At around 3pm on October 24 1968, a sharply dressed executive from the computer manufacturer Control Data Corporation took the stage in the auditorium of the National Bureau of Standards in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He was addressing the audience of the second annual symposium of the American Society for Cybernetics. The society, a nexus of academics, spies, policymakers and businesspeople, was dreamt up a few years earlier by a CIA operative.
The signals were transmitted to the “squawk box”, which generated and altered the music based on how the dancer moved. The resulting sound was far from harmonious, but the experiment validated a broader philosophical point. Dancing became something qualitatively different when it could influence the music’s “ecology”. Establishing a two-way feedback loop between movement and sound redefined both art forms.