When attitudes became toys: Jasia Reichardt’s play orbit

This essay discusses Play Orbit, an exhibition of ‘toys, games and playables’, curated by Jasia Reichardt and Peter Jones, shown at the Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales and then at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, between August 1969 and February 1970. The essay’s core claim is that Play Orbit, which Reichardt described as ‘the most democratic exhibition ever held in this country’, also continues her interest in the encounter of art and cybernetics, and so marks a significant but still largely neglected moment in the history of systems art in the late 1960s.