Aartje (Aartje Hulstein)
Paediatric Physiotherapist, Treloar Trust, Alton, UK
Email: aartje@glanville.co.uk
Bio: Aartje Hulstein, born in 1950 in Ede, the Netherlands.
I studied physiotherapy in the Netherlands. I took part in a postgraduate training in Rhythmical massage, Pressel massage and the Contact&Resistance Method, all in the field of Anthroposophical Medicine.
My approach towards physiotherapy became more holistic.
In 1994 I met Ranulph Glanville and became interested in second order cybernetics, went to conferences with him and met a lot of interesting people. I started to apply some of the ideas to my work.
In 1996 I moved to England and started work in a boarding school for physically disabled children, where I work as a physiotherapist. In the school I develop new ways of integrated working with all other disciplines. I use second order cybernetics to look at situations in a new light, this helps to be more creative with the very complex students.
Being married to Ranulph means living with second order cybernetics and applying it in my life.
The ongoing conversation between anthroposophy and cybernetics in myself enriches my life and work.
Last year I went to the C:ADM conference and ‘lived’ with my question ever since, it has taken me on interesting roads, including working on a chapter with Claudia Westerman for the post conference book.
SoI: I bring to the conference my ability to listen, not just with my ears, but with other senses too.
I bring curiosity and interest in what other people do in their lives, an interesting practice and the ability to ask difficult questions.
Listening has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. From the ‘listen, do as you are told’ I have now arrived in a place where I am asked to speak, and I am listened to. I have also become much better at really listening to what others say, not just hear them.
In my professional life I listened to learn the techniques to diagnose and to treat (often control) the outcome. I knew what had to be done.
Slowly I started to listen to what the ‘patients’ told me and explored with them what they thought might help. I had to learn to observe, to try, to reflect and to find new ways of observing and reflecting.
I learned to trust my hands, to listen with them, rather than see, and reflect on what they did after the act and then connect it with what I knew.
In the conference I hope to share and extend my listening skills, listening to the experience of other people and adding new experiences and reflection to my way of working.
I very much enjoyed the form the conference took last year and I am looking forward to create a new form with other participants
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As a physiotherapist I learned to listen to other people’s body and their movement by touch, looking and sensing.
This, over the years, has developed into a conversational approach, not knowing the answer, but exploring possibilities through mutual feed back on the experience, after careful and open listening.
In this workshop I would like to share my experience with you and explore touch and movement as a way to listen to each other.
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abeer abdelkader ( )
Email: abeer.4r@hotmail.com
Bio:
SoI:
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allenna (Allenna Leonard)
Principal, Complementary Set
Board member, Cwarel Isaf Institute
Email: allenna_leonard@yahoo.com
Bio: I became interested in cybernetics thirty years ago when I was active in a media reform organization trying to have an impact on a government agency with little success. I went to U of Maryland and studied with Barry Clemson and later met and partnered with Stafford Beer. I continue to try to advance the ideas that we shared and the models he developed along with others. I am a mother of three grown up children and have three grandchildren. I live and practice in Toronto.
SoI: Long term interest in the application of cybernetics to governance and social affairs. Looking for conversations and the insights that emerge.
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Andrew_O (Andrew Owen Brightman)
Assistant Head, Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue
Email: aobbright@gmail.com
Bio: Andrew O. Brightman, PhD, Assistant Head, Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University. Andrew has overseen the development of both the undergraduate and the graduate curricula for the School. During this time, Andrew has developed numerous undergraduate and graduate courses including several tiered professional development and engineering design courses and a graduate course in Biomedical Engineering Ethics. As a Tissue Engineering researcher, Andrew was an active participant in the development of the Small Intestinal Submucosa technology that is now part of several medical devices in clinical use. Andrew also is a contemporary dancer and improviser, who has danced with the Purdue Contemporary Dance Company, performed Improvisational Movement Theatre, and is currently training in Authentic Movement/Contemplative Dance with Alton Wasson and Daphne Lowell. Andrew’s favorite movement form is Contact Improvisation and he is a Faculty Advisor for the student group, Contact Improvisation at Purdue.
SoI: I have been actively pursuing my fascination with the practice of ‘deep listening’ for more than five years since I was first introduced to the concept and practice in a workshop by a colleague at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Kirstie Simson, (Dance Faculty), directed our attention to the reality of a fully embodied experience of listening, which is in actuality a state of being in the world. Listening from the fully-embodied mind is becoming aware of the multi-sensory process that is occurring at all times for every person. However, this level of listening often goes unperceived until the attention is called to it. In further pursuit of this practice, I discovered Contemplative Dance/’Authentic Movement’ (Mary Starks Whitehouse et al.), another embodied form that engages deep listening in the pursuit of expressing emerging awarenesses and subconscious knowing of the past and present, through ‘active imagination’ (C.G. Jung). During two years of training in this contemplative, intuitive, active, embodied practice, I have developed a further interest in how this practice of ‘deep listening’ can be applied to the detection of emergent properties of complex systems such as interpersonal relations, ‘wicked’ design problems, and the artistic creative process. It seems to me that ASC Conference will be an ideal venue to explore some of these ideas with others who might share similar interests and bring new concepts and experiences to the discussion. I am proposing both a performance and a workshop to have two levels of involvement. I hope to invite an initial reaction and response to ‘deep listening’ as displayed in practice through an improvised creative process by a performance group. And then, through a workshop, to engage a deeper dialogue with the more interested and intrigued after, and during, their own experience of the deep listening practice of Contemplative/Authentic Movement.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Performance (15 min. followed by discussion) – “Listening with the Sensing Body” – a group improvisational performance at the interface of two movement-based listening practices: Contact Improvisation and Contemplative/Authentic Movement. These two practices of ‘deep listening’ will be integrated into one movement performance to ask the question of the performers and the audience: “Where are you listening and does it matter?” ‘Listening to what we are listening to’ (i.e. ‘noticing what we are noticing’) can be the beginning of a deeper, more embodied experience of the investigation of listening. In this performance improvisors will be continuously connecting, physically and energetically, without words, in order to find the emergent dance being created in the moment. This dance will range from the highly physical lifting of other bodies into space to the sensuous, small movements of intimate interactions. The practice of ‘witnessing’ (from Authentic Movement) will add another layer of interaction and listening to this creative process. Improvisers will have the option at any time to step away from the movement and give attention to all that is happening in the space. The ‘witnesses’ will ‘listen’ to the emerging dance, in its environment, with their whole being, from a slightly distanced and altered perceptive space. The ‘witness’ position is intermediate to the position of ‘audience’ in that the ‘witness’ can re-enter the dance at any time. This added layer of witnessing provides an opportunity, for the audience as well as the improvisors, to focus attention on how this ‘telescoping’ level of awareness alters participation in the emerging dance and how it alters the dance itself. A question for both then becomes, how does my listening to and experiencing of this dance alter its outcome? An occasional overlay of spoken text, apparently unrelated to the emergent dance and yet somehow influencing and influenced by it, will add a third layer of complexity. This layer is intended to further the exploration of how we ‘listen’ with our full range of senses when our ears are actively engaged. The ambient spoken soundscape is intended also to more closely replicate the noise-filled environment in which we often try to listen as we move, witness, and interact with our world.
Workshop (60 min.) – “An Introduction to Contemplative/Authentic Movement as a Practice of Deep Listening” – The practice of Authentic Movement can provide a rich path to original creative insights and to a deeper sense of listening or paying attention. Also known as Contemplative Dance, this simple yet profound movement form involves the interplay of the body and psyche in an expression of active imagination. In this workshop, I will facilitate an experience of moving from the inner impulse; an impulse to be active or to be still, that often arises from ‘listening’ to the knowings and experiences that reside deep in the subconscious of each individual. As a facilitator, I will serve as witness for the group. This role provides a safe space to participate (often with closed eyes) and provides a level of feedback and facilitation of response that is sensitive, non-judgmental, and reflective of the individual’s movement session as experienced from another’s perception. Time will be provided for creative process using journaling, drawing, or other art forms to bring to fuller consciousness the content gathered through this listening practice; i.e. the process of active imagination that occurred during the movement session. All experience levels are welcomed. Bringing a journal or notebook to record or reflect on personal experiences is encouraged. The workshop will be limited to a maximum of 25 participants and will require a room with open floor space for moving around.
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apellaMes ( )
Email: shannamartvin@gmail.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
aurelioporfiri (Aurelio Porfiri)
Associate Professor, University of Saint Joseph (Macau)
Director of Choral Activities, Santa Roma de Lima school english section (Macau)
Visiting Conductor, Shanghai Conservatory of Music music education department
Email: aurelioporfiri@usj.edu.mo
Website: http://www.usj.edu.mo/?faculty&col=5&fid=Aurelio%20Porfiri
Bio: Aurelio Porfiri is Associate Professor of Music for the University of Saint Joseph (Macau, China) and Guest Conductor for the Music Education Department of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (Shanghai, China). He is the Artistic Director of PHP (formerly known as Edition Music Contact, Germany), a company specialized in choral music. In this capacity he commissioned a relevant number of new choral compositions from outstanding composers around the world.
Born in Rome in 1968, he studied organ, piano, composition, choral conducting, Gregorian chant and polyphony. He has a terminal degree in choral music from the Conservatorio of San Pietro a Maiella in Naples (Italy) and has also achieved the intermediate level in Organ. He is completing his Doctorate in History. He has taken part in workshops leaded by outstanding composers and conductors such as Alice Parker, Robert Page, Columba Kelly, Marco Boschini, Milton Pullen, Mary J. Oyer, Robert M. Fowells, Paul Salamunovich.
Porfiri is a composer of considerable renown. His works have been commissioned and sung, among others, for the liturgical programs of Vatican Radio. As a composer, he writes in a wide range of forms, including 12 Oratorios, several Masses, motets and hymns mainly in Italian, Latin and English.
SoI: Me and my assistant, both musicians, are interested to study the ways vocal performance affect our listening. So, it is an interest based on recent development in neuroscience and music perception studies.
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REFERENCES
– Huron David (2008). Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Cambridge (MA), USA: The MIT Press
batesoma (MaryCatherine Bateson)
Email: mcatb@attglobal.net
Bio: Mary Catherine Bateson is a writer and cultural anthropologist. She has taught at Harvard, Amherst, Spelman and George Mason University in the US, and also in Iran and the Philippines. Bateson’s books include Our Own Metaphor (1972), With a Daughter’s Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson (1984), Angels Fear (1987) and best-selling Composing a Life (1989). Her most recent book, Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom, appeared in September 2010, winning the Books for a Better Life prize in psychology. She originated the Granny Voter concept in 2004 and has recently begun collaborating with Generations United to extend the concept of generations working together for the future. She lives and writes in Hancock New Hampshire, travels and lectures frequently, and is a visiting scholar at Boston College.
SoI: I think the theme of listening is a very promising one, especially in the context of the various new technologies of conversation, mediation, etc., each of which involves teaching participants to listen in new ways: (world cafe, America speaks, Art of Hosting (Berkana Institute), Public Conversations Project), or generate new ideas. I think one discovers interesting and fruitful analogies by thinking of these as technologies even tho no electronics may be involved (America speaks uses computers connecting small groups). In a similar way, different approaches to meditation can be regarded as technologies, ways of changing the internal conversation, and so can systems of psychotherapy and mediation.
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BobHelland (Bob Helland)
Email: bobhelland@gmail.com
Bio: I am an Economics graduate of Saint Cloud State University in St. Cloud, MN. Aged 26, I presently live in Saint Paul and work for the state government. In addition to my economic and mathematical passions, I fancy myself an actor and musician. I am a bold and ambitious individual with a vision to the future and am thrilled to have won the ASC’s Heinz von Foerster award. I hope my participation at the “Listening” conference and membership with ASC propel me in new directions towards my academic and career aspirations.
Addendum: If my Biography interests you, please read my Statement of Interest regarding a potential opportunity for sharing accommodations during the Listening Conference. – Thank you!
SoI: I was the Heinz von Foerster prize winner in “Cybernetics of Cybernetics” writing competition. At the conference, I will be looking for understanding and guidance. I expect to meet people who have once once been where I now am and are able to pass on wisdom. I will be willing to listen.
Addendum: I will be arriving late Monday (8-Aug) and leaving the afternoon of Sunday (14-Aug). I re-arranged my trip departure date so as to be present for the discussion of “Cybernetics of Cybernetics” entries where I look forward to an open-air discussion of my submission “The ACRE Model”, a conceptual framework for disentangling our abstract human perceptions and conceptions from the near-objective, concrete, resource-laden world in which we exist.
In the interest of building new friendships and benefiting economically from sharing resources, I would like to extend an open invitation to anyone interested in sharing accommodations: I have booked a Quality Inn double-bed, smoking room (to be most inclusive, I do not intend to smoke but have no objections to those who would). My reservation is actually for 10-Aug (Wed) through 14-Aug (Sunday), due to my original trip plans. Anyone who wishes to discuss a shared opportunity is invited to send me an email to setup an arrangement. BobHelland@gmail.com – Thank you!
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boltmwj1 (Mark Johnson)
Reader, University of Bolton
Email: johnsonmwj1@gmail.com
Website: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com
Bio: Originally trained as a musician, I am reader in educational technology at the University of Bolton’s Institute for Educational Cybernetics. As the department name implies, I am interested in the organisational aspects of learning technology – particularly as it relates to our understanding of ‘the person’ and the ecological relationship between people, institutions and technology. I have a particular fondness for the work of Stafford Beer, Niklas Luhmann and Gregory Bateson. Outside cybernetics, I am very interested in Rom Harre’s work on Positioning Theory, and I am fascinated by the tension between constructivism and philosophical realism – particularly as articulated by Roy Bhaskar. I have been recently doing a lot of Agent-based modelling using NetLogo to explore theoretical ideas associated with Harre, Luhmann and Beer.
SoI: I guess we don’t usually go to conferences to listen! I may have honourable and good intentions about listening at this one – although I’m not sure I’ll manage it. But then I’m interested in why I (and most of the people I know) find it difficult. Some key questions occur to me:
….is listening difficult because it is organisationally difficult within my personhood?
…if so, is there a way of characterising the organisation of personhood which identifies the challenge of listening?
…and with such a characterisation, how might we have better control over ourselves to listen better?
…and finally, what does a world of ‘better listening’ look like? And do we want to live in it?
Workshop or performance proposal:
“Modelling Listening”
This workshop combines a focus on listening with an concrete aim to identify models that might shed deeper light on the nature of listening and communication. The workshop comprises a series of ‘bursts’ of activity where each participant becomes an ‘agent’ acting within a square grid with a set of behaviours and strategies. In the ‘burst’, the behaviours and strategies are played-out. After the burst, a short period of reflection allows participants to consider “is this listening?”. In the light of reflection, behaviours and strategies are evolved and a new burst is conducted. The process repeats throughout the workshop.
It is hoped that by the end of the session a “model of listening” has been sufficiently refined to allow for it to be programmed. If there is time, it may be possible to implement this model using NetLogo before the end of the conference.
Paper proposal:
I start with the conception of ‘viable systems’ (drawing on Beer) and human attachment and loss (drawing on Bowlby) arguing that they can provide a framework for the questioning of economic assumptions concerning property, commodities, money, exchange and markets which underpin the conventional economic viewpoint from which nations are experiencing such difficulty in making meaningful distinctions and constructive policy decisions.
Fundamental to the argument is that the conception of humans as viable biological systems relates directly to the sociological work of Beck concerning ‘risk’: ‘risk’ is experienced as anxiety, which in itself can be seen as a systemic reaction of the viable system with regard to its interactions with the environment. Coupled with risk is the reality of ‘loss’ for those caught up in the economic crisis, and in this regard, Bowlby’s control systems view of ‘attachment’ can help to characterise the interpersonal dimensions which have a bearing on mechanisms of individual well-being and anxiety management.
This short paper proceeds by addressing each of the key economic concepts re-articulating them in cybernetic terms. In conclusion, by arguing that our ability to listen to the world in which we live depends on the quality of our antennae, a cybernetic intervention focused on the construction of new sorts of antennae may be a useful thing to do!
Introduction
Our distinctions help us to hear what we hear and do what we do. The extent to which one’s hearing can be related to one’s doing is an indication of the extent to which one may be listening: but our distinctions determine how our antennae work.
At a time of economic crisis, the most obvious thing to do is to question our distinctions. Unfortunately, many of those distinctions are seen to be simply too difficult, or worse, simply too ‘obvious’ to be critiqued: debts must be repaid. In search of powerful questions however, cybernetics can provide different ways of examining lived experience, whilst acknowledging that this experience contains ‘property’, ‘money’, ‘markets’ and increasingly ‘services’.
The cybernetics of viable systems (most notably that of Beer (1971)) presents a way in which to conceive of experience within the framework of regulating mechanisms within an environment. Leonard’s presentation of the ‘Personal VSM’ (Leonard, www) provides one way of thinking about this: people must manage the things they have to do through instinctive or habitual actions, organising adequate resources so that things get done, monitoring what is actually happening, thinking ahead about what might need to change, and finally considering the various balances between dreaming, coordinating and reacting as part of an expression of individual identity.
Within those individual processes of managing personal viability, there is another aspect of experience, mutually contingent on the first as we engage with things and people around us: we fall in love, have children, buy houses, learn to play the piano, get jobs and look after our parents. Equally, we may lose our jobs, our houses and our loved ones. These may be considered mechanisms of ‘attachment’ to other people as articulated by Bowlby (1958). It is my contention in this paper that they may also be considered as mechanisms of attachment to ‘things’ too.
Emotional life can be considered to exist between the mechanisms of individual viability and mechanisms of attachment: the thrills, joys and losses of ‘being’ somehow relate to attachments to loved ones and things, but equally those emotional responses must logically be determined by some state of (in)ability to manage complexities and maintain viability at particular moments on the part of the individual experiencing them. Drawing on Beck’s (1992) analysis of the experience of modernity, we might say however that beyond those rare instances where new attachments are made (like falling in love) or losses experienced, the practical balance of individual viability is characterised by differing levels of risk, and its associated emotional landscape is characterised by anxiety.
Property and Attachment
Our attachment to material artefacts, other people, intellectual ideas, religious belief, language, culture and personal habits are all considered factors which underpin economic behaviour. From Keynes’s ‘propensity to consume’ (2007) to Sen’s (2007) recent work on identity, it seems that the core of our values lies in attaching value to things external to us. In the case of people who we love, one set of economic behaviours arises: the provision of safety and opportunity, for example. In the case of material things, another set of economic behaviours arise: the exchange of goods and services, the management of money. Equally, the ownership of ideas and opinions by individuals can be seen to directly relate to human behaviour that seeks to defend ‘identity’, some of which will be directly economic.
In identifying that such behaviour may relate to personal identity, Sen’s insight into the relationship between identity and violence (Sen, 2007) invites a cybernetic description of the operation of the person as a ‘viable system’ in Beer’s sense. Moreover, if such an insight can show a relationship between viable systems and ‘commodities’ as well as between viable systems and ‘opinions’, then a radical view of ‘property’ can be articulated which provides an alternative to the traditional concepts of commodities, services, value and exchange which have received little attention since Marx, or indeed since the work of Smith (1776) and Locke (1689).
At the root of such a description is the idea that property and identity might be conceived of as being biological. But if the identity of a viable biological system depends on the relationship between that system and ‘commodities’ in the environment, personal opinions and other people, how might the operation of that system be characterised?
Bowlby’s description of mechanisms of attachment might provide a way of characterising this. Bowlby argues that the relationship between mother and child is a feedback mechanism: “”the child’s tie to his mother is a product of the activity of a number of behavioural systems that have proximity to mother as a predictable outcome” By citing ‘proximity’, Bowlby argued against the Freudian view of the mother-child relationship which was based on the mother feeding the child. Instead, citing Lorenz’s (1978) work on ‘Imprinting’, Bowlby argued that there had to be a control system operating whereby systems effectively ‘locked-on’ to one another. However, Bowlby stops short of articulating the detail of the mechanisms whereby this might take place. Using Beer’s VSM, it may be possible to suggest a possibility which also addresses the key issue of ‘proximity’.
Beer’s VSM and Mechanisms of Attachment
The Viable System Model articulates a number of regulating mechanisms which maintain different aspects of viability of the system within an environment. From the environment to the viable system there are perturbations to which the mechanisms of the system must react, altering the organisation of the system components. The perturbations from the environment ultimately take the form of sense-perceptions: sounds, smells, caresses, images. Each of these will have a continual impact on the viability of the system. Furthermore, the individual organisational impact of a sense-perception will have some bearing on future sense-perception, with dispositions to certain sensual stimuli continually evolving. Thus the processes of sense-perception may be viewed as being chained from one perception to another in the stream of experience.
Bowlby saw attachment as a mechanism of homeostasis with the environment. By looking at the sensual relationship between the individual and the environment, a mechanism can be described whereby internal homeostasis produces external behaviour in the form of attachment which contributes to the maintenance of internal homeostasis. Given this continual chain of sense-perceptions which are selected on the basis of previous sense perceptions, and the requirement of the individual biological system to maintain its viability, it is conceivable that a particular ‘sensual configuration’, maybe in the form of the mother (or, in Lorenz’s case, in the form of ‘giant eggs’ or wire-frame ‘mothers’) may become the object of focus for the biological system as it has become adaptationally disposed to continue to maintain a proximal relationship to the source of those sense perceptions. At the root of this relationship of attachment therefore, the need for the viable system to become attached in order to maintain its identity can be suggested.
Property
Whilst Bowlby’s focus is on the control systems which relate mother and child, the mechanism described here is focused on the sense perceptions of a biological system, and the need to maintain a sensual (and therefore proximal) relationship with the source of those sense productions. In line with Lorenz’s discoveries, a relationship between biological and inanimate objects in the environment might also be suggested within this mechanism.
When individuals become attached to objects there are various words used to describe the relationship and the experience. Amongst these ‘property’ and ‘commodity’ might be listed. In this way, a conception of property may be considered as a biological mechanism and this is in sharp distinction to the classical conception of property originating in the thought of Locke, who conceived of property being connected to the labour of the person who owns a commodity. This labour-mixing theory survived largely intact through the work of Smith and then Marx.
However, a biological view of property sees the sensual relations to an object as fundamental to the process of maintaining the viability and identity of the individual in whom there is an attachment relationship to the object. In other words, the identity of individuals may be seen as being constituted by the sensual relationships they have with those things they are attached to. This however presents a problem, for it then becomes difficult to explain why it is anyone would want to trade an object to which they are attached for another object.
Exchange and Risk
We can consider what happens in the biological viability of a person when property is exchanged. Exchange occurs when property seen from a biological context is transferred from one person to another, and at the end of this process, the individuals concerned have new attachments to new objects and have given up their attachments to their old objects. This might be viewed from the perspective of the loss of an attachment (and consequently the potential loss of identity and viability within the person), and the formation of a new attachment and the reconstitution of identity.
What might be the driver for doing this? Using the VSM, one of the principle regulating mechanisms is what Beer terms System 4. System 4’s job is to consider how the world might change, what new threats might evolve and how the system ought to adapt to survive in a changed world. In addition to this, the other regulating mechanisms of the VSM are continually having to cope with environmental perturbations which can change the operating environment and quickly produce situations which are unmanageable. Amongst these mechanisms, the anxiety of future survival manifests itself in the continual concern of the viable system to develop organisational capacities that will help it survive and maintain its identity in changed circumstances.
Viewed in this way, exchange may be seen as a survival mechanism whereby the system finds ways of relinquishing old attachments providing the consequent loss of sensual perturbations can be compensated for with some new attachment. Such an emphasis on sensual compensation and maintenance of viability provides an alternative to classical economic theories about rational choice.
Money can be seen to be a special case of this sort of mechanism. Money as a generalised means of acquiring new objects of attachment may have its own ‘sensual’ properties and a general capacity to compensate for a wide range of loss of attachments in lieu of an increased capacity to replace them at some point in the future. Beyond this, conventional economic behaviour of consumption and saving can be seen as ways of compensating for the loss of attachments and the accrual of increasing means for sustained viability through the capacity to acquire new objects of attachment as necessary.
But as with simple exchange, behind this behaviour lies the fundamental anxiety that is associated with the risks of modern life, that somehow the objects with which we constitute our identity are impermanent, and their loss deemed a threat to our identity. Viewed in this way, economic behaviour is more ‘systemic’ than rational: it is an attempt to mitigate catastrophic loss in a way which preserves individual identity.
The Biology of Risk
Beck argues that the fundamental economic and social distinctions of modernity concern risk and anxiety rather than the distribution of wealth. In his view, it is the distribution of risks which shows up the marked inequalities between social groups. Those who have access to economic and social capital and who have high levels of education have the means to manage their anxieties in ways in which those who don’t cannot. For “the means to manage anxieties and risks” we might say “the means to manage their identities”. But modern society is providing new ways of managing risks which go beyond attachments to commodities.
In recent years, western economies have focused on services rather than industrial production. Like commodities, services provide “sensual perturbations” to individuals who may well respond with the same attachment behaviours as with commodities and other forms of property. Mobile phone services are a good example. But services are different from commodities in that they are not available for exchange because the capital content of a service is not owned by the service consumer. Services may be instead seen to offer ‘palliative’ risk-management rather than anything with which a more fundamental attachment might be formed.
The biological perspective of property that has been presented here allows us to consider the implications of this and to relate them to current economic trends. Despite the best efforts of many western governments, the gap between the richest in society and the poorest has been steadily increasing. With economic behaviour understood as biological mechanism of attachment based around sensual relations with commodities, an explanation for this may be suggested. This is that traditional means of maintaining viability through the acquisition of commodities with which individuals have attachments is increasingly replaced by the ‘palliative’ effects of services which, whilst they perform a similar function to commodities, do not afford the means of control and exchange to consumers. On the other hand, the providers of services accumulate capital on a global basis and use this capital:
a. As the basis of their service provision
b. As a means of removing commodity alternatives which consequently forces consumers to consume their services.
Conclusion: Listening to the economy with better antennae
In this paper, I have elaborated some new distinctions of property based on the attachment relations individuals have to commodities. This has focused on the sensual relations between the viable operations of individuals and the objects and people in the world that surrounds them. In reality, relations between things and people are not only sensual but also linguistic. The elaboration of a linguistic dimension to the mechanisms described would allow for greater refinement in the mechanisms of markets and the political dimensions of the economy.
In the present economic crisis, ‘loss’ is the principle experience for the unfortunate and ‘anxiety’ a mechanism which exists within everyone who sees loss occurring. I have argued that loss is a challenge to personal identity and viability. Economic behaviour can be understood as a means by which individuals acquire capacity to adapt whilst maintaining their identity. But what is happening to western economies can be seen to be directly related to the management of risks and anxiety, where the nature of the means for managing risks available to consumers is changing. Where there were once new commodities to which individuals could form attachments, and consequently exchange them, now there are services which directly address anxieties but without releasing any of their capital for exchange.
An economic crisis is very hostile and alien territory. But survival in hostile and alien territory requires deep listening to understand the nature of that territory. But the listening requires the right sort of antennae. It may be the case that the classical economic view cannot pick up the signals that need to be picked up if we are to steer ourselves from this situation.
References
(in the comments!)
candy (Christiane M. Herr)
Email: candyherr@gmail.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
chris mann (chris mann)
associate professor, new school university
Email: chrisman@rcn.com
Website: http://www.theuse.info
Bio: language is the mechanism whereby you understand what i’m thinking better than i do (where i is defined by those changes for which i is required).
SoI: i’d like to offer a performance which has developed out of various strategies for privileging the audience (two speakers reading the same text with mics and headphones arranged that voice A can hear voice B in the headphones and vice versa, but so loud that she cant hear herself; three speakers with mics and headphones arranged that A can hear B in the left, C in the right ear, again so loud that she cant hear herself; realtime phoneme recognition and spatialisation over 16 channels so that T always sounds in speaker 3, O in speaker 8, S in 11, etcet; a speaker lozenge that employs bone resonance ..). all of my work has been to do with speech (language is when you correct the grammar of your oppressor, ..) and examples can be found at www.theuse.info. the piece i’d like to offer is a continuation of work on overhearing and various strategies to distinguish listening to from listening for. formally its probably not too dissimilar to various other performances i’ve done at meetings of the asc over the years.
Workshop or performance proposal:
i’d like to offer a solo voice performance (up to 45 minutes duration (its some 4500 words)) on listening as a subject.
Paper proposal:
CWelch (Christine Welch)
Principal Lecturer, University of Portsmouth
Vice-President, UK Systems Society
Member, Informing Science Institute
Email: christine.welch@port.ac.uk
Bio: My name is Christine Welch. I live in Portsmouth in the south of the United Kingdom and I am currently Vice-President of the UK Systems Society. This reflects my interest in holistic approaches to problem definition and structuring. I am committed to critically-informed research, and have published a range papers and chapters in the field of Systems, information systems analysis and contextual inquiry. I am a member of the Informing Science Institute and the Editorial Board of Informing Science: International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline. This reflects my belief that our inquiries into human Systems should focus on informing and knowing as processes, and resist the notion that objective commodities (information; knowledge) can be defined or exchanged. I work as a Principal Lecturer in the Business School at the University of Portsmouth, where I teach Knowledge Management.
SoI: Conversations in an organizational setting frequently take place in a context of decision-making. Often, participants are engaged in a process intended to achieve some kind of consensus upon a course of action. The pressure often experienced within organizational life may often mean that participants are concerned to get across their own opinions and thus influence the outcome of a decision, with the result that they lack either the will or the possibility to pay sufficient attention to what other people are saying. My work and that of my collaborator have been concerned over many years to support effective dialogue between organisational actors so that they have space to explore both the similarities and the differences in their contextually-created views. What matters to each individual is not only impossible to judge externally but also irreducible to any common ‘metric’. However, discussion of ideas is still valuable within a community whose interests overlap. Just as it would make no sense to ask for a consensus on whether people prefer oranges, bicycles or tropical fish, but a conversation with a group of people about their hobbies and interests is nevertheless worthwhile. We have highlighted a need to go beyond naive models for decision-making that emphasise some kind of bi-valued logic (true/false, yes/no) and support people to explore the full range of ‘it depends’ – i.e. listen to the whole variety of potential view points. Thus, a conference in which ‘listening’ is highlighted is particularly appealing to us. We hope, by listening to other delegates, to expand our understandings of ways in which effective dialogue can be supported. This can help us to reflect and expand upon the toolbox which is central to our approach. We also anticipate great fun in listening to like-minded people whose ideas are not constrained by conventional models for organizational discourse.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Storytelling and listening: co-creating understandings
Introduction
Most of us have indulged our senses from time to time listening to a lovely piece of music, or been moved by an impassioned speech from a skilled orator. Most of us talk with family and friends, listening to their news and concerns. Sometimes we attend meetings where decision-making is intended, giving our views and listening to those of others as we seek to reach a consensus. At least, that is the ‘official’ description of this process. However, when participants wish to influence a decision in a certain direction, it is not uncommon to find that a person is not genuinely ‘listening’ to her colleague’s views, but waiting politely for that colleague to stop speaking in order that she can put across her own. The extent to which she listens may be only to pick out points from the opposing view in order to refute them and strengthen her own argument. She is not genuinely engaged with an open-minded interpretation of the message she hears and is not willing to be convinced. Even those participants who genuinely seek to understand the views of others may be defeated in their purpose.
We human beings are sentient and it has been suggested that we make sense of our world through language (e.g. Wittgenstein, 1963). Thus, we live in hope that we can be understood when we try to communicate with each other but we also know that we might be wrong. Habermas (1985) describes difficulty among human beings in achieving communication; there is a need for strategies, such as ‘languaging’ to enable people to explore one another’s sense-making processes (see Wittgenstein, 1963). When elaborating upon ‘meaningfulness’ some authorities (e.g. Schutz, 1967) question how it is possible for any mutual understanding or communication between people to take place, and how a person can act purposively in order to achieve actions that are meaningful. However, we do not wish to pursue such philosophical questions here, preferring to content ourselves with highlighting some of the issues and problems experienced in individuals’ efforts to make sense of the world and to communicate one with another – what Heidegger (1962) might have termed ‘Befindlichkeit’.
We strive for better understandings, engaging in an on-going ‘dance’ of collective sense-making (De Jaegher and Di Paolo, 2007). Our concepts of ‘understanding’ and ‘better understanding’ are not clearly defined; this too is constantly re-negotiated and re-valued over and over. In this dance, no one leads or follows in a conventional fashion. Leading is transient and changing – first one and then another shows a way. Rules for the steps and movements are constantly changing – revised through intended and unintended engagement of involved actors (Bateson, 1972). While temporarily it may appear that someone leads and others follow – this is also in flux and changing.
Boyce (1996) suggests that storytelling is a vehicle for expressing organizational culture, often used to promote a prevailing hegemony through manipulation of meaning. Conversations in an organizational setting frequently take place in a context where participants are seeking for some kind of consensus upon a course of action. We suggest that a rush towards premature consensus, motivated by a desire to get things done and move on, leads to decision-taking that is less effective than it might be (Bednar and Welch, 2006). A focus upon efficiency and rapid action leads to sub-optimality and loss of effectiveness, as participants focus upon outcome rather than creation of a genuine dialogue through listening. Lessons might be learned from bygone times when storytelling was regarded a major vehicle for group interaction, social cohesion and creation of plans for action. Parkinson (2001) comments on the reasons why storytelling has persisted in its popularity and importance throughout history:
‘Stories show life as it might be, should be, shouldn’t be, never could be. Basic social values, skills, wisdoms and all show up in stories but so do all sorts of other things on many different levels. It’s no accident that the founders of religions have been storytellers’ (Parkinson, 2001, n.p.)
Listening
Participants who have time and space to engage with one another’s narratives, and who listen actively to one another’s points of view, gain an opportunity to share in interpreting experiences. However, we suggest that it may be a focus on listening, rather than on narrating, which holds the key to these opportunities. We can see an example from the field of anthropology. Cruickshank (1992) cites the case of Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, in which three anthropologists appeared as expert witnesses to ‘provide the court with a minimal context for understanding how indigenous oral traditions demonstrate Aboriginal land ownership in northwestern British Columbia’ (Cruickshank, 1992, p.25). After three weeks of intensive cross-examination, supported by many pages of written testimony, the judge dismissed the evidence as, among other things, exceedingly difficult to understand. He then went on to substitute what the author terms ‘an anthropology of his own’, adopting a normative and evolutionary model to evaluate what could be regarded as an organized society, based in assumptions of (19th century) positivism. It would seem that whatever narrative those experts had presented would have been to no effect, since the judge simply was not listening.
In organizational settings, we often find similar examples. Argyris (1990) describes what he terms ‘defensive routines’ leading to ‘skilled incompetence’. He suggests that organizational relations reach a negotiated equilibrium in which actors feel comfortable. In order not to cause uncomfortable disturbances (i.e. not rock the boat) people will avoid dealing with problematic issues. At times, by protecting norms and values of a prevailing organizational culture (Schein, 2004) organizational actors’ capability to bring about beneficial change becomes paralysed. Theories that people espouse to describe their actions and motivations are not what other people can observe to be their theories in use. Practical examples of this phenomenon abound. For instances, Williams (2007) cites a survey by the IT Governance Institute of 1600 projects in UK businesses. More than half of these projects appeared to deliver little benefit, and a third were shown actually to destroy organizational value. Interestingly, Williams also adduces evidence to suggest that in some cases managers continued to support these projects beyond the point where they already knew that this would happen. Messages were received that they preferred not to heed.
Consider the following apocryphal anecdote as illustration of a desire not to listen. Managers in a toothpaste manufacturing company were worried by a drop in sales revenue. A meeting was convened to brainstorm ideas on how to sell more toothpaste in the context of market saturation. Many ideas were put forward and none appeared to be ideal, until the meeting was interrupted by a cleaner, wishing to service the room. Overhearing some of their discussion, she made a flippant suggestion – why not make the hole in the tube bigger? Senior executives were reluctant to be ‘interrupted’ by a relatively lowly member of staff. Yet, when they did listen, they found the elusive solution to their perceived problem. Opening up to diversity of viewpoint can be seen to be helpful in this case. Furthermore, it is often the creative and ‘off-the-wall’ idea, and not existing best practice, which deserves to be listened to. Weick and Sutcliffe (2002) suggest a need for organizations to promote a collective state of ‘mindfulness’. This would be characterised by a desire to learn from mistakes, acceptance that ignorance is ‘normal’ and ‘knowledge’ imperfect, respect for uncertainty and a focus on disconfirming, rather than confirming behaviour. This, we suggest, is synonymous with creation of a ‘listening’ culture.
An Open Systems Approach
We suggest that an open systems approach which enables individuals to explore and share their contextually dependent understandings will be helpful in supporting a listening culture. Human systems create problem spaces that are ambiguous, uncertain and constantly changing. This requires approaches to inquiry that can be used to explore inconsistent and ill-defined phenomena. We propose a framework that supports and guides participants to give attention to co-creation of understandings of problem spaces through exchange of narratives. The Strategic Systemic Thinking framework (Bednar, 2000) provides a vehicle for individuals and groups to explore contextual dependencies and engage in co-creation of a knowledge-base for decisions. It is not a decision-making tool, but provides a tool-kit for exploration that can lead to more informed decision-making, avoiding a rush to premature consensus. There is then an opportunity to keep the disparate narratives of engaged actors in view far into a process of inquiry, rather than screening out those considered ‘marginal’ and looking for convergence too soon. There is also scope to explore similarities and differences in narratives, gradually forming a picture of the diversity of opinion within a group of actors. Rather than a decision-taking system, participants create a richer pool of ‘knowledge’ as a basis for informed decisions.
The SST framework includes three, interrelated aspects (intra-analysis; inter-analysis and value analysis) designed to create productive learning spirals. In the intra-analysis aspect individual actors are supported to reflect and think about a problem space, using a range of tools to articulate their worldviews, e.g. rich pictures, learning exercises, observation, group roleplays – supporting visualization, communication of mental models. Using these approaches, individuals can explore and surface their contextually dependent understandings of the situation (this could be expressed as an opportunity to ‘listen’ to their own views). The focus of inter-analysis is support for collective creation of a learning spiral through communication of actors’ individually-created narratives, and sense-making of one another’s’ contributions. In value analysis, actors are supported to create a learning spiral focused on reflecting and thinking about scales for comparison and evaluation of narratives. The aim of value analysis is to bring about a constructive dialogue between the actors and those who will be affected by any potential change about beliefs and values.
Creating Narratives of a Complex Problem Space
As an example of a complex problem space, we might consider the following. The owner of a sheep farm recognizes that his profit margins are falling and that the farm no longer generates sufficient income to sustain its long-term survival. He begins a consultation with his farm manager, the shepherds and other workers employed in the farm, also bringing in outside participants for a broader range of views: his accountant, a neighbour whose land has been turned into a golf course, and a friend who owns two other sheep farms in the same region which are in a healthier financial position. Each participant in the inquiry is initially invited to express an individual view of current state of affairs, what changes they would like to see in order to bring about improvement, and what measures would be needed to carry them out (intra-analysis). When each has produced his own ‘narrative’ answering these questions, a meeting is held at which all the narratives presented. They are discussed, each considered on an equal footing, in order to gauge the range of options available. As each narrative is read out, the group is invited to make comparisons between them to identify similarities and differences. Using a white board, the farmer draws up a schematic view showing which narratives the group perceives to be related to each other and labelling them with a theme. Some narratives considered how a flock of a certain size could be looked after more cost efficiently so that animals would be healthy and marketable at a minimum cost. Some considered whether an alternative breed could be introduced into the flock which would yield more or better quality meat/wool and yield greater revenue for the same cost. Some narratives considered finding new markets for meat or wool, developing and selling bi-products such as sheepskin artefacts or lanolin, or selling through new channels such as local farmers markets. Another cluster considered broadening out the farming activities to include other animals such as goats, or some arable crops. Further narratives considered investigating merger with other local farms or collaborating with other farms in the region in developing markets and reducing costs. Some participants believed that there was no practical solution to the problem other than sale of the farm.
This inter-analysis enables the group to listen to the range of alternative resolutions put forward by individual members. There is no need to dwell upon unnecessary details of each narrative, risking information overload, nor is it necessary to rush to a premature consensus and rule out potentially creative options. It is possible to move on to investigate each cluster in more depth to produce a knowledge base around the context of the problem. There is then potential for informed decisions to be reached. Of course, further discussion would be needed to surface and clarify the beliefs and wishes of the farmer about the parameters of his impending decision before options could be evaluated. He may, for instance, dislike the idea of a partnership or he may feel he is too old to learn new skills required to diversify.
Conclusion
All human experience is contextual, and any decision situation will benefit by taking into account individual interpretations of contextual dependencies. Too often in business, communication is one-way. Managers explain to staff what has been decided and invite questions, or at best undertake ‘consultation’ within some fixed boundaries they have already defined. Their capacity to learn from sharing in the contextual experiences of those who know the organization best (its staff) is then similarly restricted. Vehicles need to be found to promote genuine conversation in which listening and learning are promoted. We suggest that an open systems approach which enables individuals to explore and share their contextually dependent understandings will be helpful in this.
References
Bednar, P. (2000). A Contextual Integration of Individual and Organizational Learning Perspectives as part of IS Analysis. Informing Science Journal, 3(3), 145-156.
Bednar, P.M. and Welch, C. (2006). ‘Structuring uncertainty: sponsoring innovation and creativity’, in Creativity and Innovation in Decision Making and Decision Support, Vol.2. F. Adam et al, (editors). Decision Support Press
Boyce, M.E. (1996). Organizational Story and Storytelling, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 9(5)
Cronan, W. (1992). A Place for Stories: Nature, History and Narrative, The Journal of American History, 78(4), 1347-1376
De Jaegher, H. and Di Paolo, E. (2007). Participatory Sense-Making: An enactive approach to social
cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6 (4), 485-507.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. Blackwell.
Habermas, J. (1985). Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (3rd ed.), Vol 2 of The Theory of Communicative Action (T. McCarthy, Translator.). Beacon Press
Cruikshank, J. (1992). ‘Invention of Anthropology in British Columbia’s Supreme Court: Oral Tradition as Evidence in Delgamuukw v. BC’,BC Studies. 95, 25-‐42
Parkinson, R. (2001). History of Storytelling. Context Magazine, http://www.uncommon-knowledge.co.uk/psychology_articles/History_of_Storytelling.pdf, accessed 11 June 2011
Schein, E. (2004). Organizational Culture and Leadership. Wiley
Schutz, A. (1967). Phenomenology of the social world. Northwestern University Press.
Weick, K. and Sutcliffe, K. (2002). Managing the Unexpected. Jossey-Bass
Williams (2007). ‘Make sure you get a positive return,’ Computer Weekly, 13 November 2007, pp 18 & 20
Wittgenstein, L. (1963). Philosophical investigations. Blackwell.
cybercastro ( )
Email: ivantimes@yahoo.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
d_rosen (Daniel Rosenberg)
PhD student, MIT
Email: d_rosen@mit.edu
Bio: Daniel Rosenberg is a trained architect, designer and researcher currently investigating how to design engaging, meaningful and enjoyable human experiences. Daniel graduated from the Catholic University of Chile with a Bachelor of Architecture (2003) and a Master of Science in Architecture (2005). Continuing his education at MIT, Daniel received a Master of Science in Design & Computation (2009), and is currently pursuing a PhD within Design & Computation while working as Design Manager of the MIT Museum Lab.
As a student at MIT, he has worked closely with Professor George Stiny and Professor Terry Knight developing research on design theory, specifically questions of how to design indeterminate building environments. He has also worked with Professor Edith Ackerman in the discussion of second-order cybernetics and its relation with design, technology and education. Daniel organizes and coordinates the students’ activities of the Design & Computation Group (DCG), involving the DCG Reading Seminar, the DCG Forum and the DCG Lecture Series.
SoI: Daniel is interested in how second-order cybernetics has explained the structural coupling between humans and their environments, and the implications it has for design and the use of technology. His vision is to use technology as a means of enhancing human experience rather than addressing technology as an end by itself. Design, in this context, refers to the definition of a particular condition that may cause certain experiences to emerge. Daniel harnesses this vision through constructing technological experiments on human-environment interaction, aiming at unveiling ways of creating memorable, transformative yet natural and effortless experiences in the world.
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Paper proposal:
David Cox (David Cox)
Facilitator for Change Teams, Procter & Gamble retired
Ombudsperson, American Society for Cybernetics
Circuit Rider, Regional Facilitator for Change Teams
Email: djcox@fuse.net
Bio: My volunteer community work is to help regional governments, businesses, and civil communities solve their urgent problems and to help them succeed in making new opportunities happen. Three kinds of help come from my experience in Procter & Gamble’s Systems Division:
(1) I served as the facilitator for hundreds of “deliberate change” teams.
(2) I invented a way system stakeholders can easily picture, explain, understand, and use very complex systems.
(3) I served as the editor of the bulletin that listed changes made by P&G change teams. This made reapplication of changes possible and recognized success of the change teams.
SoI: I bring a viewpoint on listening which holds that the interests of listeners (or readers) are the main focus of any speaker (or writer). This means discovering/understanding the “listeners’ pull.” This is different from “sellers’ push” of the seller’s product or service.
I hope to make this experience available to conference attendees. I hope to learn new skills of making good changes happen by any community.
I also bring experience in helping people with a collection of 20 teamwork skills that can be used to discover/ invent solutions to difficult or new situations and to make these solutions happen. These skills are interesting because they intentionally avoid popular tools like discussion and Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised which are stakeholder-unfriendly and lack “listeners’ pull.”
Workshop or performance proposal:
None
Paper proposal:
delfina fantini (Delfina Fantini)
Email: delfinafantini@gmail.com
Bio: Born in Santiago Chile, 1986
I studied Biology at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile where I took seminaries in the neurobiology of emotions and the brain social aspects in schizophrenics.
In the year 2009 I traveled to Singapore to the ICSID congress: ‘Design Difference’ The Year 2050, focused in how architects and designers can make a difference by 2050.
On 2010 I entered to an interdisciplinary master program at Konstfack University in Stockholm.
Living in Sweden I became very interested in ICT, research that I want to develop in my next phase.
SoI: I will bring my background.
I am concearned with future cities, I am interested in the intersection of the urban realm, human beings, and a ubiquitous technology.
I am looking to hear.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
dennisgcollins ( )
Email: d_collins_pr@hotmail.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
elizacorps (elizaBeth Simpson)
co-director, Creative Intervention Agency
Teacher/Organizer, School for Designing a Society
Email: ezb@creativeintervention.org
Website: http://www.ucpeopleshistory.org
Bio: I strive to address oppressive dynamics in all forms by unveiling their manifestations in everyday life. To this end, I pursue descriptions of self-inclusive systems; by working with the conflicts and group dynamics of communities, organizations, and the brilliant people that populate them, by eliciting participation using critical pedagogy and collective inquiry processes (e.g. action theatre and story circles), and by recurrently reflecting on the social systems (personal, communal, societal, institutional) I am part of and my/our role in them. I am also a social/performance artist whose projects often solicit creative work by people who would not call themselves “Artists”.
SoI: In seeking to support individuals and groups in identifying and accomplishing their aspirations (in light of the social and ecological world), I am always seeking to increase my listening skills as well as my ability to engender them in others. Part of listening is noticing what isn’t heard- underrepresented or absent voices or experiences- as well as the the not yet identified possibilities the constellations of our interactions create. At this conference I am especially interested in finding the ‘lower volume’ ideas and people present (or absent).
Workshop or performance proposal:
Imagination and Listening Theatre Laboratory: Incorporating Theatre of the Oppressed, Playback Theatre, and other techniques, we will use prompted, improvisational movement and sound, guided by critical pedagogy, to explore themes related to the experience and interest of the participants, in light of the conference themes. (e.g. when we are not heard, when imagination is lacking or rejected) Outcomes will include experience with somatic learning, and critical pedagogy, increased sense of community, and strategies to address the issues explored. No theater experience is necessary.
AND/OR
Imagination and Listening Story Circle: Story circles are a participatory, egalitarian means to explore and identify emergent wisdom within a group. It is particularly useful for ‘sticky’ or non-linear topics that don’t offer a clear starting point for inquiry. Such topics can be personal or professional in nature. Grounded in personal experience, story circles can be used for learning, sharing/witnessing, research, and as a powerful form of decision making. During this session I propose to use a story circle to explore an question that rises from the conference activities prior to it. (e.g. in a recent workshop on Science and Society, we explored the use of personal affect in professional settings). Outcomes will include increased skill in attention, listening, and recursive learning, as well as increased knowledge and wisdom on the topic we explore.
Paper proposal:
emmanuelruffo ( )
Email: research@emmanuelruffo.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
ErrolHTout (Errol Tout)
Senior Lecturer, Curtin University
Email: e.tout@curtin.edu.au
Website: http://errolhtout.com.au
Bio: I am a senior lecturer in Architecture at Curtin University in Perth Western Australia.
I am interested in architecture. I am interested in space. I am interested in architectural representation. I am interested in music. I am interested in sound.
I have been a registered architect for 22 years. I have been interested in music since I learned to breathe. I have worked as a musician for 24 years and have recorded 16 albums of my own instrumental guitar based music.
In 2001, I completed a Master of Architecture ‘Music and Architecture – the Connection between the Constructs’. It concerned itself with translating the ideas employed in the composition of a piece of music to be then used to design a piece of architecture.
In march 2011 I was exmined and passed my PhD entitled ‘Spatial Visualization in Architecture’ which examines the possibilities of using sound to describe space.
SoI: Architecture is not only a visual and physical phenomenon but also an instrument that tempers and constructs our sound perceptions of the world. My recently completed PhD contains a number of projects drawing attention to the significance of what I have termed ‘aural representation’ as being a contribution in forming an understanding of a work of architecture and how architectural space conditions not only how we see the world but also how we hear it.
My PhD asked the question ‘Can sound be used to tell audience things about space that, perhaps, images cannot?’ The findings from this question interact with, and extend, an internationally recognised body of scholarly work.
The PhD projects led to a final project involving a substantive body of creative work to help to make the knowledge gained in the PhD more explicit. I would like to present composed music, ‘aural representations’ for selected spaces based on my perceptions of their spatial sound characteristics. Each individual piece of music is based on the aural characteristics of the spaces it is created for, and in some cases, within. The pieces wrap themselves around the ‘room tone’ of the space.
If possible I could compose and perform a piece live to show how we can listen to a space.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Architecture is not only a visual and physical phenomenon but also an instrument that tempers and constructs our sound perceptions of the world. My recently completed PhD contains a number of projects drawing attention to the significance of what I have termed ‘aural representation’ as being a contribution in forming an understanding of a work of architecture and how architectural space conditions not only how we see the world but also how we hear it.
My PhD asked the question ‘Can sound be used to tell audience things about space that, perhaps, images cannot?’ The findings from this question interact with, and extend, an internationally recognised body of scholarly work.
The PhD projects led to a final project involving a substantive body of creative work to help to make the knowledge gained in the PhD more explicit. This paper will present composed music, ‘aural representations’ for selected spaces based on my perceptions of their spatial sound characteristics. Each individual piece of music is based on the aural characteristics of the spaces it is created for, and in some cases, within. The pieces wrap themselves around the ‘room tone’ of the space.
Title
Aural Representations of Architectural Space – Listening
Errol H Tout AIA B.Arch[WAIT] M.Arch[Curtin]
Senior Lecturer, Department of Architecture + Interior Architecture, School of Built Environment
Curtin University, Western Australia.
Abstract
Architecture is not only a visual and physical phenomenon but also an instrument that tempers and constructs our sound perceptions of the world. My recently completed PhD contains a number of projects drawing attention to the significance of what I have termed ‘aural representation’ as being a contribution in forming an understanding of a work of architecture and how architectural space conditions not only how we see the world but also how we hear it.
My PhD asked the question ‘Can sound be used to tell audience things about space that, perhaps, images cannot?’ The findings from this question interact with, and extend, an internationally recognised body of scholarly work. The PhD projects led to a final project involving a substantive body of creative work to help to make the knowledge gained in the PhD more explicit.
This paper will present composed music, ‘aural representations’ for selected spaces based on my perceptions of their spatial sound characteristics. Each individual piece of music is based on the aural characteristics of the spaces it is created for, and in some cases, within. The pieces wrap themselves around the ‘room tone’ of the space.
Keywords
Sound, space, music, architecture.
Introduction
The perception of architectural space engages more than just our visual sense. It is my hypothesis that sound can offer information about architectural space that images may not be able to, as it has particular affordances that images do not. My doctoral research in my PhD examined how these possibilities may manifest themselves in some useful manner to an audience of architects and those who may be interested in the sound of spaces. The work was embodied in a series of creative projects in the PhD rather than an analytical, scientific work.
Architecture is not only a visual and physical phenomena but it is also an instrument that tempers and constructs our sound perceptions of the world. The projects in this paper draw our attention to the significance of aural representation as being a contribution in forming an understanding of a work of architecture and how architectural space conditions not only how we see the world but also how we hear it.
I do not assert that we privilege the visual as much as Jay (1994) in Downcast Eyes suggests; rather I am suggesting that the ‘aural environment’ is an important part of the combination of things that go together to contribute to our perception of space. This is, in itself, nothing new as it has been clearly suggested in the work of Blesser & Salter (2007), Scruton (1997), Schafer (1977), Chion (1983), and Schaeffer (1983) that the concept of the ‘aural environment’ has been validated, but also that not enough attention has been placed on its importance in the world that we are forced to live in, and what the ramifications might be. All of these authors suggest more work is needed in the area and this has been one of the stimuli for my investigation. I have found that the available vocabulary dealing with sound is extremely limited, even though the experience is profound. Scholars including Blesser & Salter (2007), Scruton (1997), and Schafer (1977) agree that it is very difficult to speak about sound.
The pieces I have called ‘Aural Representations’ involve performing music for specific spaces, responding to ‘room tones’ with both improvisational as well as composed pieces. They draw the listener’s attention to the individual spaces’ unique tonal characteristics. These are one of the parts that affect our perception of the space. A drawing cannot convey this information. The space, and its acoustic properties, becomes a major part of the performance and composition. The works are termed ‘aural representations’ as they are used to communicate information about spaces by bringing to the audience’s attention to the room tone of the space. It does this by wrapping a piece of music around the space’s room tone.
I acknowledge that our perceptual senses have atrophied with time, particularly our ability to listen. Schafer (1977) offers reasons for this, mainly inactivity. This project encourages their return to active service. This encouraging the extension of receptive aural perception should also be regarded as a contribution to knowledge alongside the primary outcome of the project itself.
Room Tones
Having used the term more than once already, it is important to discuss what is meant by the term. Each room has a tone. Rooms will emphasize a frequency within it; this means certain frequencies will resonate more than others within that particular space. Each room also has its own reverberant quality. Sounds will take longer to decay in some rooms than in others.
If we sit and actively listen we can hear the room tone. Active listening is something many people are not particularly good at.
A simple method to recognize the room tone is to try the following simple, but quite powerful, exercise. Put on some noise cancelling headphones. As they are turned on the listener is immediately aware of the room tone being cancelled; that is what they do. The exercise informs the listener what is (not) there. The listener may be surprised how much there is to the room tone. It is my suggestion that the listener did not notice the room tone before because they weren’t offered the opportunity of listening. It is one my assertions that we don’t actively listen–and one of the tasks of the aural representation is to make the listener aware of that. Architecture is an: ‘… instrument that tempers and constructs our sound perceptions of the world’.
Precedent
Precedents include the following musical composers Bach, Varese, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Boulez, Ives, Schoffer and Henry, Cage, Fripp + Travis. The work of these composers demonstrates the validity of creating music for specific spaces. I have made no attempt to emulate the work of any of the composers
In terms of sound artists, this project is informed by the work of Alvin Lucier’s ‘I am Sitting in a Room’ (1969) as well the Dream House by La Monte Young [an avant-garde composer in his own right] with Marian Zazeela. Both of these projects speak about the tone of spaces. Certain frequencies will be emphasised within spaces, and each space is different, due to its size, shape and materials within the space.
Schafer’s (1977) nomenclature regarding ‘keynote sounds’, is relevant to the concept of room tones. The room tone, to use his visual analogy, is the ‘ground’ of the aural environment in which gives the ‘figure’ its substance. Here is where I must draw away from Schafer’s term, as he is thinking about the keynote sounds of a landscape which are often those created by its geography and climate: water, wind, forests, plains, birds, insects and mammals. I am directing the project toward interior sounds in a building and it is important that I make this distinction. It can be seen here the ambition to expand on existing scholarship to extend the boundaries of thinking about the aural environment.
Process
These works that I have made are what I call ‘aural representations’ of space. Sound can tell us things about space which images cannot. Amongst the things that sound can offer is that it can tell us what the ‘room tone’ of a space is. This is a function of the room size, room materials, room shape, its resonant frequencies and the reverberation times of the room. No image can communicate this information but these sound pieces do.
The way these sound pieces have been approached is as follows; I start with rhythm and then move to tonality. Once a space has been selected, the reverb and delay (echo) time of the space are scrutinized by making sounds in the space and listening to how they work in that particular space. This will affect the rhythm of the piece of music to be created. I do this by playing sequences of notes at different speeds to find what rates of echo (or delay times) are actively working in the space.
The next selection is to do with the resonant frequency of the space. Every space that resonates has a tonal centre which it will emphasize, this is a major part of the ‘room tone’, and I start with that note. To find this I commence this by playing many notes until I find the one that resonates. I then build a series of notes that belong to the same tonal centre. As the tonal family of notes varies (major minor etc) from space to space, different pieces of music will occur. Some pieces presented here have something approaching a melody and this melody uses the available notes that are being accentuated within the space. Different spaces emphasising different frequencies have a tonality. This tonality is the starting point of making a melody. To summarize I start with rhythm and then move to tonality.
Aural Representations
I have included 2 pieces in this paper.
Casa Del Fascio
I created this first piece of music to have a dialogue with the ‘room tone’ of the building. The room tone comes from a recording I did there. The piece of music is not created real-time within the space, it does, however respond to the tonality of the room tone that I recorded. It would be completely different if I had used another recording of another room tone.
At first the audience is presented with the way sounds are affected by the room tone slamming doors and the guards speaking to each other. This sound is looped (it repeats itself) on purpose to reinforce how the room tone responds to sounds in the space. As the piece proceeds more musical sounds are added to respond to the room tone, finding the tonal centre and then building on it. The musical sounds are then diminished and replaced by others to offer another type of reading of the space. It concludes with room tone as presented at the beginning of the piece. The music is playing the room tone of the space.
The reader is directed to the following file
Casa Del Fascio May 2010
This can be found at the website
Asylum Tone (in B)
I acquired this room tone from a sound library (sound-effects-library.com). These sound libraries allow for downloading after payment of a small licence fee and the user is permitted to use the sound in any form they wish, as they have paid the license fee. This piece of music came from it by the means described in the paragraphs above, finding the tonal centre and then building on it. The audience can hear the room tone at the commencement of the piece and then can hear musical parts responding to the room tone. The piece concludes with the room tone reminding the audience of where the piece started.
The reader is directed to the following file
Asylum Tone in B
This can be found at the website
Conclusion
This project offers a shift of perception for the listener in terms of thinking about sound in architectural spaces. It takes the essence of a ‘room tone’ and offers it back to the listener. It shows us what the ‘room tone’ of a space could be via the researcher’s particular interpretation. This ‘room tone’ is presented in a manner which the audience would not have noticed before. It does this by creating a creative interpretation of the room tone and using it as means of constructing a piece of music. This is its contribution to a body of knowledge concerning the sonic environment.
This project demonstrates one way that sound can be used to convey to an audience information about space that images cannot. It directs our attention to some of the things that sound confers to us. They are spatial presentations using sound.
A book employs drawings, photographs, models to tell us things about architectural space. If there was a recording of the building, further and different information could be gleamed from that. We could use this recording also as a technique or tool to tell us about existing spaces.
I find this to be in accord with Rasmussen’s (1962) thoughts as published in Grueneisen (2003) (p. 00.008):
Can Architecture be heard? Most people would probably say that architecture does not produce sound, it cannot be heard. But neither does it radiate light and yet it can be seen. We see the light it reflects and therefore gain an impression of form and material. In the same way we hear the sounds it reflects and they, too, give us an impression of form and material. Differently shaped rooms and different materials reverberate differently.
The pieces of music, the aural representations, I have composed could be identified as a manifestation of these ideas so eloquently laid out by Rasmussen. They are a way of making architecture be heard. The pieces of music draw the listener’s attention to the room tone of the space, which is different for every different space. This extends our understanding of a part of the study of the aural environment.
The works are part of a longer term series of projects in which famous buildings will be basis of creating more aural representations. I intend to start with Australian buildings then move on to internationally renowned projects overseas.
References
Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter. Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? London: The MIT Press, 2007.
Chion, Michel. Guide to Sound Objects Pierre Schaeffer and Musical Research. Edited by Translated by John Dack and Christine North: Bibliothèque de recherche musicale. (N.p.): Buchet Chastel., 1983.
Grueneisen, P. (2003). Soundspace: Architecture for Sound and Vision, Birkhauser.
Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Rasmussen, Steen Eiler. Experiencing Architecture. Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1962.
Schafer, R. M. The Tuning of the World. New York, Alfred A. Knopf,1977.
Scruton, R. The Aesthetics of Music. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1977.
Faisal (Faisal Kadri)
Email: faisal@artificialpsychology.com
Website: http://artificialpsychology.com
Bio: Faisal L. Kadri is an independent researcher not affiliated with any educational institution. His research interest since 1986 is in applying the mathematical tools of continuous nonlinear systems analysis to modeling motivational mechanisms in animals and humans. He has published two books and over twenty articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings.
A summary of works, including current paper, can be viewed on-line at: http://www.artificialpsychology.com/serendipity/
SoI: The contribution is a re-examination of Ross-Ashby’s Homeostat and how the suggested mechanism of multiplier feedback works and complements the Homeostat. The multiplier feedback explains adaption and stability phenomena without the need for a set point. Hysteresis and animal behavioral homeostasis are examples of multiplier feedback phenomena.
This is basic nuts-and-bolts cybernetics. It would take too long to develop the basic ideas in order to show the connection with the listening theme of the conference.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Principia Cybernetica describes homeostasis as resistance to change, which agrees with Ashby’s Homeostat models the regulation of disturbances to a living organisms, such as ambient temperature variations in constant temperature animals. Linear negative feedback with an internal set-point is sufficient to describe how Ashby’s homeostat works with temperature regulation but not how the mechanism of hunger leads to a state of satiation. Animal behaviorists understand homeostasis as the regulation of the intake of body needs, such as hunger and thirst. In satiation, an animal does not respond to food stimuli with little effect of its availability or content, if the regulating element were a subtractor as in negative feedback then the animal would need to counter-balance the stimulus internally, which suggests needless processing of information with no physiological evidence of processing. However, if the regulating element was a multiplier then a state of zero hunger in the multiplicand could be reached, which would remove the effect of all feeding stimuli in the sated state.
The analysis of multiplier feedback mechanisms is not new. Frechet and Volterra solved the formal integral equations in the early part of the twentieth century. Numerous contributions ensued, particularly to the Multi Dimensional Laplace Transform which is probably the most practical tool of analysis of the integral equations. Notably, in the 1990’s a form of multiplier feedback structure was used to describe neuron behavior by Kronenburg et al. In order for the multiplier element to describe homeostasis in animal behavior it had to meet certain conditions: A saturation element has to be in the forward path and an inverted even order nonlinear element in the feedback path in order to insure that saturation leads to zero forward gain.
The multiplier feedback could simulate hysteresis in magnetism and other media in a robust analytical way, the structural conditions to be met are slightly different: third order saturation nonlinearity in the forward path and even order non-inverted nonlinearity in the feedback path.
In order to compare the mechanisms of Ashby’s Homeostat and multiplier feedback interactive Java applet simulations will be presented, including multiplier feedback homeostasis and hysteresis.
I am grateful to Dr. Horace Townsend who permitted me to use the Homeostat Java code.
franciscoparrac (parra correa )
Profesor, Universidad Católica de Pereira
Email: franciscoparrac@gmail.com
Bio:
SoI: Soy maestro en artes Plásticas, mis estudios de Maestría están orientados a la interacción expresiva, es por esta razón que me interesa conocer sobre las diferentes temas que pueden ser tratado en este evento.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
gabrielpujol87 ( )
Email: g.pujol@lab.matcom.uh.cu
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
hletiche (hugo letiche)
Professor, Director part-time Phd program, UvH Utrecht
Email: h.letiche@uvh.nl
Bio: I was founder and director of the The UvH (University for Humanistics) part-time PhD programme for practitioners for ten years and have now retired. Social complexity theory is one of the foci of my work. I began my intellectual life in phenomenology and still feel myself very attracted to it. Organizational theory and the European philosophical tradition of speculative thought are my principle sources. Having been a Professor in a faculty of applied philosophy was a marvelous match for me.
SoI: Listening is easily equated with something good; but sound (white noise) can be life threatening and listening can be a very dangerous and violent. Michel Serres especially has developed a theory of white noise as a social political source of doubt. I hope to explore the dark side of listening.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Rhythmanalysis
Listening can be approached from an anthropocentric and phenomenological position. Attention is then centred on what persons hear. The emphasis is rapidly placed on meaning, structure, melody and order, and not on potentia, chaos, noise and vibration. Rhythmanalysis follows via Bachelard (2000) and Lefebvre (2004) on the thoughts of the Brazilian philosopher Pinheiro dos Santos (writing in 1931). The effort is to break with the Platonic tradition of understanding rhythm as the ordered tempo of existence, speech and drama. The assertion is that, not continuous similarity and measured cadence, but quantum vibration and motion, are characteristic of existence. Music and melody are the exception; motion, tension and ‘screech’ are the commonplace. Sound is mostly portrayed at equilibrium – ie as ordered, continuous and harmonic; but “far from equilibrium” energy and vibration is ontologically the foundation of existence. Vibration is a priori — motion and energy is primary. But only a narrow range of humanly perceptible and interpretable vibrations are normally recognized as ‘listenable’. Other intensities and frequencies form rhythms of existence that differ from (only) those of humanly and socially ordered cadence(s). Rhythmanalysis has as its goal the appreciation of vibrations, energies, motions and intensities that are turbulent. Prioritizing the frequencies that are under (human perceptual) control makes existence look ordered, rational and anthropocentric. Openness to the frequencies outside human (social) control is unnerving, but it does acknowledge the quantum reality of matter, existence and process.
Sound and affect (Goodman, 2010) is an unsettling and provocative field of study. The turn to affect in social studies (and especially anthropology) approaches research not from what is under anthropocentric control, but from what strikes and/or moves us (Stewart, 1006, 2007; Clough & Halley, 2007). Rhythm is affect-ive — ie it moves us. The energies, vibrations and momentums of quantum motion make and affect us. But they are not simply ‘hearable’ or reducible to sensemaking. Sound as commanding affect comes from the ‘white noise’ (Serres, 1984,1993), which is0 originatory to all existence.
In this workshop, the effort will be to hear rhythm as experimental sound attempts to. The Italian ‘futurists’ already began to call for ‘noise’ and ontologically significant sound (versus anthropocentric and clichéd ordered sounds) at the beginning of the 20th century. Unsettling and affective noise (Bain, 2003) has been developed into an ‘art form’. But noise as the pulsation and vibration of energy, and not as the rhythm of control, is still today little heard, understood or experienced. In this workshop, steps will be taken to do rhythmanalysis.
Paper proposal:
jaikim ( )
Email: jaikim@ajou.ac.kr
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Jeff Glassman (Jeff Glassman)
Co-artistic director, Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman Duo
Email: jglassmn@illinois.edu
Website: http://lisafayandjeffglassmanduo.org
Bio: Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman are composing and performing movement-based theatre artists who apply complex composed structures to ordinary daily human behavior. Notated movement scores often accompany their productions. “Natural-looking” behavior is contorted and subverted, letting “naturalism” show its socially constructed face. They invent systems for movement and speech in theatre, as systems for sound have been invented for composing music, utilizing a repertory of gestural-choreographic innovations by the duo to cast a critical look at social life. These include the orchestration of instantaneous shifts of time and place in complex patterns. Together and individually, they have performed for the past 40 years, as a duo for the past 20 years, doing Artist Residencies and tours across the US, in Eastern and Western Europe, Mexico, Cuba and Korea, receiving National Endowment for the Arts and Illinois Arts Council fellowships. They are an ensemble in Network of Ensemble Theatres.
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
jlombardi (jude lombardi)
Email: jlombardi@jlombardi.net
Website: http://www.jlombardi.net
Bio: I am a social worker by training.
I am an independent scholar, since I no longer teach at university yet still desire to learn and teach. Teaching is learning.
I am a videoethnographer and have been for about 20 years. I like documenting people saying what they said and seeing it again and again so that my interpretations might be clearer to me — and my audience.
Lastly, I long for the day when I feel comfortable, calling myself an artist. Why? Because I think art is the only means for generating social change in our current society.
Question: When is a social artist?
SoI: from past life at SU
Workshop or performance proposal:
Remembering Ernst.
Autobiography of Gertrude Stein, written by jLombardi as performed by Mark Enslin.
Paper proposal:
jmwilby (Jennifer Wilby)
Lecturer, University of Hull
President, ISSS
Email: jmwilby@gmail.com
Bio: Jennifer Wilby is a lecturer and researcher in management systems and sciences in The Business School, University of Hull. Jennifer’s research interests include: developing systems resilience and flexibility in the management of complex systems, hierarchies and general system theory, and the development of critical systematic evaluations of research methods. Jennifer is also a part-time (2007-2009) EPSRC post-doctoral fellow researching on the EmergeNet Emerging Sustainability Project.
Prior to joining the University of Hull, Jennifer worked in urban planning, database programming and textbook publishing. Since then, Jennifer has worked at the University of Lincoln for two years and for five years at the University of York in the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination undertaking systematic reviews of health care interventions on behalf of the Department of Health (NICE). Jennifer has just finished a year as President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), and has now resumed the role of VP for Administration of that society. She has been Honorary Treasurer and executive board member of ARCISS (The Association of Research Centres in the Social Sciences), and is a member of the board of the UKSS (United Kingdom Systems Society). Jennifer is also Editor of Bulletin of the International Society for the Systems Sciences and Book Reviews Editor of Systemic Practice and Action Research.
SoI: I am interested in coming to listen to other participants. I have done enough talking in the past few weeks and would now like to sit and think and absorb from others. I would also like to learn more about cybernetics and what it means to my own research and wanderings.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
lamin sabally ( )
Email: lsabally@yahoo.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
laudrich (Larry Richards)
Executive Vice Chancellor, Indiana University East
Email: laudrich@iue.edu
Bio: I am a long-time member of ASC, serving as Treasurer, President and Past-President during the period 1982-91. I am also a past President and Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Management. My interests include policy decision-making, social design and transformation, and the arts, technology and society. I currently serve as Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Indiana University East in Richmond, Indiana.
SoI: I would like to be a participant-listener in the conversational sessions of the main conference, and to attend and participate in pre- and post-conference events/activities as well. I think that listening in all its forms is a critical concept in the design of a participative-dialogic society, and a concept that deserves further exploration and development. The speaker-respondent circularity requires listening to turn the circularity into a conversation. Participants must set ego aside, and explore new ways to be present. In particular, I claim that an alternative approach to the uniquely human attribute called consciousness is needed, a shift from one characterized by purposiveness to one focused on presence. I look forward to the exploration.
Workshop or performance proposal:
I am willing to do a pre-conference workshop, with others or alone, on difference-making from a cybernetic perspective. It could serve as a tutorial, but would be more participatory than a typical tutorial. It would focus on listening and its circularities as essential to a second-order cybernetic perspective on making a difference in the world. The idea is to have the participants in the workshop experience the concepts first-hand through their interactions.
Paper proposal:
Laura Ehmann (Laura Ehmann)
Email: minniecreek@charter.net
Bio:
SoI: I am a doctoral student in the Transformative Studies Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Cybernetic epistemology was introduced in my courses and I am in love with it. I am attending this conference because I continue to be curious. I want to see if and how conversing (last year’s conference) finds its way to listening (this year’s conference). And, as always, I want to have fun.
In my academic work, I am interested in using cybernetics as a framework for creating a form of online classroom experience that is a performed embodiment of the transformative subject matter it teaches: a circularly organized interaction between what is taught and how it is taught. I am particularly interested in the aesthetics of the online learning environment as it is embodied in using non-traditional academic communication such as images, video, audio, poetry, and absurd wordplay.
Cybernetic epistemology helps me recognize that I create the descriptions of my everyday world and when this happens I invite a shift to occur. I become more interested in looking at the ways I describe my everyday rather than in a particular category or set of descriptions of my everyday. I begin to notice that I am responsible for participating in what I bring forth as a description and the interactional effect on those around me who do not describe the world in circular or relational terms.
To quote Bradford Keeney, “To the extent that we enact the circularities of our relational presence in a way that fosters the greater circles that hold us, we may be said to be a part of a healing presence and a resourceful participant in the advance of the greater good.”
Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
LeslieB (Leslie Burm)
Tutor – Researcher, Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, Ghent-Brussels, Belgium
Email: info@tarra.be
Bio: I am based in Belgium, civil engineer-architect, sound artist, composer and freelance collaborator at Bureau Bouwtechniek N.V.
Founder of TARRA in 2006.
Currently teaching and researching at the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, Ghent-Brussels, Belgium.
SoI: Sonic environments are more and more perceived as annoyance, as noise, especially urban ones. As a consequence users of urban spaces isolate themselves on an auditory level. This may introduce an impoverishment of the perception of city spaces and the communication among its users. My research focuses on the exploration and introduction of creative actions to understand this phenomenon and to interact with it. These actions will not have their nature in a defensive approach – a more common approach in architecture and urbanism – but are looking to an acceptance of a sonic environment and the introduction of new sound stimuli. This approach – mixing, combining an existing or manipulated soundscape with a newly introduced sonic experience – wants to introduce a research by design of the construction of sound within existing soundscapes in order to generate knowledge for – and not about – the perception of sound in spaces. Or to put it in other words : ‘listening’ in all its dimensions.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
The ambition of this paper is to demonstrate how my participation in the 2011 ASC Conference on Listening contributes to my field of interest and might contribute to the reflections of other participants.
Participants in the conference are asked to design a tie. I took this instruction as a starting point for a generative process.
The structure of my contribution, for now (10/05/2011), will be as following.
First I will give an insight into my design process of the tie in relation to my field of interest. I believe a kind of diary structure will suit the purpose. A pre-reflection can be found under the chapter ‘Before’
During the conference I will use the tie to interact as intensive as possible with people. I will keep trace of the information, the tie will be the mediator. My reflections on the fly will be communicated under chapter ‘During’.
A post-reflection on my experiences will be written down under the chapter ‘After’. This chapter should lead to insights which I will share under chapter ‘Conclusions’
2. Before
2011/05/10
What is a tie?
I’m not that familiar with wearing ties. When I imagine a tie I see some kind of cloth that people wear around their neck. Some ties are small, some come in bright colours, some have beautiful prints, some are skinny, some are silent. Others are big, have dark colours, have no prints, make light, make sound.
So a tie could be anything you put around your neck ?
What does a tie ?
A tie probably descended from the Roman ‘Fascalia’. This was a piece of textile which was worn by orators to warm the vocal chords (1).
In a poem of Marcus Valerius Martialis we can read :
Quid recitaturus circumdas vellera collo? Conveniunt nostris auribus ista magis.
Why are you wearing a scarf when you are reciting? We could better put it around our ears !
So a tie should give some kind of comfort?
What does a tie say?
A tie has evolved into a symbol. This might be a representation of group, an idea, a fashion trend.
So a tie speaks if you listen.
What about the ASC tie?
On the website they state : The ties are to introduce yourself and your interests, to help engaging others in conversations and be worn throughout the conference. The ties will summarize how you see yourself and are a way in which you can make yourself known and entice others to join in conversation with you.
And what about my tie ?
For now, I say, it should – besides the requirements above – engage people in generating sounds. Sending and receiving through spoken language is one thing, making sounds is another.
3. During
This chapter will be generated during the conference.
4. After
This chapter will be generated after the conference.
5. Conclusions
This chapter will be generated after the conference.
References
1. http://lostsymbolweb.blogspot.com/2009/09/chapter-one-fascalia-cravats-and.html
Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman Duo (Lisa Fay)
Co-artistic director, Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman Duo
Email: jeffglassman0@gmail.com
Website: http://lisafayandjeffglassmanduo.org
Bio: Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman are composing and performing movement-based theatre artists who apply complex composed structures to ordinary daily human behavior. Notated movement scores often accompany their productions. “Natural-looking” behavior is contorted and subverted, letting “naturalism” show its socially constructed face. They invent systems for movement and speech in theatre, as systems for sound have been invented for composing music, utilizing a repertory of gestural-choreographic innovations by the duo to cast a critical look at social life. These include the orchestration of instantaneous shifts of time and place in complex patterns. Together and individually, they have performed for the past 40 years, as a duo for the past 20 years, doing Artist Residencies and tours across the US, in Eastern and Western Europe, Mexico, Cuba and Korea, receiving National Endowment for the Arts and Illinois Arts Council fellowships. They are an ensemble in Network of Ensemble Theatres.
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Mark10 (Mark Burgin)
UCLA
Email: markburg@cs.ucla.edu
Bio: Mark Burgin is currently a Visiting Scholar at UCLA, USA. Before, he was a Visiting Professor at UCLA, Professor at Institute of Education, Kiev; at International Solomon University, Kiev; at Kiev State University, Ukraine; and Head of the Assessment Laboratory in the Research Center of Science at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Dr. Burgin is a member of New York Academy of Sciences and an Honorary Professor of the Aerospace Academy of Ukraine. He is a Chief Editor of the international journals Integration and Information. He is doing research, has publications, and taught courses in mathematics, computer science, information sciences, system theory, artificial intelligence, software engineering, logic, psychology, education, social sciences, and methodology of science, authorizing and co-authorizing more than 500 papers and 17 books. He originated such theories as the mathematical theory of technology, system theory of time, general information theory, theory of named sets, and neoclassical analysis (in mathematics), making essential contributions to such fields as foundations of mathematics, theory of algorithms, theory of knowledge, theory of intellectual activity, and complexity studies.
SoI: I work on information theory and listening is an interesting kind of information processes.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Mark Burgin
Department of Mathematics, UCLA
405 Hilgard Ave.
Los Angeles, 90046, USA
Listening is not merely a separate act or action – it is a process. To sustain this process, it is necessary to be attentive to what a person is listening. As a result, we see that true listening is impossible without awareness. At the same time, the central component of listening is auditory sensing – without receiving sounds, listening in its direct meaning is impossible. However, to really listen, it is not enough only to acquire sounds through sensory channels. It is necessary to understand these sounds, explicating their meaning. As a result, we come to the third basic component of listening – comprehension. Only on the level of comprehension, listening becomes the key process that turns talking into conversation. This allows us to build a theoretical model of listening, expounding the role of feedback in the process of listening, as well as relations between listening and other sensing and mental processes. In addition to listening in its direct meaning, there is metaphorical listening as natural languages and especially their utilization are build on metaphors, which extremely expand possibilities of natural languages to convey information. To better understand listening in its direct meaning, metaphorical listening is described and analyzed. The basic tools used for process analysis and theoretical modeling of listening both in a strict sense and in broad, metaphorical sense are system approach, information theory and cybernetics.
markenslin (Mark Enslin)
organizer , School for Designing a Society
Email: enslin.mark@gmail.com
Bio: I was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1955. I became more and more interested in art, composition, peace, social justice, groups, and even science when I was teenager. Then I enrolled in the music department of the University of Illinois, a year too late for the Cybernetics of Cybernetics class but in time to meet Herbert Brün and encouragement for learning ways these interests—and people who shared them—could converge: Seminars in Experimental Composition, the American Society for Cybernetics, the United Mime Workers, Performers’ Workshop Ensemble, an anti-apartheid shantytown on the quad, Creative Cybernetics: Our Utopianists’ Audacious Constructions, School for Designing a Society, the 1999 protest against the World Trade Organization, the project to build a free hospital based on fun and friendship, community court watch, and other perturbances.
SoI: I’m interested in listening as a compositional project to address problems of “not being heard” and “not being listened to” that arise in the domains of the personal and the political. I bring several performances of music and theater as manifestations of this interest.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
mcgree (Elizabeth McGregor)
Graduate Student, Wright State University
Email: mcgree@gmail.com
Bio: I received my undergraduate education in Electrical Engineering and Psychology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. During this period, I worked as an intern at General Motors where I rotated through various projects, including: a global vehicle design project, an efficiency project for technicians, and hybrid vehicle integration. Currently, I am a graduate student, studying Human Factors Psychology, at Wright State University. My areas of research include: user interface design, mental workload, configural knowledge, and understanding through the web. Of these areas, user interface design interests me the most and consequently will be the topic of my thesis research.
SoI: I really enjoyed C:ADM last year and found it to be of great benefit to me in terms of motivation and finding new perspectives for my research. I think that this would be another wonderful experience. I also feel that I will be able to make greater contributions to the discussions of this conference as the ideas are directly relevant to my research in how people learn through different mediums. I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to share my knowledge from research with others of different perspectives and I feel that it would be mutually beneficial.
Workshop or performance proposal:
I would like to give a presentation on the current theories, in psychology, that pertain to how we learn from one another. This presentation will highlight how we interpret information as listeners and how we create a mental frameworks for conversations, learning, and etc. I will also give some brief insights into my current research about learning from the web.
Paper proposal:
MEAGAN19Petty ( )
Email: saraward@mail333.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
mehitabel ( )
teacher, The School for Designing A Society
PhD canditate, CUNY Grad Center
Email: mehitabelabroad@gmail.com
Bio:
SoI: I am a composer interested in listening and responding to the work of Mark Enslin, Susan Parenti, Jeff Glassman, Lisa Fey, Jacob Barton, ElizaBeth Simpson, and Larry Richards.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
meletis ( )
Email: c.meletis@yahoo.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
mhohl (Michael Hohl)
Email: michaelhohl@gmail.com
Website: http://www.hohlwelt.com/en
Bio: I’m a designer and researcher working with digital media. I like making things, thinking about things, how we do them and what they mean to us. Currently I am exploring telematic technologies, calm technologies and ambient displays. A main interest is to understand how technology changes us, while we think we are doing something with technology. My work is about consciousness, perception and experiences of presence and connectedness among physically remote people connecting via the web.
What i am looking for: I want to learn about all the different ways of listening. Until now i mostly thought of listing in the sense of ‘mindfulness’, paying attention to the sounds that surround us. At last year’s conference i realised a new dimension: Making an effort to understand people. I realised that this is an active process. If we do not make an effort to understand another persons perspective, we will not understand.
My interests: Listening was a topic at the heart of my Phd research. I wish i could have spent more time on it. Admittedly the dimension of listening i was exploring in my thesis was more related to a John Cage’s or Stockhausen’s ways of ‘listening’, where we learn to become consciously aware of environmental sounds. Needless to say i also am interested conversational ‘listening’ in which minds connect.
What i may contribute: Some thoughts on the role of listening (the conference’s listening) in the different stages of research.
I hope to meet someone who knows more about Alfred Tomatis.
SoI: What i am looking for: I want to learn about all the different ways of listening. Until now i mostly thought of listing in the sense of ‘mindfulness’, paying attention to the sounds that surround us. Last year i realised a new dimension: Making an effort to understand people. This is an active process. If we do not make an effort to understand, we will not understand.
My interests: Listening was a topic at the heart of my Phd research. I wish i could have spent more time on it. Admittedly the dimension of listening i was exploring in my thesis was more related to a John Cage’s or Stockhausen’s ways of ‘listening’, where we learn to become consciously aware of environmental sounds. Needless to say i also am interested in conversational ‘listening’ in which minds connect.
What i may contribute: Some thoughts on the role of listening (the conference’s listening) in the different stages of research.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
mspiler ( )
Email: mario.spiler@rogers.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
noel (lupata )
Email: lupata_noel@yahoo.fr
Bio: i am a congolese leaving in kinshasa and i am working to a turkish compagny name’s TURGAN sprl.i speak many language.
İ have finish in Civile Aviation.
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Olover (Oliver Rizzi Carlson)
Email: oliver8@hotmail.com
Website: http://www.thecultureofpeace.org
Bio:
SoI: I bring an interest and thinking about peace education and cybernetics, the desire, design and doing of peace systems or infrastructures, facilitating the process of the creation of a culture of peace. I am looking for ideas and ways of thinking that enrich my current thinking and peace education, as well as the understanding of the culture (cultivation) of peace.
Workshop or performance proposal:
I would like to offer a workshop on peacebernetics, related to my interest stated above. I understand correctly that today (May 10) is not the final deadline for workshop proposals? Thank you!
Paper proposal:
otter (Art Collings)
Email: otter@mac.com
Bio: I am 52 years old, live in NY’s Hudson Valley, and work as a conservation planner for a conservation land trust. My BA is in Mathematics, and my MA is in Conservation Planning and Design.
SoI: My interest in cybernetics lies on the mathematical side. As I have been slowly reading classics in the field, Shannon’s “noisy channel” concept seems obvious preparation for a Listening Conference. Regarding this theme, I bring the question whether Listening should be regarded as a good in itself, or rather a tactic. I know arguments for both positions. Certainly, I like to listen, especially to others who skillfully articulate difficult and intriguing ideas. And surely, the world will be better when people listen to each other more. But somehow I am wary about the urge to beatify the concept. Listening (obviously) is essential to the widest range of human acts. And, listening – physiologically – is a whole body process (not just ears) that evokes vast ranges of response. But listening is also the most treacherous of activities – in accord with it’s second definition (“to obey”). Listening becomes entrainment, surrender to influence, obedience. Variety killing variety I suppose, but at some point I prefer argument, discord, and noise.
More than likely, though, if I speak to you at the conference, it will be about some completely different topic. One mathematical topic, that I may be inclined to speak about is the 4-value logic I have been working on for some time. After the loss of much hair, I finally proved the completeness theorem for this logic. The reason this logic is (may be) of interest is that it contains provable statements that can’t be established from the postulates/axioms/initials of regular propositional logic / boolean algebra. In other respects I am not aware of any direct application for this logic (such as to cybernetics), which makes it in some sense an abstraction.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Paulineo (Pauline Oliveros)
Founder and Executive Director, Deep Listening Institute, Ltd.
Professor of Music, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Darius Milhaud Artist-in-residence, Mills College
Email: paulineo@deeplistening.org
Website: http://paulineoliveros.us
Bio: Pauline Oliveros (1932) has influenced American music extensively in her career spanning more than 60 years as a composer, performer, author and philosopher. She pioneered the concept of Deep Listening, her practice based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation, designed to inspire both trained and untrained musicians to practice the art of listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble situations. During the mid-’60s she served as the first director of the Tape Music Center at Mills College, aka Center for Contemporary Music followed by 14-years as Professor of Music and 3 years as Director of the Center for Music Experiment at the University of California at San Diego. Since 2001 she has served as Distinguished Research Professor of Music in the Arts department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where she is engaged in research on a National Science Foundation CreativeIT project. Her research interests include improvisation, special needs interfaces and telepresence teaching and performing. She also serves as Darius Milhaud Composer in Residence at Mills College doing telepresence teaching and she is executive director of Deep Listening Institute, Ltd. where she leads projects in Deep Listening, Adaptive Use Interface. She is the recipient of the 2009 William Schuman Award from Columbia University for lifetime achievement. A retrospective from 1960 to 2010 was performed at Miller Theater, Columbia University in New York March 27, 2010 in conjunction with the Schuman award. She received a third honorary degree from DeMontort University, Leicester, UK July 23, 2010. Recent recordings include Pauline Oliveros & Miya Masoka, Pauline Oliveros & Chris Brown on Deep Listening and Quartet for the End of Space including Mercury Retrograde and CyberTalk, Pogus Records 2011.
http://paulineoliveros.us, and http://www.deeplistening.org/
SoI: I am the founder of Deep Listening – a practice that I have been teaching for more than 30 years. I will be interested in what others have to say about how they listen.
Workshop or performance proposal:
i will facilitate a performance of my Tuning Meditation around the swimming pool. I will also speak at the dinner on the subject of Deep Listening.
Paper proposal:
paulpangaro (Paul pangaro)
CTO and Founder, CyberneticLifestyles.com
Teaching cybernetics of design, and thesis presentation, School of Visual Arts — Interaction Design Program
Chair of Trustees and Fellow, ASC
Email: paulpangaro@pangaro.com
Bio: http://pangaro.com/
SoI: i prefer a focus on conversation above a focus on listening. of course, listening is needed. and so is conversation. call it a predeliction.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Peassenen ( )
Email: macdermotsrob@gmail.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Peter Bednar (Peter Bednar)
Senior Lecturer, University of Portsmouth, UK
Research Associate, Lund University, Sweden
Email: peter.bednar@port.ac.uk
Bio: My interest related to Systems Thinking is focused upon supporting people in their contextual inquiry into contextual dependencies within what they themselves experience as human activity systems. I grew up in Sweden but now I live in the UK where I work as an academic. I love music, many years ago I also composed music and occasionally even played professionally, now I am confined to listening. I love sailing and when I was younger I had a small sailing dingy which I used for for sailing adventures during the summer holidays for many years around the Swedish and the Danish coast. Today I enjoy watching F1 racing….
SoI: Conversations in an organizational setting frequently take place in a context of decision-making. Often, participants are engaged in a process intended to achieve some kind of consensus upon a course of action. The pressure often experienced within organizational life may often mean that participants are concerned to get across their own opinions and thus influence the outcome of a decision, with the result that they lack either the will or the possibility to pay sufficient attention to what other people are saying. My work and that of my collaborator have been concerned over many years to support effective dialogue between organisational actors so that they have space to explore both the similarities and the differences in their contextually-created views. What matters to each individual is not only impossible to judge externally but also irreducible to any common ‘metric’. However, discussion of ideas is still valuable within a community whose interests overlap. Just as it would make no sense to ask for a consensus on whether people prefer oranges, bicycles or tropical fish, but a conversation with a group of people about their hobbies and interests is nevertheless worthwhile. We have highlighted a need to go beyond naive models for decision-making that emphasise some kind of bi-valued logic (true/false, yes/no) and support people to explore the full range of ‘it depends’ – i.e. listen to the whole variety of potential view points. Thus, a conference in which ‘listening’ is highlighted is particularly appealing to us. We hope, by listening to other delegates, to expand our understandings of ways in which effective dialogue can be supported. This can help us to reflect and expand upon the toolbox which is central to our approach. We also anticipate great fun in listening to like-minded people whose ideas are not constrained by conventional models for organizational discourse.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Philip (Philip Baron)
University of Johannesburg
Email: pbaron@uj.ac.za
Website: http://www.ecosystemic-psychology.org.za
Bio: I was born in the world’s crime capital Johannesburg in October 1979. I am the youngest of four siblings.
I am married and have three children to which i devote a lot of my time.
I teach protection engineering at the University of Johannesburg. My interests are in engineering, psychology and religion (people’s beliefs and epistemology). I enjoy training in the gym, listening to music and occasionally working on my car. I enjoy assisting people with making changes in their lives.
My educational background is in engineering, psychology, religion and philosophy. I am currently working on a cross field doctorate study.
SoI: The topic of listening is of interest to me. Here are two spin offs which i am busy with and would love to explore/challenge in community with others:
1. Technology, the influence of technology on our communication. The experience of technology and the changes it brings in everyday life, including family life, religious life and psychology. For example, teenagers (and adults) and the use of mobile phones – should there be rehab for addicted phone users? Social media, Facebook etc. The love for technology and the time it takes away from other aspects of life like from family life and engaging with each other directly etc. Electronic devices (TVs, phones, PC etc) and the role they play in family life. The effects, the good the bad and the fancy. Where are we headed with technology becoming an end in itself? Let’s talk about the future life and our life styles. Are we happy/sad with the way we/our children/society operate and rely on technology? Are we heading for a superficial time where no one experiences authentic face to face encounters anymore? Electronic communication. The good stuff the bad stuff, the fun stuff. Are we spending too much time communicating with our electronics?
2. The levels of communication. Carl Roger’s emotional feeling. Feeling where a person is at. Personal experiences including those not so easily explained, like intuitive feeling and knowing. Just like super sports men/women there are people who have excellent abilities in perceiving people. Let’s discuss these abilities and maybe even try some of them. Maybe some magic will occur. On a serious note, profiling as a profession, how much is learned and how much of this is not – personal stories. One of the best profilers in South Africa talks of visiting the crime scenes and tuning in to the criminal. Many levels of listening. Personal experiences etc.
3. People are talking, emailing, texting, posting, tweeting, blogging – who is listening anymore?
4. Music appreciation.
5. Spiritual listening.
6. Dealing with blank faces, A student’s revenge to lecturers/teachers.
My interests are relational psychology, engineering, music appreciation, problem solving, cybernetics, ecological thinking.
I have a diverse background in engineering, psychology, IT.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Heidegger stated (1977):
Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology. P.4
It is true that some thought of him as a Luddite, however philosophers often have insight into future happenings; thus, it is worthwhile hearing Heidegger’s call for awareness. The reason is summarised by Merold Westphal (2004:24) where he says: “technology threatens to become the only thinking, to become the sole criterion by which we operate”. He further states that the great thinkers of the past were philosophers and theologians, while the great minds of today are engineers and entrepreneurs. In terms of ICT this raises a few important questions. Are our technology based communication methods decided upon by engineers and programmers? Are our ICT devices a form of interruption? Can technology be taught listening skills, or social skills? Can our ICT become a full member of our conversations?
Phillip Guddemi (Phillip Guddemi)
President, Bateson Idea Group
Managing Editor, Cybernetics and Human Knowing
Vice President for Membership, American Society for Cybernetics
Email: pguddemi@mac.com
Bio: I am an anthropologist by training, a student of Gregory Bateson and Roy Rappaport. I have also worked for over a decade in theoretical cybernetics using the ideas of Maturana and Peirce as well as Bateson. My interests have ranged from ritual and art to the ways human social systems and psychologies work, and to what sort of thing ecosystems might be and how human societies can relate to them. Like Bateson I am also interested in the modes of animal and human communication and, like Maturana, in the ways that empathy underlies and continues human social existence. Institutionally my roles include President of the Bateson Idea Group which is concerned with preserving Bateson’s legacy and intellectual heritage, Managing Editor of the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing, and of course V.P. for Membership for the ASC.
SoI: The 1968 Wenner-Gren conference that Mary Catherine Bateson chronicles in Our Own Metaphor has long been a touchstone for me. It linked the ecological crisis, which I was already aware of, to ways of thinking in a culture that were deep rooted. But when I came to study with Gregory Bateson as an undergraduate at U.C. Santa Cruz, he gently discouraged my interest in planning cultural change. A felt urgency for action did not excuse sloppy thinking, and most urgent thinking tended in his view to be sloppy for systemic reasons. Most solutions to short-term problems reinforced the larger context which produced the problems. In the ensuing forty-two years it has been sad to witness the continued reinforcement and even entrenchment of so many of the premises of thought and action that Bateson found problematic before his death in 1980.
I hope to bring to this conference any wisdom that I have gleaned from my diverse and restless studies. I also bring to the table a belief that deep listening is essential to understanding, a belief that is partly inspired by old school ethnography with its methodology of “deep hanging out.”
Creative thinking in new ways is unlikely to transform the larger culture, but it is perhaps the only thing that can. Encouraging listening and empathy will not always enable us to vanquish the people and ideas we consider our foes, but it is unlikely that we can solve our current human set of problems by force or by silencing other viewpoints in historically familiar ways.
I would like to see cybernetics bring us to new frontiers in humility, so that we recognize our own limitations and vulnerabilities and those of the people and environments around us, and so we can to some extent give up our dreams of control. In a paradoxical way I feel this describes an aspect of the vision of the elder Bateson, which brought about in him a kind of empathetic wisdom that if we also adopted it, might at least make the inevitable changes in our immediate futures more bearable.
Workshop or performance proposal:
If Nora Bateson is also attending, I would consider joining with her in a showing of her film or other performance or workshop.
Paper proposal:
pille (Pille Bunnell)
Adjunct Professor, Royal Roads University
Board and several Special Projects, SelfDesign Educational Foundation
sole proprietor, LifeWorks Consulting
Email: life.works@mac.com
Bio: Pille has a background in ecology and ethology. She worked as a systems ecologist who specialized in the integration and explanation of complex concerns for domain specialists, policy makers, students, and the public. As the Director of Environmental Literacy with an international consulting firm she conducted integrative projects in the framework of Adaptive Environmental Management; dealing with concerns ranging from fisheries, wildlife and forestry, to land use management, energy use, and climate change. Since retiring from the consultancy she has shifted her focus to cybernetics, investigating the relation between complex systems, human understanding, and human activities. She teaches Systems Methods and Systems Thinking in a Masters of Environmental Management program at Royal Roads University.
After six years as President and Past President of the American Society of Cybernetics, she remains active with the society and serves on the editorial boards of Cybernetics and Human Knowing and Constructivist Foundations.
SoI: I am interested in coming to the conference for three reasons. First, and foremost, I like the people and their ideas, and I enjoy learning what they have been thinking about. I enjoy having a wide range of conversations
with both old friends and newcomers. I did not make it to the ASC
conference last summer, and I missed it. This brings me to the second
point; I do feel a sense of connection, a loyalty I could say, to the
organization, or perhaps more properly to the people who constitute the
organization. Thus the two facets, pleasure for myself and a desire to
contribute.
Thirdly, I have not had an opportunity to experience a conference in the planned format, and am curious to experience it. I like good presentations very much. I enjoy the artform of ideas well thought through and presented so that others can see within hours what has taken months to develop. I like to hear and think, and then after thinking, have a one-to-one conversation.
What might I contribute? I have been thinking about the matter of “domains” over the last year. In particular I note how ephemeral these are, how easily we constitute and reconstitute them as we flow in our doings and conversations. Yet we construct the logics that give credibility to what we say with rules that do not recognize the dynamics of how domains and distinctions arise and disperse. I detect many “domain errors” in how people make claims or arguments. Yet in good conversations, we flow with this dynamic with comfort and ease. The phrase “listening for domain” has taken on a new depth of meaning for me.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
pisaduriuasda ( )
Email: pisaduriuasdai@mail.ru
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
pmlewin (Philip Lewin)
Adjunct Instructor, Writing, Lansing Community College
Email: pmlewin@yahoo.com
Bio: I teach the humanities and writing at universities in western Michigan. My primary interest is in epistemology, that is, in the general question of how we make sense of and function within the world while maintaining a self-legitimating sanity. I have tried to ground this interest within philosophy (primarily European phenomenology), developmental and cognitive psychology, depth psychology, organismic biology and evolutionary theory, and literary theory (primarily narratology).
My involvement with ASC grew out of my graduate work in the late 1970s. Among my primary influences at that time were studies on Jean Piaget with Ernst von Glasersfeld, summer courses with Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela on biological epistemology, and the revelation that was my first reading of Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind. These influences continue.
SoI: In a simple-minded kind of way, I have long believed that the central moral issue of our time concerns noticing — and the failure to notice — what one is actually doing, what the consequences of one’s actions are. The worst instances of evil, it seems to me, result from the failure to notice, from the self-willed moral blindness that rigid adherence to any ideology, whether secular or sacred, affords. Cybernetically speaking, the failure to notice is a failure at the most elementary level of recursive interaction.
What I look forward to at this conference is to begin from the perspective of the other and in so doing, to create space to notice.
Workshop or performance proposal:
A proposal for a workshop on the state of contemporary education
Both the cure and the disease of the contemporary classroom, if not of the culture more generally, is arguably the nexus of phenomena centering around electronic technologies and the internet. Even to begin to name the manifestations of this reality is to grow weary — smart phones linked to the social media of Internet 2.0, Ipads, computer classrooms, scanners, digital cameras, laptops, academic databases, fansites, blogs, Powerpoint presentations, Facebook — so familiar and pervasive, so endlessly recreative and mutually reinforcing, has this domain become — and, I would add, so recent, no more than 15 years old at its limits, yet old enough that the generation of students currently in the classroom has never known a world that was not electronically saturated.
I would propose holding a conversation about the nature of the kind of education that is appropriate for this time and place. Obviously, any inquiry into education raises issues that touch on virtually every aspect of society and culture. I would hope that an engagement over this question that involved cyberneticians of a variety of ages, experiences, and backgrounds could be fruitful, not so much in terms of providing a solution to the problematic that I outline, but in terms of raising considerations that each of us alone may not fully appreciate.
My opening gambit is that traditional liberal arts education makes sense only in the context of the worldview of the modern, and thus is no longer appropriate within the increasing hegemony of the digital postmodern. I would be eager to listen to the variety of alternative perspectives that those who are also concerned with the nature of contemporary education might offer.
Paper proposal:
rajbir ( )
Email: amnbhullar@gmail.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Randy Whitaker (Randall Whitaker)
Email: enolagaia@aol.com
Bio: My academic training consists of a BA in anthropology / psychology, a BS and an MSc in computer science, a PhD in informatics, and substantial graduate work in cognitive psychology. I’m currently employed as a senior human factors analyst in the defense sector. My current professional foci are cognitive-based work analysis and designing individual and collaborative decision support tools. Certain elements of my approach / techniques served as the basis for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s ‘work-centered design’.
My relationship with cybernetics includes such elements as four decades of formal and informal studies, a doctoral dissertation grounded in Maturana and Varela’s theories, and a couple of decades’ effort invested in researching and popularizing their work specifically and second-order cybernetics generally. I’m a life member and former officer of the ASC.
SoI: Listening has been a very important part of my life. Careful listening helps explain why I wasn’t diagnosed as legally blind until age 9. I’ve employed listening skills of various types in such roles as (e.g.) professional musician, volunteer counselor, Social Security claims interviewer, knowledge acquisition specialist, participatory design participant, and systems analyst. In these and other contexts my lifelong propensity for listening was applied to ‘listening with intent’ (i.e., listening in the service of some purpose).
It is my observation that listening has become something of a lost art in a modern American society that prioritizes trappings such as visual glitz and personal projection over substance and understanding.
I’m interested in hearing what others think of listening, how they employ it, and how this critical human capacity might be constructively returned to its proper prominence.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
ranulph (Ranulph Glanville)
CybernEthics Research
Email: ranulph@glanville.co.uk
Bio: Student of Gordon Pask.
Serving the ASC as an officer for the past 6 years.
Serving cybernetics by building bridges, helping publish and exploring “basic” concepts.
SoI: There is no conversation without listening: it is listening that converts a stream of sound into a conversation, an act of sharing. Listening is the pre-requisite that we can hope to understand others, an act of generosity and openness towards the other.
(When I talk of listening, I do not mean hearing: I mean that form of hearing that is attentive, seeking to “hear what is behind what is heard”, to understand. In visual terms, the parallel is seeing = hearing; looking= listening.
I shall come to listen: to learn to listen better and to discover what listening better does for me and for those I am with.
Workshop or performance proposal:
I can offer a piece of music lasting 20 minutes, which demands acute listening. It needs very high quality audio speakers and amplifiers.
Paper proposal:
rmartin (Robert J. Martin)
Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology, Truman State University
Email: rmartin@truman.edu
Bio: Robert J. Martin studied composition, computer programming, electronic music, and writing with Herbert Brun; heuristics and cybernetics with Herbert and Heinz von Foerster. His interests in composition, cybernetics, and creativity resulted in completing an interdisciplinary doctoral thesis in music and educational psychology at the University of Illinois under Herbert and Heinz. Currently a professor emeritus at Truman State University and a licensed psychologist in private practice, he has worked as a counselor/psychotherapist with children, adolescents, and adults, and as educational psychologist teaching preservice and inservice public school teachers the elements of learning, Piaget, and radical constructivism. Currently he teaches an interdisciplinary undergraduate course in creativity that includes making short videos.
SoI: As a musician and composer I am interested in listening to all sound, organized and unorganized. As a teacher and psychotherapist I am interested in listening to others as the way we learn what others have taken our words to mean. As a human being I am interested in how others, especially those from different cultures understand the world in which they live. My listening (and seeing and reading) is an opportunity to expand my universe by learning about theirs. The ASC conference is an opportunity to do this. In particular I appreciate the opportunity to engage in listening and interacting with an international group. The ASC conference is the one time each year when I have the opportunity to talk and listen with others about constructivist and second-order cybernetic thinking.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Sabine Breitsameter (Sabine Breitsameter)
Professor for Sound and Media Culture/Media Arts and Sciences, Hochschule Darmstadt
Email: sabine.breitsameter@h-da.de
Website: http://www.sonic-media-art.net
Bio: Sabine Breitsameter, artist, curator and scholar for sonic media art, Acoustic Ecology, electroacoustic art and for sound and media culture,. She was appointed Professor (Sound and Media Culture/Media Arts and Sciences) at the Faculty of Media, Hochschule Darmstadt/Germany in 2006. 2003-2008: guestprofessor for „Experimental Audiomedia“ at the University of the Arts/Berlin . 2005/06: director of the German-Polish artist radio station „Radio_Copernicus“.Since the 1980s: author and director for cultural radio programs and interactive media art at German and international cultural institutions and media.
Artistic and scholarly director of international festivals and symposia, e.g. „KlangUmwelten/Sonic Environments“ (Academy of Arts 1995/Berlin), „All Ears“ (Kassel 1997 /Documenta X), „StadtStimmen/City Voices“ (City of Wiesbaden 1999 ), „Frankensteins Netz“ (Goethe-Institute Tokio), “Trans_Canada” (ZKM Karlsruhe 2004), “, „Tropical Soundscapes“ (Goethe-Institute Bogotà),“Expanded Interface” (Ars Electronica Linz 2010).
Numerous workshops, lectures and publications on the culture of listening in traditional and interactive media.
SoI: Listening and soundmaking – be it traditional or within linear or interactive media – are highly interactive practices, which evolve within interacitve, cybernatic settings and frameworks. I would like to share – together with my co-worker Eric Leonardson and Jay Needham – our system approach on listening based on Acoustic Ecology, and have it practised, discussed and critically enriched by the symposium’s participants.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Acoustic Ecology Workshop
Listening as a systemic concept: conversation, improvisation and locality
A joint workshop and lecture performance by Sabine Breitsameter, in cooperation with Eric Leonardson and Jay Needham.
The submission will be conveyed by Jay Needham.
Paper proposal:
sheseesred ( )
Email: lauren@sheseesred.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
spaceimprov (Jay Needham)
Associate Professor – Audio Arts, Southern Illinois University
Midwest Chapter rep., World Forum – Acoustic Ecology
Chair, Communications, Arts and Internships Committee, Fuller Dome NFP
Email: jayneedham@neondsl.com
Website: http://www.wavespace.org
Bio: Sabine Breitsameter has been an artist, media maker and curator in the field of sonic art forms, Acoustic Ecology, and listening culture. Her main interest focuses on experimental audiomedia including network based sound, radio art and the interrelations between Acoustic Ecology and digital technology. In 1993 she became a founding member of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. She holds a chair as professor of Sound and Mediaculture in Darmstadt, Germany.
Eric Leonardson is a Chicago-based audio artist. He has devoted a majority of his professional career to unorthodox approaches to sound and its instrumentation with a broad understanding of texture, atmosphere and microtones. He is President of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology, director of the World Listening Project, and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Sound and Contemporary Practices.
Jay Needham is a sound artist, electro-acoustic composer and scholar. His compositions activate listening as an irreplaceable component of an artistic cognitive process. His collaborations with grass roots organizations such as the, Associatión Panamericana para la Concervación have increased awareness of the importance of natural places and disappearing soundscapes around the planet. His recent residency in Antarctica aboard the MV Antarctic Dream has resulted new series of sound sculptures titled South Polar Suite.
SoI: We plan on bringing our curiosity and our diverse backgrounds as artists and scholars to the ASC. The global discipline of Acoustic Ecology is wide ranging and collaborative in nature and we feel that we could contribute a unique perspective on listening to the ASC in 2011. We are seeking paths of intersection, opportunities to exchange and interface with others from a variety of disciplines. We listen as recordists, artists, ethnographers and scholars but are not content to stay within traditional boundaries. We are dedicated to interfacing with others in the hopes of exchange. We would like to learn more about where cybernetics intersects with Acoustic Ecology and also discover ways in which our own research projects can benefit.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Acoustic Ecology Workshop
Listening as a systemic concept: conversation, improvisation, and locality
A joint workshop and lecture performance by Sabine Breitsameter, in collaboration with Eric Leonardson and Jay Needham.
Our workshop will provide a three-tier perspective on a consistently systemic approach to listening, which is Acoustic Ecology. Acoustic Ecology, coined and founded by Canadian sound researcher, pedagogue, and composer R. Murray Schafer, is a scientific, scholarly, as well as aesthetic approach to understanding the prerequisites for and the process of listening. It is interdisciplinary and explores the interrelations and the causal dynamics between the qualities of sonic environments and the auditory perceptional abilities of an individual or a society. The system itself consists of three main factors: listener/sound/environment (cf. Truax), and can be regarded as a regulatory circuit. They exist and behave in a dynamic relationship of mutual influences.
The three tiers represented in the workshop are history, conversation/improvisation, and locality. One of the team members, all leading artists and scholars in the field of Acoustic Ecology, will teach each component of the workshop. The aesthetic as well as the cognitive synthesis of the workshop will be moderated jointly.
The portion dedicated to history will introduce the system of Acoustic Ecology and its relation to cybernetics, and exemplify and discuss it by means of a diverse range of historical perspectives including Weizenbaum’s “Eliza”, the ancient Greek “Ars Sermonis” and the “conversation” as a figure of thought by the German poet Friedrich Hoelderlin.
The portion dedicated to improvisation will be an active forum where we consider improvisation as conversation and vice versa. Presuming that effective listening is not a natural gift but a skill that gains strength through practice, this component of the workshop is intended for non-musicians and musicians alike. This workshop will set a context that engages multiple modes of listening simultaneously, removing dominating forms of communication. Improvisation and conversation are practices that create physical connections for the improviser with objects, sounds, and people. In the workshop, attendees will perform simple exercises that can be executed using one’s own body, voice, language, and readily available objects. We anticipate that the participants will gain a new appreciation for their acoustic environment, or soundscape.
The portion dedicated to locality will consider listening to environments as active and participatory. Departing from the notion that an aural sense of place is governed and negotiated, workshop attendees will learn to listen and contextualize ambience as informed by contemporary art practices.
The over-all workshop explores the diverse set of relations and schisms between content-based factuality and sensuality-based aesthetics. Workshop participants will be introduced to a vocabulary that is specific to sound and listening. The workshop addresses the basic methodological problem of analyzing the process of listening and offers new insights into our relation to locality and our culture’s multiform aesthetic practices.
We would like to request that the workshop be 90 min. in length in order to facilitate team teaching with the three workshop leaders and to include a feedback session at the end of the workshop.
Paper proposal:
srabeler (Sylvia Rabeler)
PhD candidate, Systems Science, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Email: srabeler@binghamton.edu
Bio: I am an artist and PhD candidate in Systems Science at Binghamton University, the State University of New York. I hold a MS degree in Systems Science, a BA in Biology and Psychology, and studied design at Pratt Institute for two years. I am currently serving as treasurer for the American Society of Cybernetics (ASC). My work is interdisciplinary, combining the study of color, logic, math, systems, and cybernetics. The tentative title of my dissertation is “Chromatic Reasoning: Introducing a New Conceptual, Spatial, Color Theory.”
SoI: In Webster’s English dictionary, every definition of the word “listening” includes a reference sound; however, one subtext defines listening as “to give consideration (~ to a plea)” or to pay attention. Defining listening as such, we can use the term listening as a means of observation. From this perspective we can listen to thoughts and concepts, things that exist in our mind, things that do not have an association with sound. In my theoretical systems research, I use an art-based methodology to optimize my spatial reasoning skills, and heighten my ability to see alternative solutions to problems of logic. I refer to this method as Cybernetic Scrying. This involves a employing a self-directed feedback loop between mind and environment, essentially listening to the rational calculations of my mind for information on how to proceed with the construction of a visual composition, via iterative applications of paint on a canvas. Each application of paint changes my perspective on the problem that I am working on, necessitating a new round of listening. The more I listen, the more I sharpen my awareness. This is a form of mental exercise. Practice improves performance. In attending the ASC Conference on Listening, I would like to share my ideas regarding this method with others and to develop a paper that outlines a theoretical foundation for the use of the scrying algorithm. Most importantly, I am interested in what others have to say about listening and how they integrate listening in their work.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
The purpose of this paper is to introduce and share a formal method for cybernetic self-listening; a process by which one expands their own cognitive self-awareness and rational processes while immersed in artistic expression.
DESIGN/METHOLDOLOGY/APPROACH:
Therapeutic scrying uses self-observed negative feedback, in an algorithmic manner, to accessing information available in one’s own semi-subconscious. It is an a-perceptive, iterative, technique which focuses on listening to, and seeing, information that is absent in the perceived environmental domain.
RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS:
The scope of this document is limited to cybernetics and the arts. However, this methodology has potential for use in the field of clinical art therapy. The present research does not explore the empirical efficacy of therapeutic scrying.
ORIGINALITY/VALUE:
Scrying fuses cybernetics and art to create a new tool for breaching mental blocks or boundaries in reasoning and creativity.
KEYWORDS:
art, body-mind, cybernetics, feedback, listening, therapy
Stefan G Brun (Stefan Brun)
Artistic Director and Liaison for logistics, Prop Thtr
part-time instructor at Department of Interactive Arts and Media, Columbia College
member of artistic collective, Curious Theater Branch
Email: sgbrun@gmail.com
Website: http://www.propthtr.org
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Stella Octangula (Mick Ashby)
Digital Archivist, W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive
Email: mick@rossashby.info
Website: http://www.rossashby.info
Bio: Worked in the telecommunications and computer industries for 25 years.
Created the W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive web site.
Winner of the ASC’s 2010 Cybernetics of Cybernetics Competition with the entry “Structure, Environment, Purpose, and a Grand Challenge for the ASC”.
SoI: I will bring to the conference two rather magnificent ears, curiosity, and an open mind.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Supriya Kummamuru (Supriya Kummamuru)
Senior Consultant, Tata Consultancy Services
Email: Supriya.Kummamuru@tcs.com
Bio: I have 19 + years of experience in the IT Services Industry. I hold a Masters degree in Management Studies from Bombay University. I started my career in Tata Consultancy Services one of the worlds largest IT Services Organization. While at TCS I was introduced to the field of Systems Theory and Cybernetics. I applied these ideas and methods to several consulting assignments and conduct Training’s & Workshops in these areas. Some of the clients I worked with include Banks, Public Sector, Media, UN Organizations.
Drawing on this experience I have developed several offerings embedding the Systems Thinking & Cybernetics Concepts. I am currently registered with Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University pursuing my research on Organization design applying Stafford Beers Viable Systems Model.
SoI: Listening if perceived form cybernetics concepts would have the feedback and learning built in as opposed to just hearing. My interest stems from my area of research which is application of Stafford Beers , Viable Systems Model built on Cybernetics principles to Organization design. The research questions I would like to raise is do organizations listen to the needs of the employees , are there channels designed to listen and built appropriate systems to address them. My purpose in attending this conference is to see if there are any models which would share similar concepts which would help in validating my ideas or imbibing new ideas for my ideas. I am particularly looking at the knowledge intensive industry like software services, where the human variety needs are more than the machine variety. Broadly, Systems Thinking can help in designing organization structures and Cybernetics can help in designing organizational processes. All these should be integrated through a sound philosophical approach, which emphasizes deep and systematic understanding of the complexity underlying the organizational processes without the temptation to offer oversimplified check lists and heuristics, which invariably fail to take into account the complex dynamics of organization/environment and their interaction. This is basically my interest
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Listening Organization: A Cybernetics Framework to enable an organization to establish efficient formal channels to capture , understand and address the stakeholder needs effectively.
Abstract: The paper presents a Framework for building a listening organizations based on cybernetic concepts. Presently organizations need to deal with enormous complexity in the environment: both external and internal . . In order to understand and absorb this complexity for survival they also need to have the formal channels which would capture, process and deliver results from understanding these noises. This calls for the organization to have autopoietic homeostats to deal with this inherent complexity. Communication, feedback, control and variety matching with respect to the environment are some of the cybernetic concepts which will be the building blocks of the proposed framework.
Employees play a key role in the survival and decline of these large organizations. Employee competence, capability and morale are the key ingredients to the organizations growth. It is inherent that organizations should have the capabilities or systems to “Listen” to the needs of the employees to be viable. Organizations often fail to hear the voice of their employees, while there could be abundant evidence in advance. The organization as a whole cannot hear and assimilate these voices and are not prepared for an eventuality. Most organizations are poor listeners
Individual Listening (ILA, 1996) is defined as the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages. Organizational Listening can said to be the process of capturing , understanding and addressing stakeholder needs through formal and informal channels.
Viable Listening organization should design formal structures to enable Individual Listening and organizational listening. The proposed framework suggest the design based on cybernetic concepts.
tamuna ( )
Email: tamunachaghi@gmail.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Ted Krueger (Ted Krueger)
Associate Professor of Architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Email: krueger@rpi.edu
Bio: Ted Krueger teaches in the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he directs the Graduate Programs in Architecture. These include professional and post-professional Masters degrees in Architecture as well as MS and PhD research degrees in the Architectural Sciences. His research interests are in human-environment interaction, perception and design for extreme environments.
SoI: Perhaps the principle value of listening is to encounter that which you don’t already understand. That is my hope for the conference. In this it is important not to listen only to the message of others, but also to what supports its saying, to what surrounds the saying, and to what remains unsaid.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
tfischer (Thomas Fischer)
Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Email: Thomas.Fischer@xjtlu.edu.cn
Bio: Thomas Fischer, the current Secretary of the American Society for Cybernetics, comes originally from Germany. For over 10 years he and his family lived in Hong Kong where he worked as an Assistant Professor in Product and Industrial Design at the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Thomas worked as a Visiting Associate Professor at the Institute of Creative Industries Design at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan from early 2010 to mid-2011. Thomas is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China. Thomas holds a PhD in Education from the University of Kassel in Germany and one in Architecture and Design from RMIT University in Australia. Thomas is as much interested in human creativity as he is in machine logic and he studies both, preferably in some combination. Much of his work is situated in, and dedicated to design education, creativity in Eastern and Western culture, the limitations of methods and tools in designing and the theory and philosophy of computer-aided architectural design.
SoI: I regard listening as a means for personal enrichment and would like to participate in order to enrich myself with new ideas and views. I offer my ideas and views to other participants in return. Professionally, I am interested in the role listening plays in innovation and design. At this conference I will try to develop some specific ideas regarding listening in organizational hierarchies as outlines in my paper proposal.
Workshop or performance proposal:
If this is of interest, I can facilitate a discussion about the past and future of cybernetics during the ASC meeting, using films by the Eames couple.
Paper proposal:
thoma ( )
Email: tamuna_chaghiashvili@yahoo.com
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
timjachna (Tim Jachna)
Associate Director (Academic Programmes), School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Email: tjachna@hotmail.com
Bio: I come with three overlapping decades of experience as a student, practitioner and teacher of the design of the built environment respectively – at the interior, architectural and urban scale – in North America, Europe and Asia. My Masters and PhD studies and other research and publications address the potentials and implications of digital morphogenesis in the built environment. My research and publications have touched on issues of design participation and co-construction of built space, generative and evolutionary design and digitally mediated interactive environments and systems.
SoI: Each of us is responsible for our own listening, but in our various roles, we also find ourselves responsible for establishing the conditions for specific economies of speaking-and-listening involving others, besides oneself. In each of my professional roles (designer, planner, team leader, educator, administrator…) I am expected to be a different kind of listener. In each of these roles I am also expected to establish and sustain situations in which listening in certain ways by certain participants is facilitated, encouraged and even (ostensibly) enforced! I see benevolent and nefarious dimensions to this, in theory as well as from my personal experience. I hope to use the context of the conference to discuss appropriate positions and approaches to fulfilling such roles.
Taking the theme of this conference as an occasion to think about the role of listening in the practice of design, I have the impression – which I would like to discuss and articulate further in the conference – that new paradigms or approaches in design arise with a commitment to listen intently to something that has not previously been given focused attention – to give a focused hearing to an aspect that conventional design approaches of the time may consider to be minor voices, supporting views, irrelevant distractions, peripheral chatter or background noise. Functionalist, rationalist, neo-historicist, “green”/sustainable, deconstructivist, post-modern, and participatory approaches to design (just to name some examples) all arose not from new ideas as to how to answer the questions designers were dealing with, but rather from new ideas as to how to listen, and what to listen to, in defining the questions that design should address.
I will come to the conference with my curiosity, experiences and thoughts about these two themes, and I expect that many other themes will emerge in the course of my participation and my listening.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
I discern at least five distinct modes of listening involved in the role of a design educator:
– “Listening for” is the most conventional mode of educator listening, in which design educators listen to students for signs of “learning outcomes”. This mode is often applied in order to give students “feedback” on their development as part of a conversation loop.
– “Listening to” is a mode in which design educators seek to understand the reasoning and thoughts behind a student’s design decisions or their position. In this mode, the educator seeks to gain the ability to “think with” the student in coaching them through their design process.
– “Listening as” is a type of role-playing listening, in which design educators place the student in different modes of being-listened-to (or not being-listened-to) that students can expect to face as designers. This mode simulates a social situation within which students can rehearse different tactics of interaction.
– In “listening as example”, design educators provide students with a model for the type of listener a designer they believe a designer should be. For students to learn from this mode requires the educator to earn the empathy of the students – a very different relation than the deference often expected of students in learning from educator “feedback”.
– Simply “listening” is the mode in which design educators remain sensitized to the potential for new ideas and inspirations in their listening to students and others, that influence their practice as a design educator holistically. This mode of listening is the least goal-oriented, task-specific or intentional, and is necessary for sustaining creative practice in education.
In the proposed paper, I will explain and illustrate – through example scenarios from my personal experience and observation – the ways in which I perceive these different modes of listening being practiced by design educators (in both beneficial and detrimental ways) and will venture an exposition on the special type of economy of speaking-and-listening that sustains the process of design education.
tinapearson (Tina Pearson)
Email: tina.pearson@shaw.ca
Bio:
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
umpleby (Stuart Umpleby)
Professor, George Washington University
Email: umpleby@gmail.com
Website: http://www.gwu.edu/~umpleby
Bio: Stuart Umpleby is a professor in the Department of Management and Director of the Research Program in Social and Organizational Learning in the School of Business at The George Washington University. He teaches courses in the cross-cultural management, organizational behavior, process improvement, systems thinking, and the philosophy of science. He received his PhD working with Heinz von Foerster at the University of Illinois. He is a past president of the American Society for Cybernetics. His website is www.gwu.edu/~umpleby.
SoI: I am interested in defining cybernetics as a science underlying the social sciences and design disciplines (e.g., architecture and policy studies). Whereas physics is a science of matter and energy, the subject matter of cybernetics is information and regulation.
In an industrial society theories could perhaps be reasonably thought of as existing outside the system observed. However, in an information society theories have become obvious elements of a social system. Presently the most prominent case is economics. In economics there is renewed interest in the history of economic thought. Prior to the economic crisis of 2008 economic thought was often described as a progression from imprecise thinking to mathematical analysis, as a movement toward free market capitalism with erroneous experiments being tried by various countries. Following the financial crisis and a renewed interest in government regulation of markets, there has been a return to Keynes’s ideas about the appropriate role of government in the economy. This return to earlier ideas has led to a description of economic theories as fundamental parts of the behavior of an economy. For example, there is an oscillation between a theory that markets will solve all problems and a theory that markets are unstable and government regulation is needed. A theory that encompasses previous theories and describes their effects on an economy could be called “second order economics.”
The financial crisis has led to a reconsideration of the importance of the history of economic thought. Acceptance of a reflexive view of economics, and other social science disciplines, has been impeded by a concern that self-referential statements lead to logical inconsistencies. Second order cybernetics, by interpreting self-reference as occurring in time, can serve as a guide to the social sciences on how to include reflexive phenomena in their theories.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
vandermerwejj (Johann van der Merwe)
Head of Department, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Email: vandermerwejj@cput.ac.za
Bio: I am the Head of Department for Research, History & Theory of Design, in the Faculty of Informatics and Design, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), South Africa. My research focus is a design theory-of-knowing that has culminated in a doctorate (currently being examined), the aim of which is to explicate a gramma/topology of design knowing, itself comprised of such circular feedback systems as cybernetics, actor-network theory, autopoiesis and ontological phenomenology. My next big project will be to begin the planning for a new department provisionally named Theory & Techniques, one that will cut across the (newly formed) four major streams in the faculty (all the existing departments having been merged and consolidated).
SoI: What do I bring to this conference: The result of my doctoral research is a theory-of-knowing called gramma/topology, which utilises cybernetics and systemic thinking, actor-network theory, autopoiesis and ontological phenomenology. As a committed radical constructivist I am convinced that this theory-of-knowing works, for me, but I cannot prove this to anyone else, except through a cybernetic conversation, and even then all that is possible is not solid proof, but a taking on board of another point of view that could lead to a change of mindset. None of this is possible without a ‘letting go’, a way of opening up to ‘the other’ in such a way that the listener can, effectively, uncover and ‘see’ something new, without an ‘own knowledge’ getting in the way. That is the art of listening, for, as Maturana and Varela (1987:196) stated, “each person says what he says or hears what he hears according to his own structural determination; saying does not ensure listening”. Every person’s structural determination has to be changed, redesigned, in the very act of listening, through one framing action, as it were.
As for my interests and what I am looking for, simply this: I would welcome the opportunity to robustly discuss and argue my work, and in the process share something that I believe in, because it is in the acceptance of my communication (transformed by the receiver/’listener’) that I can first begin to perceive what gramma/topology might mean, and when this transformed information is fed back to me in an ongoing conversation, it is as if I am listening to my new knowing self for the first time.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
Claudia Westerman (2010:24-25) queried, apropos of last year’s C:ADM conference, the type of space that a cybernetic conversation needs in order to ‘be designed’ / constructed (my wording), and, even more interesting, she uses the term ‘framing’ in the context of this space, as well as reporting that there were many questions from participants “about rules and how to play them”. Mark Johnson (2010) was somewhat concerned with the notion of causality in terms of the nature of constructed realities, in the sense that “I’d like my cybernetics to allow me the freedom to at least consider the possibility of an ontological world, just as it lends itself to allowing me to consider the possibility of the absence of reality”, to which Ben Sweeting responded with “cybernetics [locates] us in the world in the midst of reciprocal subject-object interactions”.
This paper, then, will have a conversation with itself, following Luhmann’s (2002:156) ‘only communications can communicate’, in the sense of wondering about Westerman’s space for conversation, and what framing means for the conversationalist (speaker) and listener (same person, who is also the observer of self-observations); it is in the ‘framing’ that construction of realities take shape, and it is here that a communal sense of the rules and how to ‘play’ them emerge, an element of cybernetic conversation that should speak to Johnson’s concerns over causality. This space of becoming is nothing if it is not an ontological world of possibility, and it is here that we find both presence and absence playing new games with new rules, proving that cybernetics allows us to locate ourselves in worlds of probability wherein we are the reciprocal subject-object relation. If listening could be made visible, we would be able to see this happening, see ourselves being redesigned, ‘as we speak’.
Finding no-one
By listening we find out that we are not. Ordinary listening merely accesses data and at best information, but that does not necessarily lead to action,[1] in the absence of the making of distinctions. Once we get to this constructivist point, we can use the space of ‘we are not’ to make distinctions between our old selves and the continuously (re)designed new selves, and for that to happen we need to pay attention to what the concept of listening can reveal.
Claudia Westermann (2010:24-25) queried, apropos of last year’s C:ADM conference, the type of space that a cybernetic conversation needs in order to ‘be designed’ / constructed (my wording), and, even more interesting, she uses the term ‘framing’ in the context of this space, as well as reporting that there were many questions from participants “about rules and how to play them”. I find that these and similar queries are ongoing, and still of concern to many people, which is enough reason to entice them into an open conversation about understanding, and what we mean when using this term. The space of ‘we are not’ is a space for conversation, and it is here that the construction of realities take shape. This space of becoming is nothing if it is not an ontological world of possibility, proving that cybernetics allows us to locate ourselves in worlds of probability wherein we are the reciprocal subject-object relation. If listening could be made visible, we would be able to see this happening, see ourselves being redesigned, ‘as we speak’, as we listen, given that speaking here means an investigative response to what we are listening to, turning ‘speech’ into ‘probe’.
Listening to no-one
Listen as hard as you may, but you will still hear nothing, since there is nothing to hear in the first place. We tell ourselves that there can be no listening without hearing, and no hearing without sound, and the content of sound is communication; so we fondly believe, since this is a normal, safe, and accepted argument. In that case, you would be arguing that deaf people cannot listen to a conversation, and yet they do exactly that. If there can be no listening without hearing, then reading a book cannot be about a conversation, but it is, and even more so (in some respects) than a verbal conversation.[2] Listening does not just mean I hear you, and that we can therefore assume that I understand you. Listening can be done with our ears, with our eyes, with our skin, and if we are lucky, we learn how to listen with all our senses, in an act of synchrony, or, we learn to listen by designing our own framing actions. The truth is that I cannot hear ‘you’, because there is no ‘you’ to listen to, only an ‘I’ that advances the movements (and displacements) of existence. I admit to a radical constructivism, and I may as well be as radical as I can be, which includes the tenets of social autopoiesis, and therefore we hear nothing because there is no you, only a structural I that makes decisions about couplings with its environment[3] based on the integrity of its own internal organisation. This last observation can be, and is usually, interpreted (put into practice) in various (and often, divergent) ways, the most common state of being ensuing through what Heidegger calls Verfallen, since we deal with our world (our whole environment, i.e., our social, cultural, economic, professional ‘worlds-of-influence’) in such a way that the ‘I’ we have constructed can survive, as intact as possible, based on the integrity of the internal organisation of what we believe our identity to be, but Verfallen can mean such a falling back into the everyday concerns of the world – work and play – that we are not really thinking, and definitely not listening.
Who are we then, if we can so easily construct an ‘I’ that only manages to listen to the brute voice of animal survival?
If reasoning is anything like thinking (seen in the broadest sense), then everyday concerns, Verfallen, an unthinking and ‘practical’ attitude will lead us to the conclusion that in everyday conversations we are not listening at all, but only manufacturing arguments to strengthen our own case (which may be seen as an argument for brute survival), and yet this is exactly what is seemingly being argued by Mercier and Sperber (2011), and I am afraid that I have to agree. However, the case for reasoning as an argument for ‘survival’ does not, in fact, include the brute voice of individualism as we have been led to believe, and if we can accept the autopoietical structure of living systems (above), then the Mercier and Sperber (2011:57) argument holds, namely that when humans use reasoning (as an everyday activity, but we can expand that idea to specific reasoning as well) they are not so much seeking truth as they are ‘designing’ an argument to support their particular viewpoint. What Mercier and Sperber are proposing is that we should re-think our notion of reasoning in general, since “much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions” (:57). Much of what can be called ‘normal’ reasoning is done through an unconscious and intuitive inference, while argument should be a conscious process, by the observer of that process, of the process itself, but also a consciousness of the mechanism by which a conclusion is reached; “What characterizes reasoning proper is indeed the awareness not just of a conclusion but of an argument that justifies accepting that conclusion” (Mercier and Sperber, 2011:58). Justification of the making of (particular) distinctions (part of argumentation) and justification of the form that our ‘survival’ takes – in short, justification of and for the form that the design we choose is inclusive or exclusive, of the other.
What, then, is the difference between this type of argument (which most people would assume to be linked to ‘logic’) and rhetoric (which, by the same argument, is assumed to be strengthened, perhaps unfairly, by persuasion), and how is reasoning / thinking like listening?
Toulmin (2001:167) refers to Aristotle’s work on logic as a still relevant point of departure when thinking about our own thinking, which is what reasoning is, or should be, even on the mildest scale of operations; “We give reasons for the things we do, the ways we vote, and the movies we admire; we find fault with the reasons of the same kinds that others offer in turn … Little of this has to do with formal or substantive analytics; yet we can all be said to ‘know a lot’ about these things, as is clear of we take the trouble to study everyday conversations.” Here we have a link between conversation and logic, and more, since Toulmin (2001:25) questions the distinction between logical analysis and rhetorical power – seen by some as the difference between authentic reasoning and inadequate persuasion – and then asks how can this distinction, this separation, be maintained in real life (“realistically or universally … applied”), as if we could think and reason using “context-free and timeless concepts” that are “disembedded” from our experiential world(s) via a valueless language? How could we, in our language use that is so humanly and metaphorically symbolic, manage to break apart what can better be regarded as a unity, i.e., “Rhetoric and Logic … the substantive appraisal of argumentation and the formal analysis of arguments” (:25), since both provide us with forms of knowledge that should return to a whole (experience and appreciation of our constructed worlds).
To reason within an everyday conversation
The cybernetic rule of law (which I just made up) is encapsulated in the following: as I have written elsewhere (van der Merwe, 2007), according to Churchman (1977) the philosopher Spinoza was of the opinion that “the ethical mode of life is understanding”, and Russell (1987:555) agrees that Spinoza thought the preservation (those formative elements we choose to conserve) of man’s own being results from a wise act, which in turn is made possible through personal but also contextual understanding. Wittgenstein’s belief (Edmonds and Eidinow, 2001:55) was that ethics can only be revealed through the way we choose to act, because as a subject it resists articulation: it is there, but we cannot talk about it, directly, as a subject separate from … something else, which is more like Davis’s hermeneutic listening, below.
To reason within an everyday conversation, then, requires that we pay attention to what a cybernetic conversation can afford its participants, namely the capability of listening to the cybernetic rule of law, which, among other things states that ethics can only be expressed when ‘dialogue falls quiet’, allowing us to see the form of ethics in the representation of each other’s actions and its consequences, and we listen to, and ‘see’ the developing social systems design conversation, itself a ‘thing’ that cannot be expressed or perceived directly, but that must be allowed, in a reasonable way and in the public sphere, to develop as a living systems idea, and therefore protected as an ongoing and necessary conversation. What we listen to cannot be written down, and like ethics cannot be expressed directly (everything is mediated by something else), and “when words are not enough – when dialogue falls quiet” (Nelson, 2004:265), we have to allow a ‘thing’ to show itself, to become clear through its image in another’s representation.
This correlates with Jacques Maritain’s belief that we should live according to the “logic of the structure of the living thing”, not the logic of decidability, or what Maritain (1939:52) called the pseudo-logic of clear ideas (i.e., positivism), but the logic of the living and contextual, cybernetic, conversation that seeks associations, relationships, and the creation of that open space of ontological possibility where listening includes the idea of an investigative response. We are indeed redesigning our new selves when we find ourselves ‘listening’ for our own voices of reason – that could bring to us a narrative of being/movement and of action/decision. This hybrid rhetoric/logic voice speaks to us of both our own contact with the world and the information coming to us (the structure being informationally open) from the environment we move in, i.e., the social and practical world of others, and find in this hybrid voice /narrative the acceptable reasons (the logic of the living thing) for making choices.
A cybernetic conversation is thus much more a form of listening than it is a form of (traditional) communication, as Davis’s work shows. Davis (1997:355-356) uses Rorty’s expansive approach to human consciousness by referring to the latter’s notion of developing new ways of speaking (and therefore of thinking) about perception and its consequent action(s), and Davis does so by focusing on three ways of listening, the third being of most interest here, which he calls hermeneutic listening. This comes closest to what a cybernetic conversation can achieve, although I have to take issue with his interpretation of constructivism, which he believes has the individual as its object of study as far as cognition is concerned. In contrast, enactivism regards issues such as learning and making distinctions for action as both individual and collective, which, when “understood to exist in dialogical, ecological, and coemergent relationship … cannot be understood as distinct” (Davis, 1997:366). And yet, while regarding constructivism as limited, Davis does point out that both constructivism and enactivism (and for the latter he cites the work of Bateson and Varela et al. as examples) are based on a cognitive logic that brings into play the principle of survival-of-the-fit (as opposed to the erroneous survival of the fittest), which means that cognition, and particularly the example of hermeneutic listening, should be underpinned by the notion of adequacy (i.e., also denoting competency and capability), in other words, based on (contextual) discussion rather than through imposition of a rule.
What hermeneutic listening accomplishes is to overcome the notion of a single authority, and to replace that with collective relationships, further highlighting the importance of listening as “an imaginative participation in the formation and transformation of experience … [demanding] … the willingness to interrogate the taken for granted and the prejudices that frame our perceptions and actions” (Davis, 1997:369-370). Hermeneutic listening is thus, ultimately, a corrective to the modern preoccupation with an authentic ‘self’ – we listen to know who we are, and what we can become. As for my statement that cybernetics allows us to locate ourselves in worlds of probability wherein we are the reciprocal subject-object relation, the following: “Once one has understood that perceptions and observations do not drift like snowflakes into a passive receiver but are the result of actions carried out by an active subject, one cannot but wonder what precisely these actions are and how they work” (von Glasersfeld, 1996); extrapolated from this I believe that this active subject can also be an ‘active object’, in the sense that perceptions and observations drift like snowflakes from the observer towards the observed, and settle on the objects and events being observed like a cloak of awareness, trying in the process to become conscious of the no-one. This is the act of listening, a discernment that feels its way to a possible judgment (the making of distinctions in order to act/decide), and it tries to do so with shrewdness and sensitivity. What is being observed, and listened to (listened for), also includes the possible relations we can observe, in this act of listening, that, if acceptable, can lead to the form (design) of the new self.
List of References
Churchman, C.W. (1977). A Philosophy for Complexity, from Managing Complexity, orig. in H.A. Linstone and W.H. Simmonds (eds.), Managing Complexity. Reading (Mass.): Addison-Wesley. http://groups.haas.berkeley.edu/gem/essays/complex.html
Davis, B. (1997). Listening for Differences: An Evolving Conception of Mathematics Teaching. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 28(3):355-376.
Edmonds, D. and Eidinow, J. (2001) Wittgenstein’s Poker. London: faber and faber.
Maritain, J. (1939). Art and Scholasticism, J.F. Scanlan, translator. London: Sheed & Ward.
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xenjacob (Jacob Barton)
teacher, student, performer, School for Designing a Society
Vice President, UnTwelve
Member, An Exciting Event
Email: udderbot@gmail.com
Website: http://jacobbarton.net
Bio: Jacob A. Barton (b. 1985) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose work focuses on microtonal practice and theory. Jacob studied music composition at Rice University with Karim Al-Zand, Kurt Stallmann, Edward Applebaum, and Art Gottschalk. In 2005, Jacob accidentally co-invented the udderbot, a DIY slide woodwind instrument, now his primary instrument. He has organized and participated in many collaborative performance projects which include the Seventeen Tone Piano Project, the Garden Performance Project, AquaTown: A Future Hydrohistory, the World’s First Udderbot Recital, and an Udderbot Marching Choir. Currently, Jacob performs with musico-puppetry collective An Exciting Event and teaches composition and social change at the School for Designing a Society in Urbana, Illinois.
SoI: I am interested in connecting my practice of microtonal music more explicitly to concepts of cybernetics. This is part of my broader interest in adding alternatives that add alternatives: finding needed language, inventing instruments, programming computers, couching pedagogies. I could offer a session in microtonal listening (the literal kind of listening) including live performaces. This could be connected to, but separate from, the performances being offered by the School for Designing a Society.
I’m also interested in having conversations involving temporary self-reference, paradoxical/contradictory descriptions, and building a repertoire desirable performances for everyday life.
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
yaaqov (Ya’aqov Ziso)
Email: yaaqovz@gmail.com
Bio: I have composed music for ASC conferences in the past, attended several conferences, workshops and classes engaging cybernetics at the School of Designing a Society. As the project of creative digital repositories for the SDaS unfolds, the project team, which I coordinate, observes the dynamics of organizing our endeavor, we keenly listen and plan our conversations. I am currently working on a microtonal composition, and preparing a workshop on designing disagreements.
SoI:
Workshop or performance proposal:
Paper proposal:
