Steve Dixon

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, 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 being-for-others. 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. 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.

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

Cybernetic-Existentialism

a history of new media in theater, dance, performance art, and installation

Digital performance

Barry Smith

In the past decade digital media has been increasingly incorporated into live theater and dance, and forms of interactive performance have emerged in participatory installations, on CD-ROM, and on the Web. This text traces the evolution of these practices, and presents accounts of key practitioners and performances.

Steve Dixon

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