Systems art is art influenced by cybernetics, and systems theory, which reflects on natural systems, social systems and social signs of the art world itself.

Systems art emerged as part of the first wave of the conceptual art movement extended in the 1960s and 1970s. Closely related and overlapping terms are ''Anti-form movement'', ''Cybernetic art'', ''Generative Systems'', ''Process art'', ''Systems aesthetic'', ''Systemic art'', ''Systemic painting'' and ''Systems sculptures''.

Related fields of systems art

Anti-form movement

By the early 1960s Minimalism emerged as an abstract movement in art (with roots in geometric abstraction via Malevich, the Bauhaus and Mondrian) which rejected the idea of relational, and subjective painting, the complexity of Abstract expressionist surfaces, and the emotional zeitgeist and polemics present in the arena of Action painting. Minimalism argued that extreme simplicity could capture all of the sublime representation needed in art.

Associated with painters such as Frank Stella, minimalism in painting, as opposed to other areas, is a modernist movement. Depending on the context, minimalism might be construed as a precursor to the postmodern movement. Seen from the perspective of writers who sometimes classify it as a postmodern movement, early minimalism began and succeeded as a modernist movement to yield advanced works, but which partially abandoned this project when a few artists changed direction in favor of the anti-form movement.

In the late 1960s the term Postminimalism was coined by Robert Pincus-Witten to describe minimalist derived art which had content and contextual overtones which minimalism rejected, and was applied to the work of Eva Hesse, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra and new work by former minimalists Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Sol LeWitt, and Barry Le Va, and others. Minimalists like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Agnes Martin, John McCracken and others continued to produce their late modernist paintings and sculpture for the remainder of their careers.

Cybernetic art

Audio feedback and the use of tape loops, sound synthesis and computer generated compositions reflected a cybernetic awareness of information, systems and cycles. Such techniques became widespread in the 1960s in the music industry. The visual effects of electronic feedback became a focus of artistic research in the late 1960s, when video equipment first reached the consumer market. Steina and Woody Vasulka, for example, used "all manner and combination of audio and video signals to generate electronic feedback in their respective of corresponding media."

With related work by Edward Ihnatowicz, Tsai Wen-Ying and cybernetician Gordon Pask and the animist kinetics of Robert Breer and Jean Tinguely, the 1960s produced a strain of cyborg art that was very much concerned with the shared circuits within and between the living and the technological. A line of cyborg art theory also emerged during the late 1960s. Writers like Jonathan Benthall and Gene Youngblood drew on cybernetics and cybernetic. The most substantial contributors here were the British artist and theorist Roy Ascott with his essay "Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision" in the journal Cybernetica (1976), and the American critic and theorist Jack Burnham. In "Beyond Modern Sculpture" from 1968 he builds cybernetic art into an extensive theory that centers on art's drive to imitate and ultimately reproduce life.

Generative systems

Generative art is art that has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical or randomised autonomous processes. Sonia Landy Sheridan established Generative Systems as a program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1970 in response to social change brought about in part by the computer-robot communications revolution. The program, which brought artists and scientists together, was an effort at turning the artist's passive role into an active one by promoting the investigation of contemporary scientific—technological systems and their relationship to art and life. Unlike copier art, which was a simple commercial spin-off, Generative Systems was actually involved in the development of elegant yet simple systems intended for creative use by the general population. Generative Systems artists attempted to bridge the gap between elite and novice by directing the line of communication between the two, thus bringing first generation information to greater numbers of people and bypassing the entrepreneur.

Process art

Process art is an artistic movement as well as a creative sentiment and world view where the end product of ''art'' and ''craft'', the ''objet d’art'', is not the principal focus. The 'process' in process art refers to the process of the formation of art: the gathering, sorting, collating, associating, and patterning. Process art is concerned with the actual ''doing''; art as a rite, ritual, and performance. Process art often entails an inherent motivation, rationale, and intentionality. Therefore, art is viewed as a creative journey or process, rather than as a deliverable or end product.

In the artistic discourse the work of Jackson Pollock is hailed as an antecedent. Process art in its employment of serendipity has a marked correspondence with Dada. Change and transience are marked themes in the process art movement. The Guggenheim Museum states that Robert Morris in 1968 had a groundbreaking exhibition and essay defining the movement and the Museum Website states as "Process artists were involved in issues attendant to the body, random occurrences, improvisation, and the liberating qualities of nontraditional materials such as wax, felt, and latex. Using these, they created eccentric forms in erratic or irregular arrangements produced by actions such as cutting, hanging, and dropping, or organic processes such as growth, condensation, freezing, or decomposition".

Systemic art

According to Chilvers (2004) "earlier in 1966 the British art critic Lawrence Alloway had coined the term "Systemic art", to describe a type of abstract art characterized by the use of very simple standardized forms, usually geometric in character, either in a single concentrated image or repeated in a system arranged according to a clearly visible principle of organization. He considered the chevron paintings of Kenneth Noland as examples of Systemic art, and considered this as a branch of Minimal art".

John G. Harries considered a common ground in the ideas that underlie developments in 20th century art such as Serial art, Systems Art, Constructivism and Kinetic art. These kind of arts often do not stem directly from observations of things visible in the external natural environment, but from the observation of depicted shapes and of the relationship between them. Systems art, according to Harries, represents a deliberate attempt by artists to develop a more flexible frame of reference. A style in which its frame of reference is taken as a model to be emulated rather than as a cognitive systems, that only leads to the institutionalization of the imposed model. But to transfer the meaning of a picture to its location within a systemic structure does not remove the need to define the constitutive elements of the system: if they are not defined, one will not know how to build the system.

Systemic painting

Systemic Painting, according to Auping (1989) "was the title of an highly influential exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 1966 assembled and introduction written by Lawrence Alloway as curator. The show contained numerous works that many critics today would consider part of the Minimal art". In the catalogue Alloway noted, that ... "paintings, such as those in this exhibition are not, as has been often claimed, impersonal. The personal is not expunged by using a neat technique: anonymity is not a consequence of highly finishing a painting". The term "systemic painting" later on has become the name for artists who employ systems make a number of aesthetic decisions before commencing to paint.

Systems sculpture

According to Feldman (1987) "serial art, serial painting, systems sculpture and ABC art, were art styles of the 1960s and 1970s in which simple geometric configurations are repeated with little or no variation. Sequences becomes important as in mathematics and linguistic context. These works rely on simple arrangements of basic volumes and voids, mechanically produced surfaces, and algebraic permutations of form. The impact on the viewer, however, is anything but simple".

See also

Algorithmic art

Dynamic Painting

Computer art

Conceptual art

Evolutionary art

Fractal art

Information art

Interactive art

Media art

Process music

Software art

Sustainable art

Systems thinking

Systems music

References

Further reading

Vladimir Bonacic (1989), "A Transcendental Concept for Cybernetic Art in the 21st Century", in: ''Leonardo'', Vol. 22, No. 1, Art and the New Biology: Biological Forms and Patterns (1989), pp. 109-111.

Jack Burnham (1968), "Systems Esthetics", in: ''Artforum'' (September, 1968).

Karen Cham, Jeffrey Johnson (2207), "Complexity Theory: A Science of Cultural Systems?", in: ''M/C journal'', Volume 10 Issue 3 Jun. 2007

Francis Halsall (2007), "Systems Aesthetics and the System as Medium", Systems Art Symposium Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2007.

Pamela Lee, (2004), ''Chronophobia.'' Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Eddie Price (1974), ''Systems Art: An Enquiry'', City of Birmingham Polytechnic, School of Art Education, ISBN 0905017005

Edward A. Shanken, “Cybernetics and Art: Cultural Convergence in the 1960s,” in Bruce Clarke and Linda Dalrymple Henderson, eds. From Energy to Information: Representation in Science, Technology, Art, and Literature. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002): 255-77.

Edward A. Shanken, “Art in the Information Age: Technology and Conceptual Art,” in SIGGRAPH 2001 Electronic Art and Animation Catalog, (New York: ACM SIGGRAPH, 2001): 8-15; expanded and reprinted in Art Inquiry 3: 12 (2001): 7-33 and Leonardo 35:3 (August, 2002): 433-38.

Edward A. Shanken, “The House That Jack Built: Jack Burnham’s Concept of Software as a Metaphor for Art,” Leonardo Electronic Almanac 6:10 (November 1998). Reprinted in English and Spanish in a minima 12 (2005): 140-51.

Luke Skrebowski (2008), "All Systems Go: Recovering Hans Haacke's Systems Art", in ''Grey Room'', Winter 2008, No. 30, Pages 54–83.

External links

Systems Art Symposium, in de Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 2007.

Observing 'Systems-Art' from a Systems-Theoretical Perspective by Francis Halsall: summary of presentation on Chart 2005, 2005.

Category:Art movements Category:Artistic techniques Category:Cellular automata Category:Conceptual art Category:Contemporary art Category:Digital art Category:Genetic programming Category:Postmodern art Category:Systems theory Category:Systems science Category:Conceptual systems

fr:Anti-Form nl:Systems art

name	Beyond Words
director	Louis van Gasteren
starring	Meher Baba
cinematography	Jan de Bont
distributor	Sheriar Foundation
released	1997
runtime	30 min
country	Netherlands
language	English
website	}}

''Beyond Words'' is a 1997 documentary film directed by Louis van Gasteren.

Shot in India partly in 1967 in 35mm film and partly thirty years later in 1997 in video, ''Beyond Words'' is one of only three or four films ever shot of the silent master Meher Baba that include synchronized sound and the only film shot of him in 35mm color. In the film van Gasteren deftly interviews Meher Baba on finding God within the self, drugs, and cinema. Meher Baba's silent gestures are interpreted in English by disciple Eruch Jessawala. It was one of the last films and by far the most professional ever shot of Baba, with cinematography by Jan de Bont.

The Meher Baba footage in ''Beyond Words'' was originally planned by van Gasteren to be included in a longer film titled ''Nema Aviona Za Zagreb'' (No Plane for Zagreb) which was never completed. After a long period of consideration van Gasteren finally released the unseen footage in ''Beyond Words'' in 1997. Although Gasteren did not show the 1967 footage of the film publicly for 30 years, he allowed Pete Townshend of The Who to include two still frames inside the gatefold cover of his 1972 Meher Baba tribute album ''Who Came First''. Van Gasteren also interviewed and filmed Timothy Leary in Millbrook, New York for the film ''No Plane for Zagreb''. The footage of Leary does not appear in ''Beyond Words''.

Plot

The film begins in 1967 with extremely exotic and unusual scenes of a mast (a kind of Sufi God-intoxicated person that Baba worked with), followed by a scene of Baba washing the feet of lepers, and then an interview of Meher Baba by van Gasteren. The film ends with a much older van Gasteren returning to India three decades later in a reunion with Eruch Jessawala who originally interpreted Baba's gestures. Meher Baba has long died as the now more mature men exchange words and photos. Also in the final scenes, Louis van Gasteren dons a red turban that Meher Baba had given him during their meeting in 1967 and which he had not worn for 30 years.

References

External links

Official website of Louis van Gasteren

Category:1997 films Category:Documentary films about people Category:Dutch documentary films Category:Meher Baba Category:1990s documentary films

Peter Michael Senge (born 1947) is an American scientist and director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is known as author of the book ''The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization'' from 1990 (new edition 2006). He is a senior lecturer at the System Dynamics Group at MIT Sloan School of Management, and co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute.

Biography

Peter Senge received a B.S. in Aerospace engineering from Stanford University. While at Stanford, Senge also studied philosophy. He later earned an M.S. in social systems modeling from MIT in 1972. He also earned a Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1978.

He was the Director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and is presently (2005) on the faculty at MIT.

He is the founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL). This organization helps with the communication of ideas between large corporations. It replaced the previous organization known as, The center for Organizational Learning at MIT.

He has had a regular meditation practice since 1996 and began meditating with a trip to Tassajara, a Zen Buddhist monastery, before attending Stanford. He recommends meditation or similar forms of contemplative practice.

Work

An engineer by training, Peter was a protégé of John H. Hopkins and has followed closely the works of Michael Peters and Robert Fritz and based his books on pioneering works with the five disciplines in Ford, Chrysler, Shell, AT&T;, Hannover Insurance, Harley-Davidson since the 70s and 80s through today.

Organization development

Senge emerged in the 1990s as a major figure in organizational development with his book ''The Fifth Discipline'' where he developed the notion of a learning organization. This views organizations as dynamical systems (as defined in Systemics) in a state of continuous adaptation and improvement.

In 1997, ''Harvard Business Review'' identified ''The Fifth Discipline'' as one of the seminal management books of the previous 75 years. For this work, he was named by ''Journal of Business Strategy'' as the 'Strategist of the Century'. They further said that he was one of a very few people who 'had the greatest impact on the way we conduct business today'.

Learning Organization and Systems Thinking

According to Senge 'learning organizations' are those organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together." He argues that only those organizations that are able to adapt quickly and effectively will be able to excel in their field or market. In order to be a learning organization there must be two conditions present at all times. The first is the ability to design the organization to match the intended or desired outcomes and second, the ability to recognize when the initial direction of the organization is different from the desired outcome and follow the necessary steps to correct this mismatch. Organizations that are able to do this are exemplary.

Senge also believed in the theory of Systems Thinking which has sometimes been referred to as the 'Cornerstone' of the Learning Organization. Systems thinking, focuses on how the individual that is being studied interacts with the other constituents of the system. Rather than focusing on the individuals within an organization it prefers to look at a larger number of interactions within the organization and in between organizations as a whole.

See also

Organizational learning

System Dynamics

Systems thinking

Strategy dynamics

Strategic management

Organizational Communication

Publications

Peter Senge wrote several books and articles. A selection:

1990, '' The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization'', Doubleday, New York, 1990.

1994, ''The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook''

1999, ''The Dance of Change''

2004, ''Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future'', published in 2004

2005, ''Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, 'Organizations, and Society'

2008, ''The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals and Organizations Are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World''

References

External links

SoL, Society for Organizational Learning - which Senge founded

Presence.net - another SoL web site based on his more recent publications

Presencing Institute

Systems Thinking in Action Conference, an annual event that Senge has keynoted for the last 19 years

Category:1947 births Category:American business theorists Category:Living people Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Category:MIT Sloan School of Management alumni Category:Social information processing Category:Systems scientists

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