There are some issues with Gene Youngblood’s interpretation of the computer as a medium. While it’s true that to some extent, computers can be a creative collaborator when it comes to art, computers are NOT free from error, as we’ve seen exploited with glitch art. Glitch art embraces the unpredictable and the unconventional, but definitely in a different way than Youngblood intended for – neither the computer nor the artist can predict what will always happen, and how, and this lack of control makes the computer less a collaborator and more a generative tool. It is NOT an active participant, because it has no control over its own mechanical failures, and the artist selects from its glitching what he wants and what he does not want.
I think in a lot of ways, for Gene Youngblood, the concept of the sensorium is a utopian one. The language he uses, primitive and complex, base and vulgar, to describe what is new and what is populist or general (like Disneyland) is in a lot of ways a sort of patronizing sneer at anyone who thinks dressing up like it was the Age of Aquarius and putting shit on your face is probably not the most constructive use of your time. Personally, I think his ideas about intermedia and stimulating the human senses in a deliberate way are cogent, but I wish, as with a lot of this written work in this selection, that it would see farther than it did. It’s a bit of a letdown, really.
