1st Edition

Cybernetic-Existentialism Freedom, Systems, and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Arts and Performance

By Steve Dixon Copyright 2020
336 Pages 87 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

334 Pages 87 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

334 Pages 87 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Cybernetic-Existentialism: Freedom, Systems, and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Arts and Performance offers a unique discourse and an original aesthetic theory. It argues that fusing perspectives from the philosophy of Existentialism with insights from the ‘universal science’ of cybernetics provides a new analytical lens and deconstructive methodology to critique art.   In this study,... Read more

1. Introduction: Cybernetics and Existentialism in Arts and Popular Culture; 2. Visual Art: The Aesthetics of Systems; 3. Interactive Art: Communicating, Controlling and Being-for-Others; 4. Participatory Art: Autopoiesis with Strangers; 5. Theater Art: Staging Cybernetics, Dread, and the Existential Crisis; 6. Performance art: actualizing science fiction and invoking transcendence; 7. Identity Art: The Adaptive System of the Authentic Self; 8. Uncanny Art: Existential Absurdity within Cybernetic Environments; 9. Conclusion: the eternal return and being-in-new-systems

Biography

Steve Dixon is President of LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore, one of Asia’s leading arts institutions. He is co-founder and Advisory Editor of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media (Routledge), and author of the award-winning 800-page book Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art and Installation. He was co-founder and co-Director of the Digital Performance Archive and has published on subjects including theater, film, performance studies, digital art, science fiction, and robotics.