"As was the case with other artists, Norbert Wiener's "Cybernetics," published in 1948, was to have great significance for the work of Nicolas Schöffer. On reading it he made his first acquaintance with the science in the making, and he was later to incorporate cybernetic concepts in several of his most interesting works. Schoffer's application of cybernetics — which Wiener defined as "control and communication in the animal and the machine"-postulated that the behaviour of a mobile sculpture would be influenced by the behaviour of the spectator and by the environment in accordance with a fixed pattern and this would in turn influence the spectator."