Library Person
Paul Ryan
American video artist and cybernetician; a founder of the Raindance media collective and author of Cybernetics of the Sacred.
Paul Ryan (1943–2013) studied philosophy of communication with Marshall McLuhan as a graduate student at Fordham University, then turned that training toward the Sony Portapak as it reached artists in the late 1960s — becoming a founding member of Raindance Corporation, the video collective whose journal Radical Software helped define an early, cybernetically-informed video art movement. His book Cybernetics of the Sacred (1974) extended that cybernetic framework into media ecology and theology. He later developed the Earthscore Notational System, a graphic method for reading and reporting on ecological triads, published in part by NASA; his video and print work is held by MoMA and the Smithsonian.
