Cybernetics in Humanities and Arts in the USSR. Big Data Analysis and Computer Art

“…The Soviet Union had its own Digital Humanities, digital art, and “the other” aesthetic theory that studied it. Previously extruded to the periphery of academic science and official art, until today these subjects remain largely unexplored and undisclosed, not organized into a single historical narrative.”

Soviet cybernetic art, as much as Soviet cybernetics in general, dissolved in history with the emergence of the era marked by the expansion of Western computer technologies, having become a marginal dead-end branch of digital art’s evolution. This is largely due to the fact that the history of Soviet digital humanities and cybernetic art is closely interrelated with political processes and social life in the USSR. The book provides a detailed, step-by-step analysis of this seemingly long-forgotten scientific and art phenomenon’s chronology through the prism of the country’s history. This is the first time recollections of contemporaries, including letters and memoirs, as well as rare archival materials, have been published in such a large extent.