Guy Debord was one of the founders of the Situationists, and published The Society of Spectacle in 1967, describing the state of influence that media and pop culture had taken over the general populace. The Situationists looked to blur the lines between art and life and construct situations within the everyday placing value in interaction.
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The Fluxus movement was interested in the exchange of information and making that information accessible to all, however, the movement was also interested in redefining art, like its predecessors, the Futurists and Dadaists. George Macuinas wrote the "Fluxus Manifesto" in 1963, defining the term "Fluxus," which resulted in "the cadres of cultural, social, and political revolutionaries into united front and action." Fluxus artists include John Cage and Nam June Paik.
In a 1945 Atlantic Monthly article, Vannevar Bush wrote about an object called the Memex that is able to "browse documents and allow users to create their own trail through documentation" (Paul 8) as well as enter data. This device was never created, but was a precursor for the modern day computer.
Norbert Wiener published The Human Use of Human Beings in 1950. The book discusses the mechanization of the human, as well as the facility for communication between man and machine. He also published Cybernetics two years earlier, which discussed the need for balance in a society headed for entropy. Cybernetics introduces the use of a mathematical language in terms of information exchange.
Schlemmer developed his own theory of performance. He likened painting to the god of intellect, Apollo, and theater to Dionysus, the god of the harvest and madness. He writes of paintings exploring a two-dimensional space, while performance being able to 'experience' space. Schlemmer explains that 'out of the plane geometry, out of the pursuit of the straight line, the diagonal, the circle and the curve, a stereometry of space evolves, by the moving vertical line of the dancing figure.' This writing mimics Marinetti's manifesto, "Futurist Dance" of 1917, in which he writes of the 'geometry of the dance, free of mimicry and without sexual stimulation.'
Richard Huelsenbeck left for Berlin as a result of the closing of the Cabaret Voltaire. He published written work in Zurich in "En avant Dada: Eine Geschichte des Dadaismus (1920)" in regards to the concept of simultaneity and its importance in the scheme of existentialism. He writes, "the screeching of a tram brake and the crash of a brick falling off the roof next door reach my ear simultaneously and my eye rouses itself to seize, in the simultaneity of these events, a swift meaning of life."
Tristan Tzara created a literary movement out of the Dada movement. He wrote "The First Celestial Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine", and went on to publish the Dada magazine. This was seen as a form of codification of the movement. Tzara and Ball also took over the Galerie Corray and it opened on March 17th in 1917 as the Galerie Dada with an exhibition of Der Sturm paintings.
Marinetti wrote the Manifesto of Dynamic and Synoptic Declamation instructing potential performers how to 'declaim.' This was to 'liberate intellectual circles from the old static, pacifist and nostalgic declamation.' Marinetti proclaimed for himself the 'indisputable world primacy as a declaimer of free verse and words-in-freedom.' This text is a reaction to industrialism and capitalism, as is the first Futurist Manifesto, as Marinetti wishes to let go of the traditions of memorized text in theater and improvise.
Marinetti wrote a manifesto called the Futurist Dance of 1917 noting Nijinsky's 'geometry of the dance, free of mimicry and without sexual stimulation.' He also stated that, one must go beyond 'muscular possibilities' and aim in the dance for 'that ideal multiplied body of the motor that we have so long dreamed of.' Here he speaks of the mechanical body much like Balla's futurist ballet, Tipografica.
The painter, Russolo, wrote his manifesto, "The Art of Noise," after reading a letter from Marinetti describing the sounds of war. He stated, "in antiquity there was only silence," but with the invention of the machine "noise was born." "Pure sound, in its exiguity and monotony, no longer arouses emotion." Russolo went on to perform noise music in an act of mechanization.
