Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Pask's student Ranulph Glanville had a fleeting association with Pink Floyd,
who lived nearby, and built a piece of electronic equipment for them—a ring
modulator; he also did a sound mix for Captain Beefheart (Glanville, email, 16
August 2005). More consequential than such contacts with the iconic bands
of the sixties, however, were Pask's contacts dating back to his undergraduate
days with Cedric Price (Price 2001, 819), one of Britain's leading postwar ar-
chitects, and with the radical theater director Joan Littlewood. If we pursued
Pask's projects chronologically, the order would be Fun Palace, cybernetic
theater, Colloquy of Mobiles, but for the purposes of exposition it is better to
begin with the theater and to end with architecture.
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Cybernetic Theater
Joan Littlewood (1914-2002), the founder of the postwar Theatre Workshop
in Britain and of the Theatre Royal in Stratford, London, writer and producer
of
Oh, What a Lovely War!
and many other plays that marked an era, occupies
an almost legendary place in the history of British theater (Ezard 2002).
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She
recalled that she had heard stories about Pask in the 1950s and that he had
“flitted across my life from time to time like a provocative imp. . . . He had
some idea of what we were up to. I wrote to him a couple of times. He seemed
to be as
de trop
in English society as we were. They simply did not know how to
use him—the Yanks did.” The reference to the Yanks is an exaggeration, but,
as usual for our cyberneticians, de trop sounds about right. Littlewood and
Pask first met in person, presumably in the late 1950s, at System Research, “a
normal looking house, from the outside, but we were standing in a labyrinth
of wires, revolving discs of cardboard, cut from shredded wheat packets, little
pots and plugs, while through it all a small, perfectly normal baby girl [Her-
mione Pask] was crawling in imminent danger of being electrocuted from the
looks of things, though she was cooing contentedly” (Littlewood 2001, 760).
Here is Littlewood's recollection of a subsequent conversation with Pask
(Littlewood 2001, 761): “I told him about two Red Indians taking their morn-
ing coffee in the Reservation Cafe and discussing last night's film. 'I thought
we were going to win till that last reel,' said one. 'It would be fun,' I said, 'if
the Red Indians did win for a change.' This caused a spark. He knew that I
worked with inventive clowns. 'We could have a set of different endings,' he
said. 'At least eight and the audience could decide which they wanted,' 'How?'
'By pressing a button attached to their seat, quite simple.' ” The upshot of this
conversation was a thirty-page 1964 document entitled “Proposals for a Cy-
bernetic Theatre,” written by Pask on behalf of Theatre Workshop and System
