His video art encompassed water studies and demonstrations of what Ryan called “a yoga of relationships” or Threeing, culminating in his theoretical development of the Peircean relational circuit and Earthscore notational system.
After pursuing an additional three years of independent philosophical and theological studies with the order, Ryan returned to secular life in 1965.
[4] In 1969, he exhibited in the seminal TV as a Creative Medium show (widely regarded as one of the birth pangs of video art) at the Howard Wise Gallery and cofounded the Raindance Foundation with Frank Gillette, Michael Shamberg and Ira Schneider.
[8][9][10][11] Shortly thereafter, Ryan founded Earthscore, an intentional community in New York's Hudson Valley inspired by Gregory Bateson's writings on cybernetic feedback and the triadic thought of Charles Sanders Peirce; this precipitated the development of the Earthscore semiotic system as initially delineated in the peremptory section of Cybernetics of the Sacred, a collection of essays published in 1974.
[1] A longtime resident of the Upper West Side in New York City, Ryan died on December 17, 2013, at his second home in Solebury, Pennsylvania, following a long illness.