Cybernetic-Existentialism

<p><em>Cybernetic-Existentialism: Freedom Systems and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Arts and Performance</em> 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. </p><p></p><p>In this study Steve Dixon examines how a range of artists’ works reveal the ideas of Existentialist philosophers including Kierkegaard Camus de Beauvoir and Sartre on freedom being and nothingness eternal recurrence the absurd and <i>being-for-others</i>. Simultaneously these artworks are shown to engage in complex explorations of concepts proposed by cyberneticians including Wiener Shannon and Bateson on information theory and ‘noise’ feedback loops circularity adaptive ecosystems autopoiesis and emergence. </p><p></p><p>Dixon’s groundbreaking book demonstrates how fusing insights and knowledge from these two fields can throw new light on pressing issues within contemporary arts and culture including authenticity angst and alienation homeostasis radical politics and the human as system.</p>