{"product_id":"concerning-stephen-willats-and-the-social-function-of-art-9781350197626","title":"Concerning Stephen Willats and the Social","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book on Stephen Willats pulls together key strands of his practice and threads them through histories of British cybernetics, experimental art, and urban design. For Willats, a cluster of concepts about control and feedback within living and machine systems (cybernetics) offered a new means to make art relevant.   For decades, Willats has built relationships through art with people in tower blocks, underground clubs, middle-class enclaves, and warehouses on the Isle of Dogs, to investigate their current conditions and future possibilities. Sharon Irish's study demonstrates the power of Willats's multi-media art to catalyze communication among participants and to upend ideas about audience and art. Here, Irish argues that it is artists like Willats who are now the instigators of social transformation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChange and exchange—Sharon Irish has given us an insightful, nuanced and sympathetic account of Stephen Willats’s cybernetic art and social practice, growing from the maelstrom of the 1960s to the present, unsettling the balance of present and future, artist and participants, galleries and worlds along the way. * Andrew Pickering, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Philosophy, Exeter University, UK *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eList of figures                                                                                                       Preface                                                                                                                                                 Acknowledgements                                                                                                                        \u003c\/b\u003e   \u003cb\u003eIntroduction: new functions for art practice in society                    \u003c\/b\u003e A cybernetics primer Cybernetics goes social A social practice primer Chapter overview   \u003cb\u003e1. The Omni-Directional Artist                                                \u003c\/b\u003e Heuristic tools on the move \u0026lt;\u003ci\u003e Control Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e  Homeostat diagrams Cooperative decision-making: Visual Meta Language Simulation Pedagogical processes Man from the Twenty-First Century   \u003cb\u003e2. Modelling the Social                                                             \u003c\/b\u003e Cognition Control Centre for Behavioural Art Constructing social resources and social models West London Social Resource Project Social modelling in Edinburgh Meta Filter Art and social function   \u003cb\u003e3. Mutually Bound                                                                   \u003c\/b\u003e Of concept frames From a Coded World A ‘new reality’? Willats in east London Sorting Out Other People’s Lives Inside an Ocean Art for Whom?   \u003cb\u003e4. The Art of Sociotechnical Systems\u003c\/b\u003e                                    Toward a ‘depleted, disillusioned new reality’ The Ideological Tower Vertical Living Brentford Towers Art creating society: curating the Oxford Symposium and the Mosaic Series Personal Islands   \u003cb\u003e5. Creativity in Self-Organization                                                      \u003c\/b\u003e Participatory reception Working within a defined context Defined context, social practice, and the multi-homeostat problem Living with practical realities Do-It-Yourself (DIY) aesthetics ‘Objects of Creative Release’ Back to the Wasteland   \u003cb\u003e 6. Open-Ended Urban Systems                                                \u003c\/b\u003e Middlesbrough and The Transformer Marble Arch to Oxford Circus, London: Freezone Simulation in Sheffield South London: changing everything A pivot in scale: data streams Oxford community data stream Data stream portrait of London   \u003cb\u003eConclusion: On Giving Up and Compromise                                            \u003c\/b\u003e Feedback and multiple futures Open systems and participation Thinking with cybernetics Compromise not compliance   \u003cb\u003eNotes                                                                                                         Select Bibliography    \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eIndex\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"Bloomsbury Publishing PLC","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49407520309591,"sku":"9781350197626","price":90.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781350197626.jpg?v=1730499649","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/concerning-stephen-willats-and-the-social-function-of-art-9781350197626","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}