on Toshareproject.it - curated by Bruce Sterling
https://nearfuturelaboratory.com/blog/2024/12/cybernetic-serendipity/
…Many of the projects in here (from the late 1960s!) are the kinds of things that we might see today in the context of Design Fiction, speculative design, and the kinds of art+technology practices that are now becoming more common. The catalog is a historical document, a contemporary manifesto, and a guide for the creative potential of human-machine collaboration. It is a reminder that the most interesting possibilities often lie not in having machines replicate human creativity, but in discovering entirely new forms of expression that can only emerge through the collaboration between human and machine intelligence.
It is also a reminder that imagination is an existentially vital way to prototype possibility and, as such, may be considered as much a means of survival as a means of invention and innovation. Without imagination, the unexpected explorations of the unknown, and the kinds of playful experimentation that one can see in the catalog, we are left with a world that is impoverished, constrained, and lacking in the kinds of surprises that make life worth living.
The publication, edited by Jasia Reichardt, emerged from an exhibition at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts that sought to demonstrate how humans could use computers and new technology to extend their creativity and inventiveness. What makes this work particularly significant is its timing – arriving at a moment when the relationship between art and technology was still being defined, when the boundaries between human and machine creativity were first being explored in a systematic way….