[1ST AM ED] Cybernetics, Art and Ideas

First American edition of this exploration of the relationship between creativity and technology, edited by British critic, curator, art gallery director, teacher and writer Jasia Reichardt in the wake of her successful 1968 exhibition “Cybernetic Serendipity” at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Published by the New York Graphic Society in 1971. 8vo, hardcover with dust jacket, 207 pages with 90 monochrome illustrations. Per the front flap, the book “examines in essays and pictures the role of the machine and machine systems in the creative arts and in out wider culture…[it] is a unique document of a period in which the machine as an extension of man’s arms and legs has given way to the machine as an extension of his mind and creativity.” With essays ranging from Jonathan Swift’s “The Word Machine” (taken from Gulliver’s Travels) to A. Michael Noll’s “The Digital Computer as a Creative Medium” and Margaret Masterman’s “Computerized Haiku.” The last work, Donald Michie’s “Computer—Servant or Master” points to topical and still unresolved issues. Textblock pulling away from spine slightly at the top. Light fraying to cloth. Light bumping and rubbing to dj.