Stephen Willats and the Social Function of Art

Sharon Irish is an Affiliated Lecturer at the School of Information Sciences, the University of Illinois. She is also a project coordinator in the Center for Digital Inclusion. Her research focuses on the intersections of urban and architectural space, contemporary art, systems and cybernetics. Since 2001, she has been an Advisory Editor for Technology and Culture, the international quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology. She obtained her PhD in Art History from NorthWestern University in 1985.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments i
Introduction: New Functions for Art Practice in Society 1
Chapter One: Inputs and Outputs17
Omni-Directional Artist19
Control Magazine 21
Centre for Behavioural Art21
Cognition Control23
Decision-Making: Toward `Visual Meta-Language Simulation’23
Pedagogical Processes27
Man from the Twenty-First Century29
Modelling the Social31
Social Modelling in Edinburgh35
Meta Filter38
Chapter Two: Mutually Bound56
Of Concept Frames57
From a Coded World60
A `New Reality’?62
Willats in East London63
Sorting Out Other People’s Lives64Inside an Ocean65
Chapter Three: The Art of Sociotechnical Systems75
Toward a `Depleted, Disillusioned New Reality’75
The Ideological Tower77
Vertical Living79
Brentford Towers83
Art Creating Society: Curating the Oxford Symposium and the Mosaic Series87
Personal Islands89
Chapter Four: Observing Everyday Systems103
Participatory Reception104
Working within a Defined Context106
Social Practice, Defined Context, and the Multi-Homeostat Problem108
Living with Practical Realities109
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Aesthetics111
`Objects of Creative Release’116 Back to the Wasteland118
Chapter Five: Open-Ended Urban Systems128
Middlesbrough and The Transformer128
Marble Arch to Oxford Circus, London: Freezone130
Simulation in Sheffield133
South London: Changing Everything136
A Pivot in Scale: Data Streams138
Conclusion: Compromise not Compliance155
Sources163
List of Illustrations183