Beginning in the nineteen thirties and continuing through and after World War II, scientists developed increasingly sophisticated mechanical and electrical systems that seemed to have purpose. This intersected with research on animal cognition and early computing and led to a new perspective on mechanical, electrical, biological, and social systems, resulting in a unifying theory known as cybernetics. Although today the computer has become the driving force and steering mechanism of our civilization in an unprecedented development, the original ideas relating to cybernetics have faded from view. Cybernetics - with the computer as a means - became too much a synonym for control and domination, while at the same time almost every corner of our earth was digitally penetrated. A kind of digital organism was created not only through governance, but also through self-organization.
Today, we are not only living with digital machines, but also with the environmental consequences of them, and we have to realize that our world is changing - in a way that we had not anticipated.
Reason enough to address this development as a culture - or unculture - by looking at the actors who are involved. And the sets of rules in the world that currently surrounds us, in which they are involved or even develop them themselves in a game of feedback and recursion.
But also by critically scrutinizing the consequences of digitalization and asking ourselves whether we can choose or invent other forms of technization? And where we have made mistakes in the past?
It is up to you - the students - to ensure that this does not develop as a project of criticism, because the aim of the project is to produce (art) works, concepts, performances and proposals for actions that develop practices out of an understanding of the environment, which unfold in their reciprocal relationships between the acting subjects - be they humans, animals, plants or machines.
It is highly recommended if not mandatory to register in parrallel to the scientific module by Jan Willmann here
Please apply with a portfolio with ursula.damm at uni-weimar.de
An excursion to Schieferpark in the first week of December is part of the module.
Program of the Retreat:
The environment of Schieferpark should be an opportunity to relate to natural processes and the flow of time (e.g. of plants, animals and machines). How does it come about that we recognize phenomena that we observe as a coherent entity (i.e. a system)? What kind of strategies do such “systems” use to maintain an inner balance under permanently changing external conditions? How do individual entities distinguish themselves from others and how do they connect with them, for example, to gain individual advantages, but also to show a completely different overall behavior in relation to their environment? How can we couple systems to create symbiotic and cooperative behavior on the one hand, but also antagonistic and defensive behavior on the other?. From these systemic couplings, ideas for artistic installations can then be developed. (...). We draw on the history of cybernetics and the beginnings of artificial intelligence to reflect on the relationship to our now precarious environment and its needs in these models of thinking. How can we develop technologies that bring us into balance with our natural environment? How can learning be understood in technology and living beings, based on the levels of learning defined by the cyberneticist Gregory Bateson? At the same time, the excursion should also be an opportunity to connect with students from other art schools and get to know their way of working. For students in final projects, the presentation and discussion of their work is in the foreground. For younger students and anyone interested, there are short workshops with simple tasks that can be developed, discussed and solved in group work.
Schedule of the project:
- 22.10.2024: first meeting at DBL: Introduction by Ursula Damm "Technology Creating Infrastructure" and Georg Trogemann "Cybernetics"
- 29.10.2024: Getting to know each other, presentations of participants, prior work (15 min), concept (5 min), additional presentations by teachers
- 05.11.2024: Presentation of Artists in the context of Cybernetics today
- 12.11.2024:
- 19.11.2024: Amelia (Gestures and Bodylanguage)
- 26.11.2024: Lina (smelling thru sensors)
- 02.12.2024 - 06.12.2024 Retreat in Schieferpark (with Prof. Lasse Scherffig and his Students)
- 10.12.2024: midterm presentation of your projects - be prepared (pdf with fotos, links, videos, text 15 min.)
- 17.12.2024: no meeting
- 07.01.2025: no meeting
- 14.01.2025:
- 21.01.2025:
- 28.01.2025:
- 04.02.2025: endpresentation
separate obligatory lectures:
- Georg Trogemann: 21.11.2024
- Ursula Damm: Presentation of Media Artworks on Cybernetics during the last 40 years
Literature:
- Yuk Hui: Cybernetics for the 21st Century ISBN 978-9887026808
- Claus Pias: The Macy Conferences 1946-1953. The Complete Transactions, Diaphanes 2016 ISBN 978-3037345986
- Thomas Dreher: History of Computer Art
- David Maulén de los Reyes: Re-Imagining Modernization in Chile—The Active School Movement, Integral Co-op Architecture, Second-Order Cybernetics—Lessons from the Bauhaus and Beyond
- C. Sollfrank, F. Stalder, S. Niederberger: Aesthetics of the commons
- Cybernetic Serendipity, Book
Artists:
- Verena Friedrich
- Ralf Baecker
- Nicola Hein
- Rasa Smite Raitis Smits
- Angela Wahsko
- Forensic Architecture
- David Bowen
- Raphael Lozano-Hemmer
- Gustav Metzger
- Jenna Sutela
- Walid Raad
- Adriana Knouf
- Lutz Dammbeck
- Roman Signer
- Mierle Laderman Ukeles
- Refik Anadol
Students:
- Amelia Eickhoff
- Mahla Mosahaneh
- /Dahye Seo
- Öykü Türkan
- Lina Louise Wolff
- Kitman Yeoung
- Sabah Khaled Abouelhadid Elsay Hassan
- Julian Michael Hoffmann
- Viviane Morais Dantas
- Benazir Basauri
- Rieke Hettinger
- Jan Munske