The "Tower Spatiodynamique and Cybernétique" was built by the Mills company in June 1955 at the time of the Show of Public works to the Park of Cloud Saint in edge of the Seine.
This monumental sculpture was conceived according to precepts' of Nicolas Schöffer described in his book of 1954 "Spatiodynamisme", in which it presents his very precise vision of the sculpture and also suggests associating there other forms of art like the music or the dance. The intentions of Schoffer will be concretized the following year in this "Spatiodynamique Tower and Cybernétique" of Cloud Saint, during a show of the public works which enables him to gather the financings and the technological actors necessary.
The device of 1955:
The sculpture was 50 m top, in the form of a light metal structure and longiligne, in an aired architecture, associated coloured rectangular plates installed at various levels of the sculpture.
As for the interactive and sound device, let us let Nicolas Schöffer describe it to us itself in "Spatiodynamisme" in 1954:
"the wiring for sound of the spatiodynamic sculptures is possible in a simple and harmonious way by extracting and using sounds of the various elements which make the sculpture. These sounds could be sorted, amplified and be mixed thereafter to produce a certain number of harmonic sounds, varied, which will be recorded on magnetic tape or by any other suitable means. It is again a homeostatic machine [ NDR: electronic system of interaction with sensors ] which would make function these sounds in an always unforeseen way carrying out a total synthesis between figure and the sound, so that we can say that it is the sculpture which will compose its own music, with its own sound matter and the maximum of flexibility while adapting immediately to any change of environment."
It is Pierre Henry, 28 years at the time, experimenter of the sound, the techniques sound and spatialization, associated to Jacques Bureau, to electronics engineer and impassioned jazz (founder of Hot Club in 1932) which will carry out the interactive system under the direction of Schöffer.
The metal structure:
Nicolas Schöffer calls upon company MILLS, specialist in the scaffolding and inventor of technologies of assembled tubes, to carry out according to his plans this structure of 50 m in height, which will be stayed by safety.
In 2004, company MILLS became specialist in scaffolding and projects special, in particular for special building sites and building sites relating to the restoration of the architectural heritage in France and in the world.
The sound:
Pierre Henry starts by recording percussions which it carries out on metal plates of the Tower, and carries out 12 sound loops according to his usual technique on one of the first multitrack tape recorders (6 stereo tracks) of the Philips firm, which will not cease a sponsoriser Schöffer during the years which will follow (in particular for CYSP 1, 1956, first autonomous interactive sculpture in the world, robotized and equipped with sensors, currently with the Villa of Arts in Paris).
Description of the interaction, by Nicolas Schöffer,1955:
" Thanks to the tape recorders placed in the tower, any change in environment is communicated to the homeostat: change of temperature, the hygroscopy, the wind, the colors, the light, the sounds, the various movements in the vicinity (thanks to the electric eyes). "
The electronic brain:
The sensors give uninterrupted information to an electronic brain designed by Jacques Bureau.
This electronic brain controls in real time the tape recorder, as well
as the associated amplifiers, while acting on the diffusion of the
sound in the Tower. Interactive construction carries out a mixing, a
treatment of the sound and a spatialization in real time on more than
one dozen of high speakers.
Nicolas Schöffer describes the behavior of work:
" These changes constantly start always varied and new sound combinations, alternated with silences.
This process makes it possible the tower to compose its own music with
its own sound matter, which will be always adapted to environment,
because, precisely, in fact the various factors composing environment
start sonorities "
The reception of the public
Thousands of people will surround tous.les.jours this work aesthetic,
mechanical, musical and interactive, trying to make react the tower by
activating the microphones put at their range.
At certain times,
powerful sounds even will cause a racing of the system by effect of
looping. Jacques Bureau remembers and details the setting in escape of
Soviet intelligence agents in front of a sudden racing of the sculpture.
The newspapers of the time report this adventure with emphase, a journalist seeing even as a Nicolas Schoffer a new Jules Vernes. Certain close exhibitors, less filled with enthusiasm by the concrete music and cybernetic art, will make also a petition to ask for the silence of work...
1955-2005, fifty years of Web arts
The importance of this work in the history of art finds its prolongation only in the middle of the years 1990, at the moment when hundreds of installations and devices interactive are born in the world, based on the same principle of collecting, treatment and diffusion of information in real time.
- collecting of events by sensors, flow of network or vision by computer.
- data processing: analytical treatment or visual or sound generation.
- diffusion of information, préarchivées or generated in real time.
Today, in spite of a national late context, the current artists integrated the use of these technologies, giving place to a new esthetics, an esthetics of the interactivity and real time.
Thousands of spectacles, sculptures or installations are connected with phenomena of reality on the same principles as those theorized by Nicolas Schöffer in 1954, and presented in 1955 by the Cybernetic Tower of Cloud Saint, then magistralement in 1956 by sculpture CYSP 1.
A historical event
The Cybernetic Tower of Cloud Saint is a historical event for several reasons:
- experimental Use of new materials and techniques industrial, in particular electronic, for an artistic expression.
- First truly multi-media installation, mixing visual art and sound art.
- First sound sculpture spatialized and generative in real time.
- the First interactive work using a system of remote interaction.
Other nouvauté, Schöffer, by the nature of this work, gives a new importance to the relations between art and technology, art and science, art and company. This work inaugurates the necessary relations between artist and engineer, between artist and cultural mediator.
Féter fifty years of the interactivity.
Féter the fifty years of the interactivity, of the multi-media real time, is not only to pay homage to Nicolas Schöffer as a precursor of the interactivity, it is as to show as the artistic and cultural expression contemporary was not born suddenly in the Nineties with the diffusion from the computers, but fell under an evolution, a history, a thought which exceeds the artistic field to invest the whole of the relations governing an evolutionary company with human face
.
Jean-Christmas Montagné, January 2004
President of association Sensitive Art