The aim of this thesis is to study Viking Eggeling’s artwork Diagonal Symphony together with Eggeling’s own art theoretical writings. This method of reading Eggeling’s art theoretical writings with the aim to try and create a deeper understanding of his art and especially Diagonal Symphony is a new approach in Eggeling’s art historical discourse. The thesis starts with a description of how the field of art history has understood Eggeling and his art primarily through art historical research aimed at Hans Richter. I then argue that the method of understanding Eggeling’s art through his own art historical writings is a way to create an independent understanding about Eggeling’s art away from it’s explanatory relation with Richter. To understand and to analyze the relation between Eggeling’s art and art theoretical writings the thesis theoretical viewpoint are a system theoretical one with a special focus on cybernetics and the terms feedback and control. The thesis then establish that Eggeling, in his art and art theoretical writings, tried to compose his own method for creating the form figures we can see appearing in Diagonal Symphony and that this method of creating form was a way for Eggeling to control his creativity and to build up a structured system of forms. The study then concludes with the statement that Eggeling worked with the movie and the scrolls Diagonal Symphony as artistic material formations of a system of forms called Diagonal Symphony and that the system of forms called Diagonal Symphony is the result of Eggeling’s systematic method to generate form in a structured and organised way.

From 1922-1942, the Austrian-American architect and designer Frederick Jacob Kiesler (1890-1965) designed architecture based on the idea that it must complement the physiological and psychological processes of the human body. In order to reconcile the technological changes wrought by industrialized production with the need for structures that promoted human health, he developed an inspired model for interactive design. His formative experiences in Europe working with De Stijl and the G-Group, along with his exposure to Central European examples of architecture, art, and science set the agenda for his later works. Yet he never stopped experimenting with new concepts that would bolster his essential philosophy of body-generated space. After he immigrated to the United States in 1926, Kiesler’s pursued his ideas about physiological and psychological architecture within a new cultural milieu and a network of encouraging personal connections. He forged relationships with a sympathetic community of émigré industrial designers and architects who promoted his efforts to integrate modern technology with new design idioms. During his first fifteen years in New York City, Kiesler looked to contemporary science as a way to advance a model of flexible architectural design. He also worked at the cutting edge of industrial design research and was an early protagonist of human factors engineering methods. His body-centered methodology stood in opposition to aesthetic and reductive approaches toward modernism and functionalism. Instead of designing according to a priori determinations of what was functional and what was not, Kiesler’s functionalism was based on an iterative design practice that would reveal progressively more useful and universally applicable forms. / text