To add a direction for the Net

[Leonid Ototsky]

Cybernetics - Art - Design - Society
See an abstract - http://www.ototsky.mgn.ru/it/papers/wosc2008v2.pdf

[Kuja]

Dear Leonid. Thanks for initiate such thoughtful topic. Your abstract is honorable, but, if you permit, I'd like to add some thoughts. Gregory Bateson, in his essay 'The Roots of Ecological Crisis', argues that three causes are the basis of all threats to humanity’s survival: technological progress; population increase; and the prevailing values of western culture. Following Bateson, Jon Bird and Andy Webster (British artists) assume artworks can effect a positive change in people’s ecological values. Art has the potential to act as a corrective to the pathologically narrow perspective of human consciousness. I'd like to hear you and the other about that.
Kuja

[Jon Bird]

If anybody would like to read the paper (Better Living through Electrochemistry) I wrote with Andy Webster where we outline some of Bateson's ideas and how they relate to our collaborative practice then you can download it from the RANE site:

http://rane.falmouth.ac.uk/artful_ecologies_papers_details.html

We first presented these ideas at the Artful Ecologies conference in 2006.

[Alan]

Hey Jon,

Thanks for the article pointer. A comment on it... (I suppose this relates not just to your article but to a much wider issue concerning artistic practice and its ability to change the way people think/act.)

As Bateson and countless others indicate, "we" need to change our way of thinking regarding the "self" and its relation to the "environment out there" if we are to have any hope of saving the planet from (further) ecological disaster.

Who do you personally take the "we" to be? Probably I'd take it as Western self (some might say Western male self)... Asia is fast cottoning on to "Western self" and is set to play a devastating part in our future. Still, not all cultures share the idea of self that we do. Sadly too, our self has crushed the ideas of many diverse peoples far more adept at environmental sustainability than us.

How do you see art playing *any* part in this? Surely art only has the potential to change the self-view of a handful of people who take the time to think about it. This is not the majority of people. In my experience (admittedly only Japan and China) Western art is also of limited interest in Asia. Even if the West reversed our own destruction (somehow) how would art assist in practical terms? How would art change Asia's desire to mimic our self-destructive lifestyle?

...I think I am a bit pessimistic about this. *I* love and respect and interpret art. But it is not going to change the way the world thinks about Western values any time soon! To do so it would need more than the power of religious art of the medieval period for instance. It would need to cross cultural boundaries. It would also need to be "easy to read" (not good art?) not tied up in academic discourse that you and I enjoy but flies past the vast majority on the planet.

Alan

[Leonid Ototsky]

Alan.
Thanks for the message . !
Indeed . -->“I estimate that more human beings are enduring agony today than ever before; the number could be greater than the sum of sufferers throughout history. I speak of starvation and epidemic; war and terrorism; deprivation, exploitation, and physical torture. I repeat the word agony; I am not talking about 'hard times' “ .
(Stafford Beer- “World in Torment”)" - http://www.ototsky.mgn.ru/vsm/
Suppose The Time has come for the Stafford's heritage active using
- http://www.ototsky.mgn.ru/it/papers/wosc2008v2.pdf
Leonid - http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it

[Kuja]

Alan,
You have good points. Maybe “art” – as we, Westerners, know it – don’t have entitlement to be “messianic”.
You are absolutely right w2hen you say that east is mimicking west. I wonder if this division is merely geopolitical. West and east are “states of mind”. Are ways of seeing. In this matter, indigenous America has something to say. How change our “perspectives”? I quote one Brazilian anthropologist I admire (Eduardo Viveiros de Castro):

I use “perspectivism” as a label for a set of ideas and practices found throughout indigenous America and to which I shall refer, for simplicity’s sake, as though it were a cosmology. This cosmology imagines a universe peopled by different types of subjective agencies, human as well as nonhuman, each endowed with the same generic type of soul, that is, the same set of cognitive and volitional capacities. The possession of a similar soul implies the possession of similar concepts, which determine that all subjects see things in the same way. In particular, individuals of the same species see each other (and each other only) as humans see themselves, that is, as beings endowed with human figure and habits, seeing their bodily and behavioral aspects in the form of human culture. What changes when passing from one species of subject to another is the “objective correlative,” the referent of these concepts: what jaguars see as “manioc beer” (the proper drink of people, jaguar-type or otherwise), humans see as “blood.” Where we see a muddy salt-lick on a river bank, tapirs see their big ceremonial house, and so on. Such difference of perspective—not a plurality of views of a single world, but a single view of different worlds—cannot derive from the soul, since the latter is the common original ground of being. Rather, such difference is located in the bodily differences between species, for the body and its affections (in Spinoza’s sense, the body’s capacities to affect and be affected by other bodies) is the site and instrument of ontological differentiation and referential disjunction.

Kuja

[Alan]

Hi Kuja,

I am not certain I understand the quote in full... bits of it make me uncomfortable (e.g. soul?) I am not one to hold that the worlds of different species are unique either, although in a poetic sense I can see how one might describe things that way. I.e. "not a plurality of views of a single world, but a single view of different worlds"... I am confused! Can you explain?

I was thinking about the issue Jon raised in his article anyway. If anything, I feel maybe architecture has a good chance of playing the role that Jon feels art might take. People engage directly, subconsciously and involuntarily with architecture. Architecture mediates human experience with organisms and natural processes. I think maybe the Ecological Design movement (if I dare call it that) in architecture *might* be the strongest way to effect the kind of changes in thinking the world needs, regardless of culture, a willingness or sufficient ability and resources to engage.

Alan.

[Kuja]

Alan,
1- What if the ideas comprised in that paragraph were not motivated by a "poetic sense"?
2- I also believe that architecture could play that role: parametric and evolutionary design certainly could be included in this playfield. Do you know this project?

[Alan]

1... then like I indicated, I find the remarks a bit confusing. I can't stretch my imagination far enough to agree that all agents have the same cognitive abilities. Nor do I believe there's much point in arguing (well, with me anyway :-) about things like souls. This may be fine for American Indians but in that case I suspect their idea of "cognition" must be completely different to mine which makes it impossible for me to understand what they are saying. Still, I suspect that Eduardo means by cognition pretty much what I would mean when I use the word... hence, I can only assume he is speaking poetically.

2... I'd not seen the site, thanks. I don't understand why you single out parametric or evolutionary design techniques though. For making buildings that change our view of ecosystems I don't think it matters which technique an architect employs, so long as the architecture makes the natural world and our place in it visible in ways that (much) current architecture separates us from it.

[Leonid Ototsky]

Of course, Kuja ! "artworks can effect a positive change in people’s ecological values" .
It is cool to use the Art as one of very important means , but it is not mine topic :-) .
My activity is around the IT - http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it and around using the Cybernetics ideas.
You may look at my paper "To keep abrest of the 21st Century" - http://www.ototsky.mgn.ru/it/21abreast.htm .
BTW may be it will be interesting for you to look at a "reconstruction" Project of the Cybersyn.
It is supported by the Chilein Government - http://cybersyn.cl/

Leonid - http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it

[Kuja]

Hi Leonid,
I know pretty much Cybersyn Project because Enrique Rivera was here in Brazil last year invited by me to take part on a local symposia. I will take a look at your paper.
Thanks,
Kuja

[Leonid Ototsky]

Cool ! Suppse it will be interesting for you to look at Enrique at the YOU_ser exhibition in September 2007 in Karsruhe (Germany) -
http://metaphorum.org/ . Also Enrique has taken part in the Transmediale.08 Conference in Berlin in January 2008 - http://www.syncho.com/pages/index.php?menu=s&mm=s&tex=s&...
Suppose it will be cool to organize a proper community in the South Amarica !
Exept Chile I know persons in Columbia and Peru .

[Kuja]

Leonid,
South America needs thousands of Stanford Beers!
Kuja