International Times #37 August 9, 1968 (v1#37)

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International Times

1968

Ephemera

Newspaper print
19 pages

The Library Cybernetic Serendipity

Description

For its 37th issue, dated August 9, 1968, the English underground newspaper _International Times _devoted the front page to “Cybernetic Serendipity,” the groundbreaking exhibition of computer art curated by Jasia Reichardt that opened earlier that month at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

Rather than a single image, the newspaper features a collage of artworks from the exhibition: Charles Csuri’s series of plotter drawings riffing on Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian man; a looping, abstract shape that Sam Schmitt made by interpolating coordinate data; and George Nees’s 1964 study of polygonal forms with 23 corners. Inside, the paper’s eclectic contents include music and film coverage as well as a dispatch from Johannesburg reflecting on the aftermath of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre.

Toward the back, there is a mixed review of the ICA show by a critic called Biddy Peppin. “In conception and layout the exhibition is like a funfair with an arbitrary assortment of sideshows,” she writes. While Peppin approves of the interactive displays in particular, overall she finds that the show is “spoilt somewhat by the inclusion of an incredible amount of rubbish.”