Practice:1969 Les Levine Contact: A Cybernetic Sculpture

Les Levine created a work of art called 'Contact' it is a Cybernetic Sculpture, built in 1969 based on the idea of creating art which avoids art history. Les Levine is interested by the implications of self-awareness through the technologically-extended superego of the closed-circuit TV his intentions were that if a machine could show the human organism as a working model that there would be no need for Psychology as he is quoted to say: "I don't tend to think of my work purely in psychological terms,but one must assume some psychological effect of seeing oneself on TV all the time. Through my systems the viewer sees himself as an image, the way other people would see him were he on television. In seeing himself this way he becomes more aware of what he looks like. All of television, even broadcast television, is to some degree showing the human race to itself as a working model. It's a reflection of society, and it shows society what society looks like. It renders the social and psychological condition of the environment visible to that environment."

Contact was made so people would question, and to make clear the social and political stakes raised by our own presence in a daily "environment." As people viewed the art in a gallery he would record them so they could also watch their own reactions on a closed-circuit monitor. He is not interested in traditional aesthetics, but with television environments. He hoped to help people form new images of themselves by showing them their reactions to what they saw. "They'll change as they note their responses to various situations presented on the tapes... If you see yourself looking self-conscious, for example, you'll be forced to think why."

Contact is not an art work, it is a potential art work people must be able to interact with it to have it work as a art. It relies totally on the image of the viewer for its life. It personality reflects the attitudes of its viewers. Contact is made not only between you and your image, but how you feel about your image, and how you feel about that image in relationship to the things around you. The circuit is open

Contact involves eighteen monitors and eight cameras mounted in a sleek eight-foot stainless steel console, nine monitors and four cameras on each side beneath plastic bubble shields. the cameras produce close-ups, mid-range and wide-angle views as images shift from screen to screen every few seconds. Each monitor screen is covered with a coloured acrylic gel so that a given image may be seen in nine different colours as it swirls through the closed-circuit system.

Websites information was collected and verified from
 * http://www.n3krozoft.com/_xxbcf67373.TMP/PKD/substance_m.html
 * http://www.artelectronicmedia.com/artwork/contact-a-cybernetic-sculpture
 * http://ccca.concordia.ca/cv/english/levine-cv.html
 * http://www.n3krozoft.com/_xxbcf67373.TMP/tv/les_levine.html
 * http://cld ulawan.bl.ogspot.co.nz/2010/12/cybernenic-art.html