I saw these photo collages at the Tate modern ages ago and didn’t know what to make of them. Really struck me they were using the visual language of service design. But was very struck by their combination of messaging, diagrammatic structure and provocative text. I have spent a while looking around the internet and the artist Stephen Willats seems like both a creation of his time a sort of techno futurist of the sixties and seventies, (feels like early J.G.Ballard to me) and its eerily presentient of lots of service design ethnographic work. I have seen a few customer journey / day in the life diagrams that looked like his work.

I went on a bit of an internet search for more information and found a weird interview he gave to George Mallen for Page Sixty which is the Bulletin of the Computer Arts Society. He also has his own website and publishes an occasional magazine called Control. ( how Joy Division is that! There are too many cultural overlaps with this guy.)

Visually as an object to look at I am not wild about the pieces, but as a jumping off point into a whole weird and wonderful world of art ideas, its amazing.

In the interview I was really struck with a few ideas

• collaborative projects, that is everything had to be done as a group, no individual work
• we were deeply into the basics of interactive systems
• the first computer controlled interactive multimedia game…implemented in Davos at the first European Management Forum. It also sought to illustrate the comparative value of co-operation as against competition in a macro-economic situation

Here’s a long quote to give you a vibe of how ahead of the game these guys were…

‘ Page Sixty

Bulletin of Computer Arts Society Spring 2005 Stephen Willats:
An Interview on Art, Cybernetics and Social Intervention George Mallen

SW – Yes, Gordon Pask gave a seminal presentation on cybernetics in 1963 which had a big effect on staff and students and led Ascott and others to begin to formulate a new arts agenda based on concepts of feedback and complex systems. There were about 20 staff and 20 students and somehow we saw feedback as a unique concept. Pask’s lecture, and a similarly influential seminar by Basil Bernstein, I think were the second major influences on me as an artist. Staff at Ealing got highly motivated, locked themselves in a studio and set down notational schemes and theories. I think I came to realise the importance of the audience as an important part of a loop connecting artist, work and audience. How would they receive ideas and representations? Also I had come across ideas on brain alpha rhythms and read about Grey Walter’s work on robot turtles.

…….

Roy Ascott offered me a job teaching at the Ipswich School where he’d ended up after Ealing. This was to teach my own course for a year and was a phenomenal opportunity.

When I got there in early 1965 I found the students quite naïve but very open to new ideas. I set up collaborative projects, that is everything had to be done as a group, no individual work, I would present a paper, for example on the concept of feedback, which they would try to make into projects. I took the students outside the college to talk to people and set up events. Eventually I had four groups each developing their own strategy. These were in an overspill housing estate and trying to develop the idea that a work of art could be made outside, in a community, but it would need to use language, going back to Basil Bernstein ideas, that was meaningful to the audience, finding contexts they could access. So we set up ways to find language that was meaningful using questionnaires with open questions – draw something, make a plan, describe etc. not yes/no. One outcome was a set of sign posts on the estate developed in the language of the group of people. The sign posts stayed there and weren’t pulled down, fell down after a few weeks. Another project was a group designing an ideal painting for a target audience. They then made the painting, which was then loaned round the group to have in their homes. But then Ipswich was closed – too radical!

…….

GM – It must have been after that that you were toing and froing to System Research Ltd, 66 – 67, and our paths crossed. We were into the more scientific aspects of feedback. We were working on learning processes and using Pask’s adaptive teaching machines. Out of that came the conversation theory ideas which were published by Gordon and Bernard Scott in the mid-70s. So we were deeply into the basics of interactive systems.

SW – Yes, I had been coming up to System Research Ltd in Richmond at weekends both as guinea-pig and to test things and met yourself. Fantastic atmosphere for me. Also met Christopher Evans of NPL and made contact with his ideas on human computer interaction. I certainly became more electronics and interaction orientated. This led, in the early 1970s, to me working with Derek Aulton, a professional electronics engineer who helped me build the Visual Metalanguage simulation and Metafilter projects.

I read Ross Ashby’s ideas on homeostasis and tried to create a work which would show self-organisation in groups of people. Looking back it’s clear that ideas and philosophy were in advance of technology so it was difficult to make the hardware to realise the ideas. But the Visual Homeostatic Information Mesh went some way. 75 ft long it tried to elicit co-operative modes of behaviour from the visitors. It was a vast piece developing ideas of dynamic simulation/reality transformation of perceptions through simulation. It made a connection between self-organisation, problem solving and language, going back to Bernstein’s ideas. But I was building things bit by bit and I built the Visual Homeostat Information Mesh, which was installed at the Hayward Gallery. I was developing ideas of simulating a dynamic reality, trying to create co-operative modes of behaviour. Dale Lake wrote an influential paper connecting these kinds of ideas and socialist ideology.

GM – I think we were both onto the same thing here. I was working with the Computer Arts Society in 1969/70 on the development of Ecogame. This was, as far as I know, the first computer controlled interactive multimedia game. It was implemented in London and in Davos at the first European Management Forum. It also sought to illustrate the comparative value of co-operation as against competition in a macro-economic situation. ‘

Crazy stuff.

GM is George Mallen founding member of the Computer Arts society in 1968, and managing director of System Simulaton Ltd, which provides software for cultural institutions. The interview also mentions Gordon Pask who was one of the founding fathers of cybernetics. (which seems very theoretical and abstract). Cybernetics tried to unify the study of biological and electromechanical systems through common principles of feedback, communication and control. Cybernetic looked at ideas like the flow of information, control by feedback, adaptation, learning and self-organisation. I think it was considered a bit too grandiose and fell out of fashion. But its ideas have probably influenced many disciplines, especially those concerned with natural and artificial complex systems, like artificial intelligence, systems science, cognitive science, the new sciences of chaos, complexity and artificial life.