ABSTRACT
In Pickering’s description, the poetry of the machine is precisely expressed, as is its place at the heart of the cybernetic project. Cybernetics expanded the work of systems biologists in response to the new knowledge, both biological and technological, generated during World War II. Roy Ascott began to articulate a vision for the visual arts in response to this new age of both human and mechanical communication. The cybernetic theory was partly expressed through Ascott’s art practice, in part through his writing and finally, it was expressed in a diagram he produced in 1963 for the Diagram-Boxes and Analogue Structures exhibition catalogue. In the context of the visual arts, machine liminality opened out enticing possibilities of interactivity and performance. By 1962, Ascott had incorporated direct references to cybernetic themes such as feedback systems into his work, while simultaneously exploring the relationships between words and shapes in analogue structures such as Video Roget.
