Noll, A. Michael, et al., Reichardt, Jasia, ed. 1971. Cybernetics, Art, and Ideas. Blue Star House, Highgate Hill, London N 19:Studio Vista Limited

Jasia Reichardt edited this book after the success of the exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity (1968, London, Institute for Contemporary Arts). It is the attempt to bring to a broader public ideas and results of the cybernetic art movement.

The essays in the volume deal with relationships between computers and the arts, mainly from a cybernetic perspective, i.e. under the aspect of control and feedback. The exploration of influences between creativity and technology find an early panel. Links are explored between scientific or mathematical approaches, intuition, and the more irrational and oblique urges associated with the making of music, art, and poetry. The essays, which range from Jonathan Swift’s description of a “word machine” for giving the world “a complete body of all arts and sciences” to a “computerized Haiku,” are composed of fiction, speculation, science fiction, aesthetic theories, sociological deductions, reports of experiments made with cybernetic environments, reports on computer-composed music, computer-generated art and texts, as well as explanations of how computers work and their role in our society.