Cybernetic Serendipity
Lecture Diary: Week 3 – Cybernetic Serendipity & Intermediality
This week, we moved beyond the physical machinery of the Victorian era into the fluid concepts of “Cybernetic Serendipity” and “Intermediality.” We examined how the Fluxus movement and artists like John Cage dissolved the boundaries between distinct media forms in the 1960s. I was struck by Norbert Weiner’s definition of cybernetics as “control and communication in the animal and machine,” which reframed my understanding of how biological and digital systems intersect.
The session also engaged deeply with Kenneth Goldsmith’s Wasting Time on the Internet. We discussed the concept of “aimless surfing” as a form of literature and the “alchemical recuperation” of digital debris. The class explored Goldsmith’s “data duels”—an exercise involving swapping laptops and deleting files—which highlighted a “radical vulnerability” and challenged our fears regarding privacy and digital intimacy. We connected this to Derrida’s concept of “hauntology,” suggesting that new media is always haunted by the ghosts of the old. Finally, experimenting with “Hydra play” allowed us to practically apply Roy Ascott’s theory of interactive data streams, remixing our own webcams to become part of the cybernetic structure.
Fluxus Experiment
For the Fluxus Experiment, we decided to put up a ‘MISSING’ poster for something that wasn’t actually missing, this was mine:
During the week, I received (so far) three responses – two in the form of photographs and the third in the form of an invitation to take part in a medical research programme on the subject of the affect of sustained cocaine use on the brain (at least, I hope this is where that invitation came from …)
Read the article Zombie Media, available via the library here: https://anglia.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/44APU_INST/16n1f1b/cdi_mit_journals_leonv45i5_303642_2021_11_09_zip_leon_a_00438Links to an external site.
The article argues that contemporary digital culture is built on planned obsolescence and massive electronic waste, and proposes “zombie media” and circuit-bending–style practices as an art-led method to expose, repurpose and critique this condition.[ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws]
Zombie Media summary
- Problem framing: The authors start from the scale and toxicity of electronic waste, noting that hundreds of millions of still-functioning devices are discarded annually and that obsolescence is structurally built into digital media through rapid product cycles, design choices like sealed batteries and proprietary connectors, and a cultural expectation that “new media always becomes old.”
- Planned obsolescence as design logic: Tracing the idea from Bernard London’s 1930s proposal through mid‑20th‑century marketers such as Brooks Stevens and Victor Lebow, the article shows how shortening product lifespans became a deliberate economic strategy that now operates at the micropolitical level of industrial design, where devices are intentionally blackboxed and made non‑repairable.
- From media archaeology to art method: Building on media archaeology (Huhtamo, Ernst, Zielinski and others), the authors argue that media should be understood as layered material archives – circuits, chemicals and objects that embody time and memory – and that media archaeology must move beyond historiography into a practical methodology for contemporary art.
- Circuit bending and DIY practices: Using Reed Ghazala’s circuit‑bent “Incantor” toys as a key example, the article presents circuit bending, hardware hacking and other DIY manipulations of obsolete electronics as tactics that reappropriate blackboxed devices, challenge their intended functions and foreground issues such as planned obsolescence, infrastructural opacity and user agency.
- Black boxes and “bending” archives: Drawing on actor‑network theory and Latour, the authors describe consumer technologies as nested black boxes whose inner workings and dependencies remain hidden until breakdown, and propose “depunctualization” and circuit bending – of both hardware and historical archives – as ways to open these systems up and reveal the sociotechnical relations they contain.
- Zombie media concept: The central concept of “zombie media” reframes “dead media” as media that persist materially and ecologically, returning as toxic waste or being resurrected through artistic reuse; zombie media thus names media that are out of use but reanimated into new contexts, highlighting non‑human temporalities and the fact that media decay, rot and re-form rather than simply “die.”
- Ecological and ecosophical stakes: The article insists that information technologies are never immaterial: they depend on natural resources (such as gutta‑percha and coltan) and, when discarded, re‑enter ecosystems as pollutants, demanding a media ecology perspective that connects political economy, environmental damage and the overlapping ecologies of nature, technology and subjectivity.
- Shift to an archaeological phase of digital media: Positioning digital technologies on Gartner’s hype cycle, the authors argue that many communication technologies have moved from speculative “new media” to mass commodity and now into an “archaeological phase,” where amateur DIY, reuse, remixing and sampling in art and activism become more important than celebrating technical novelty.
- Strategic proposal: Overall, the article proposes that artists, theorists and activists adopt media-archaeological circuit bending – opening circuits, archives and infrastructures – as both an analytical and creative strategy for engaging with electronic waste, exposing the temporal and ecological dimensions of media, and inventing new, critical uses for the living dead of media culture.
Using chatgpt – or your imagination! Make up some fluxus instructions and if your feeling brave and they are safe, give one a try, record it and upload documentation of it to your blog
Here is an example of fluxus instructions in action – scroll to 2:00 to miss the lengthy introduction:
I aasked Chat GPT for some ideas and was able to conduct the following this week:
1. Kettle Symphony No. 1 (At home Tuesday 10/02/2026)
Fill a kettle with water.
Do not turn it on.
Sit with it until you hear it boiling anyway.
When it does, applaud politely.
Take a bow on its behalf.
2. The Apology Piece
Walk into a room alone. (Eaton Socon Surgery, Tuesday 10/02/2026)
Say, out loud: “Sorry.”
Wait.
Leave before anyone forgives you.
3. Library Weather Report (St Neots Library, Thursday 12/02/2026)
In a library, whisper to a book:
“It’s wild out there.”
Move it slightly further onto the shelf for safety.
4. Pedestrian Crossing Benediction (St Neots High Street, Thursday 12/02/2026)
When waiting at a crossing, quietly bless each pedestrian in your head:
“Safe travels, fluorescent hat.”
“Godspeed, person eating crisps.”
Cross only when you feel spiritually ready.
https://ars.electronica.art/news/en/ < Links to an external site. Spend five mins having a look, what catches your eye? Add it to your blog
What Caught My Eye at Ars Electronica
After exploring the Ars Electronica website, the new AI for Social Impact Initiative stood out most. This collaboration between CARE Austria and Ars Electronica seeks projects demonstrating how artificial intelligence can create concrete positive change in social, environmental, and humanitarian contexts. What makes it particularly interesting is the explicit focus on perspectives from Africa, Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa, positioning these regions as sources of innovation rather than just application sites.
The 2025 festival explored the theme “PANIC – yes/no” with remarkable nuance, examining different attitudes toward crisis. I was also struck by how Ars Electronica is evolving from a festival into an entire ecosystem, with the Center, Prix competition, Futurelab, and various initiatives working together. The 2025 festival attracted over 122,000 visits, with 1,472 artists from 83 countries.
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