Nicholas Schoffer’s sculpture CYSP, is an early example of the expanded notion of contemporary theory that is said to include “the organic, the inorganic, the material and the virtual.” (Fernandez 557) The sculpture, named after the first letters of cybernetics and spatiodynamic is one of the first sculptures to have and electronic brain which allowed for total autonomy of movement, which is able to travel in all directions at two speeds as well as axial and eccentric rotation due to its pivoting polychrome plates. The sculpture is also a contemporary piece of art that exemplifies the theory of active space and spaciodynism, which architect Grey Lynn characterizes by having “properties of flow, turbulence, viscosity and drag”(557).

Many artists, architects, theorists and mathematicians in the 1950s and 1960s used the advances in technology, communication, “information theory, cybernetics, general systems theory and artificial intelligence” in order to “link the natural sciences, the humanities, the social sciences and the arts” (561). The art generated from this technologically rich and affluent period focuses on the importance of process and procedure to define the art itself. Like Schoffer’s sculpture, the ideas behind body and mind, virtual and material, objectivity and reality of perception, the artist and the viewer, the viewer and the art are all called into question. No longer is the art the central importance but instead the concept, the environment and the process is the defining importance behind the piece of work.

Fernandez, Maria. “Life-like”: Historicizing Process and Responsiveness in Digital Art. 557-581. elearning.