Organisms and machines in cybernetic art

This thesis examines how cybernetics and cybernetic art deal with the same subject in the light of research on the organism-machine opposition and similarity, which many philosophers have discussed philosophically. The relationship between machines and organisms is questioned historically, sociologically and ontologically, as the Cartesian thought, which is a soul attachment to machines by early age philosophers such as Descartes and Aristotle, is brought to the agenda by thinkers such as Kant, Cangulheim and Simondon over time. Cybernetics, whose foundations were laid by Norbert Weiner, presents a system theory that explores both organisms and machines together in the course of these discussions. Cybernetics presents an interdisciplinary structure and has been in contact with many fields other than scientific fields. The beginning of the use and theorization of cybernetic theories in the field of art was carried out by artists such as Roy Ascott and Nicolas Schöffer. In the resulting works; With elements such as interaction, feedback and participation, art, science and technology are in cooperation. Artists such as Stelarc and Arthur Elsenaar combined the body with the machines, while artists such as Eduardo Kac and Gilberto Esperza brought the machine side by side with other living things and combined it with the elements of cybernetic art. Through the works of the artists discussed in the thesis, it is examined how both living things (body, animals, plants) and machines are used with the system defined by similar visuals in organisms and machines, which are the thought of cybernetics.