Abstract

Cybernetics appeared first in America in the 1940s and ’50s as an experimental scientific field, which attempted to understand networked systems through studying channels of feedback and communication. However, its relevance to the period was quickly felt beyond its first home in mathematics, including by some in the plastic arts. French-Hungarian artist Nicolas Schöffer (1912-1992) is the first artist documented as incorporating cybernetic principles into modern art. With the help of engineers, he was able to develop new responsive technologies to realize his artistic vision. The resulting cybernetic artworks, built to respond to their environments in various ways, are defining examples within the history of art, science, and technology collaboration.

This thesis uses a selection of Schöffer’s sculptural cybernetic works originally produced between 1950 and 1970 as case studies for the unique materiality of responsive machine art, and considers how cybernetics impacted the foundations of art and technology discourse. The author invokes Schöffer’s art as a tool for navigating broader methodological questions: What does the content of cybernetic art have to teach us about writing and history? And, how can we write about machines more accurately and responsibly? The shifting material lives of Schöffer’s cybernetic artworks are analyzed alongside past and present studies of them, demonstrating one approach to understanding the rhetorical complexity of cybernetic art history and what its significance might be today.