Information Technology Reference
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sense of global fragility. As this chapter will show artists, as much
as engineers, scientists or politicians, pursued these interests, even
if they did not always explicitly invoke the theories by name. This
cybernetic culture is the direct predecessor of our current digital
culture, and the contribution it has made to the formation of that
culture owes as much to artists as to scientists and researchers.
john cage, interactivity and multimedia
It can be argued that the artist who has had the most profound
influence on our current digital culture is the composer John
Cage. Through his pioneering artistic practice in the '
s,
and through his influence on other practitioners and groups, he
fostered interest in a set of concerns that would later become central
to the development of digital media and media art. He directly
inspired musical movements such as Minimalism, which in its turn
had a crucial influence on digital music, as well as art movements
such as Fluxus, whose interest in media and telecommunications
presaged many current digital art concerns. In particular he opened
up space for the development of ideas about interactivity and multi-
media, which would not only have repercussions in the art world,
but would greatly influence those who, later, came to think about
the computer as a medium. This is not to suggest that Cage was, in
any sense, a computer artist, or that his work can only be understood
in relation to that of those practitioners who might be described
as such. In fact Cage's early work does not involve computers at all,
and it is not until the
50
s and '
60
s that he started to use them as tools
for composition and performance. But in the
1960
s he was respond-
ing to a similar set of issues and ideas to those that were beginning
to be rehearsed in relation to computers.
It may be of some relevance that, during the War, Cage's father, an
engineer and inventor, worked on problems of radar detection. As
he had done before the War, Cage helped him in his research, which
1950
