Coincident Feedback

A salient feature of Cybernetics is Feedback -- (one of) the first cybernetic applications was using error signal feedback for tracking military targets. Cybernetics' coffin nails were hammered by the 1969 Minsky/Pappert book Perceptrons which proved that a feed-forward neural net could not implement an XOR operation and was thus not a universal computer. It is ironic that a neural net with feed-back connections can implement such an operation, and that cybernetics -- which gave rise to the first neural nets -- was based on feedback.

Anyway, I want to talk about something else: The Sonic Arts Union. This was a group of musicians who "banded" together in the 1960's to do, among others, electronic music. Each of the four main members made pieces based on audio feedback. Now, audio feedback is not cybernetic feedback, but all of these compositions were open-ended and interactive and interaction is a feedback of the cybernetic kind. Here's a brief compendium:

• Robert Ashley -- The Wolfman (1964)
  See also: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/cutandsplice/wolfman.shtml
  This was a virtuoso vocal/tape performance that drove the audience mad.

• Alvin Lucier -- I Am Sitting In a Room (1966)
  See also: http://www.lovely.com/titles/cd1013.html
  Temporal feedback making music. Lucier has made many other seminal works, e.g., the first bio-feedback performance: Music for Solo Performer.

• David Behrman -- Wavetrain (1966)
  See also: http://www.lovely.com/bios/behrman.html
  Pretty much straight audio feedback via piano strings. Behrman made one of the first interactive electronic environments: Runthrough which used dancers passing between arrays of photocells to mix the music. Plus he composed the music for the Cuningham dance Walkaround which featured a Duchampian set designed by Jasper Johns.

•  Gordon Mumma -- Hornpipe (1967)
  See also: http://www.lovely.com/bios/mumma.html
  A "CyberSonic" instrument driven by a modified french horn which excited the acoustics of the room. This was perhaps the first example of man-machine-environment interaction.I studied and worked with Mumma at UCSC in the '70's, so I'm a fanboy.

Thus there is more to feedback from the 60's than one might think.