...Eamonn Bell In his Théorie de l’information et perception esthétique (1958), the sociologist of culture Abraham Moles (1920–92) set out to demonstrate the applicability of information theory—a mathematical linchpin of cybernetics—to the arts more generally. Moles drew on classical psychophysics...

... between organisms and machines, core concepts of control and feedback, information theory: These suggest a cybernetic cast to Oram’s work. As Dunbar-Hester (2010) has observed, however, some experimental musicians drew directly from cybernetic sources, while others employed cybernetic-sounding language...

... date obscures the even earlier origins of its central concerns in Meyer’s work of the 1950s and ’60s. Indeed, Meyer developed his most enduring ideas amidst an array of momentous intellectual changes, not least of which were the rise (and fall) of information theory and cybernetics, and the transition...

...Eric Drott Few intellectual movements have been as influential as cybernetics was in the 1950s and ’60s. Fewer still have seen their stock fall so precipitously in the years since. Despite the growing body of literature that has reassessed this postwar “cybernetics moment” (Hayles, Kline, Pickering...

...Clara Latham What happens when music, which is historically understood to be an inherently human activity, joins with cybernetics, which claims to fold the human into the machine? I explore this question through a case study of the theremin, focusing on both the instrument’s initial cultural...