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| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016951)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016951" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 3485 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| Cybernetics / Art |
| Suzanne Treister is an artist whose work from 2009 to 2011 serves as an example of what |
| is happening at the intersection of our current technologies, the arts, and cybernetics. |
| Treister has been a pioneer in digital art since the 1990s, inventing, for example, |
| imaginary video games and painting screen shots from them. In her project Hexen 2.0 |
| she looked back at the famous Macy conferences on cybernetics that between 1946 and |
| 1953 were organized in New York by engineers and social scientists to unite the sciences |
| and to develop a universal theory of the workings of the mind |
| In her project, she created thirty photo-text works about the conference attendees |
| (which included Wiener and von Foerster), she invented tarot cards, and she made a |
| video based on a photomontage of a "cybernetic séance." In the "séance," the conference |
| participants are seen sitting at a round table, as in spiritualist séances, while certain of |
| their statements on cybernetics are heard in an audio-collage—rational knowledge and |
| superstition combined. She also noted that some of the participating scientists worked for |
| the military; thus the application of cybernetics could be seen in an ambivalent way, even |
| back then, as a tussle between pure knowledge and its use in state control. |
| If one looks at Treister's work about the Macy conference participants, one sees |
| that no visual artist was included. A dialogue between artists and scientists would be |
| fruitful in future discussions, and it is a bit astonishing that this wasn't realized at the |
| time, given von Foerster's keen interest in art. He recounted in one of our conversations |
| how his relation to the field dated back to his childhood: |
| I grew up as a child in an artistic family. We often had visits from poets, |
| philosophers, painters, and sculptors. Art was a part of my life. Later, I got into |
| physics, as I was talented in this subject. But I always remained conscious of the |
| importance of art for science. There wasn't a great difference for me. For me, |
| both aspects of life have always been very much alike—and accessible, too. We |
| should see them as one. An artist also has to reflect on his work. He has to think |
| about his grammar and his language. A painter must know how to handle his |
| colors. Just think of how intensively oil colors were researched during the |
| Renaissance. They wanted to know how a certain pigment could be mixed with |
| others to get a certain tone of red or blue. Chemists and painters collaborated |
| very closely. I think the artificial division between science and art is wrong. |
| Though for von Foerster the relation between the art and science was always |
| clear, for our own time this connection remains to be made. There are many reasons to |
| multiply the links. The critical thinking of artists would be beneficial in respect to the |
| dangers of AI, since they draw our attention to questions they consider essential from |
| their perspective. With the advent of machine learning, new tools are available to artists |
| for their work. And as the algorithms of Al are made visible through artificial images in |
| new ways, artists' critical visual knowledge and expertise will be harnessed. Many of the |
| key questions of Al are philosophical in nature and can be answered only from a holistic |
| point of view. The way they play out among adventurous artists will be worth following. |
| Simulating Worlds |
| For the most part, the works of contemporary artists have been embodied ruminations on |
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