Concerning Stephen Willats and the social function of art : experiments in cybernetics and society / Sharon Lee Irish.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Irish, Sharon, 1952- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Willats, Stephen, 1943---Criticism and interpretation.

Willats, Stephen.

Social practice (Art)--England--London.

Social practice (Art).

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations

Edition:

First edition.

Distribution:

[London, England] : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025.

Place of Publication:

London ; Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020.

Summary:

"This book on Stephen Willats pulls together key strands of his practice and threads them through histories of British cybernetics, experimental art, and urban design. For Willats, a cluster of concepts about control and feedback within living and machine systems (cybernetics) offered a new means to make art relevant. For decades, Willats has built relationships through art with people in tower blocks, underground punk clubs, middle-class enclaves like Harrow, and warehouses on the Isle of Dogs, to investigate their current conditions and future possibilities. Irish's study demonstrates the power of Willats' multi-media art to catalyze communication among participants and to upend ideas about 'audience' and 'art.' Here, Sharon Lee Irish argues that it is artists like Willats who are now the instigators of social transformation"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

List of figures

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: new functions for art practice in society

A cybernetics primer Cybernetics goes social A social practice primer Chapter overview

1. The Omni-Directional Artist

Heuristic tools on the move Control Magazine Homeostat diagrams Cooperative decision-making: Visual Meta Language Simulation Pedagogical processes Man from the Twenty-First Century

2. Modelling the Social

Cognition Control Centre for Behavioural Art Constructing social resources and social models West London Social Resource Project Social modelling in Edinburgh Meta Filter Art and social function

3. Mutually Bound

Of concept frames From a Coded World A 'new reality'? Willats in east London Sorting Out Other People's Lives Inside an Ocean Art for Whom?

4. The Art of Sociotechnical Systems

Toward a 'depleted, disillusioned new reality' The Ideological Tower Vertical Living Brentford Towers Art creating society: curating the Oxford Symposium and the Mosaic Series Personal Islands

5. Creativity in Self-Organization

Participatory reception Working within a defined context Defined context, social practice, and the multi-homeostat problem Living with practical realities Do-It-Yourself (DIY) aesthetics 'Objects of Creative Release' Back to the Wasteland

6. Open-Ended Urban Systems

Middlesbrough and The Transformer Marble Arch to Oxford Circus, London: Freezone Simulation in Sheffield South London: changing everything A pivot in scale: data streams Oxford community data stream Data stream portrait of London

Conclusion: On Giving Up and Compromise

Feedback and multiple futures Open systems and participation Thinking with cybernetics Compromise not compliance

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9781350197596

1350197599

9781350197602

1350197602

9781350197619

1350197610

OCLC:

1230917727