The horror... the horror

Horror in Architecture
Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing
Oro Editions, 2013 

An examination of horror and its architectural analogues, including historical perspectives and a dissection of the unease at the heart of the modern project.

Written by a pair of Harvard design graduates turned landscape architects, the text sometimes has the feel of a thesis or academic tract, though it is mostly accessible and the profuse illustrations make an interesting photo-essay in themselves. The juxtaposition of rotten architecture with biological freaks, mullet hairstyles and stills from John Carpenter's The Thing, Army of Darkness and other horror films is most enjoyable, so much so that this little paperback has been enlivening my bathroom reading for the past couple of months. I shall miss it but, you know, binge and purge.

 

Cybernetic Radiophonics

Father of cybernetic art Nicolas Schöffer (1912-1992) is seen here installing his work at the ICA London for exhibit in 1960. This was presumably the first UK showing of Cysp I (1956), usually considered the original cybernetic sculpture in that it made use of a primitive electronic computer control system.

The British Pathé newsreel commentator gives us their usual 'artist-as-nutty-professor' shtick, but once he shuts up there is some great radiophonics to accompany the visuals of the Lux 3 sculpture. Schöffer collaborated with electronic / musique concrète composer Pierre Henry, which is an interesting connection.

Here is a French newsreel version, featuring prettier girls and lousier music (quelle surprise!)

There is also a nice discussion of an exhibition (perhaps 'open studio' is more precise) that took place some years ago in his old studio (which I hope is still intact in Montmartre) plus some cool images here and here.

Rowland Emett

Rowland Emett will be familiar to many as the designer of Caractacus Potts' inventions in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He was the creator of automata and an accomplished cartoonist, a cross between Ronald Searle and William Heath Robinson, perhaps with Wilf Lunn as his idiot bastard son.

Emett designed the trains on the miniature railway that operated at the Festival of Britain in 1951.

His work is primarily concerned with a jokey visual entertainment rather than serious artistic endeavor, but there is always room for humour in art. He produced a number of public artworks and this collaboration with Honeywell computers that appeared at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition:

 

Emett is currently the subject of a nice looking exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which can be seen during installation here:

The Rowland Emett Society have very kindly provided the delightful soundtrack to the exhibition on Soundcloud. 

Cybernauts

Cybernetics, Art and Ideas
Jascia Reichardt (ed.)
New York Graphic Society Ltd.
Greenwich, CT, 1971

Following three years of preparation, curator Jasia Reichardt unveiled the exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA, London in the summer of 1968. Primarily a demonstration of current ideas rather than a manifesto, the works displayed dealt with aspects of the relationship between technology, contemporary culture and creativity.

Reichardt gathered such a surplus of material during her lengthy research that she was able to publish a second book three years after the exhibition catalogue. Cybernetics, Art and Ideas was the follow-up, collecting essays by some of the writers, thinkers, scientists and composers who contributed to the exhibition.

The book opens with a short extract from Gulliver's Travels (1726) to set the tone.

'King of the Shouting House' by John Wood, a children's game which made use of computer controlled random interruptions

The mystery of the vanishing triangle by Rutherford Boyd

Iannis Xensakis score

Gaussian probability density images, A. Michael Noll

I have to say that much of the text is pretty heavy going for a code illiterate like myself. However there are some illuminating passages on the relationship between computer science and the creative arts, and some historical context for today's discussions of code as art.

Exhibition poster

I strongly urge everyone to visit the wonderful Cybernetic Serendipity archive site - http://cyberneticserendipity.net/ - if only more exhibitions were curated for posterity with such care. Not only does the site provide links to film clips and free download of the music LP that accompanied the show (including Cage, Xenakis and, erm, Wilhelm Fucks) but also a pdf download of the exhibition catalogue 'Cybernetic Serendipity - the computer and the arts' (Studio International, 1968).

"Mrs Peel, we're not needed"