Cybernetic Serendipity (ICA, London, 1968)

Cybernetic Serendipity, an exhibition about the computer and the arts, ran at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 2 August to 20 October 1968. It was curated by the critic Jasia Reichardt and showed computer graphics, music, poetry, films and machines by more than 130 people. The ICA calls it the first international exhibition in Britain on the arts and new technology.¹

The idea

The participants were not only artists but also composers, engineers, mathematicians and poets. The aim, in the ICA's account, was to show the links between the random systems that artists, composers and poets used and the cybernetic devices they worked with, and to show possibilities rather than finished achievements.¹

What was in it

The catalogue was a special issue of Studio International, published in July 1968.²

• Machines. Gordon Pask's Colloquy of Mobiles, Edward Ihnatowicz's Sound Activated Mobile, which turned toward quiet, steady sounds, Jean Tinguely's painting machines and Nam June Paik's Robot K-456.^3, 4 The catalogue section on machines also had "The Henry drawing computer" by Desmond Paul Henry and Ivan Moscovich's "pendulum harmonograph", a drawing machine of the kind described in Lissajous figures.²
• Music. Visitors could sing or whistle into a microphone and hear Peter Zinovieff's equipment improvise on the tune.³
• Films. John Whitney's Permutations and a film from Bell Labs.³
• Graphics. Contributions by Frieder Nake, Georg Nees and A. Michael Noll, Harmon and Knowlton, the Computer Technique Group from Japan, an interview with Charles Csuri, and a section on the CalComp plotting system.²

Visitors and tour

The ICA gives some 60,000 visitors. Wikipedia notes that Time magazine reported 40,000 and that the ICA did not count accurately.^1, 3 In 1969 the exhibition travelled to the Corcoran Annex of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (16 July – 31 August) and then to the Exploratorium in San Francisco (1 November – 18 December).^3, 4

London and Zagreb

One day after the London opening, on 3 August 1968, Zagreb held the colloquy Computers and Visual Research, part of Tendencies 4. Frieder Nake, who wrote for the London catalogue, later put the difference in two phrases: London was "art as an event", Zagreb "art as research".^2, 5 Nake's later rejection of the whole label is told in There should be no computer art, and JAEV's Plotter art places Cybernetic Serendipity among the exhibitions that defined the field.