Cybernetic Serendipity – a walk around the exhibition

With artificial intelligence and its effect on creativity high on the agenda, now is the perfect time to revisit the ICA’s landmark Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition of 1968  

Jasia Reichardt, specialist in art and technology and the curator of the groundbreaking Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition, which opened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, in 1968, has edited this new publication, which includes many previously unseen images and original documents.

This book begins with the history of the project, including scans of the first proposal for the exhibition to be considered by the ICA management committee, which consisted of Desmond Morris, who had just become the institute’s director, Sir Roland Penrose, Dorothy Morland, John Bodley and Theo Crosby.

The exhibition was designed by Franciszka Themerson with students from the Bath Academy of Art, and involved 130 contributors, of whom 43 were composers, artists and poets, and 87 were engineers, doctors, computer scientists and philosophers. The walk around published here consists of images of the works that were displayed, with short descriptive texts.

This is followed by Cybernetic Serendipity – Getting Rid of Preconceptions, an article originally published in Studio International in November 1968.

Editor: Jasia Reichardt
Publisher: Studio International Foundation
Content: 168 pages
Language: English
ISBN: 9781948764018 (Softcover)
Dimensions: 14 x 22.5 cm (5 1/2 x 8 7/8 in)

Available now at £25 from Art Data.