<nettime-ann> CAS: December Meeting - Ranulph Glanville

[Paul Brown <paul_brown@mac.com>]

.
The Computer Arts Society is pleased to announce the last talk
of our 40th anniversary year.

Ranulph Glanville

No Longer a Shrinking Violet?

2 December 2008 - 6:30 for 7:00
Institute of Archeology - Room 410
University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY
Nearest tubes: Euston Square, Warren Street & Russell Square
Map: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/intro/UCLmap.htm

The significance of cybernetics in the development of computer
arts is apparent in the title of Jasia Reichart's Cybernetic
Serendipity Exhibition, now celebrating its 40th anniversary
(which is also the 50th of the Philips Pavilion and the 60th of
Wiener's eponymous book). It featured, prominently, the work of
several cyberneticians whose art is currently being very
positively re-evaluated (see for instance www.paskpresent.com,
and exhibition of work coming out of Gordon Pask's work and
ideas).

Yet 1968 is also often seen as the beginning of the very rapid
decline of cybernetics to the point that, by the early 1970s,
some were referring to it as dead.

However, 1968 also sees the beginning of a transformation of
cybernetics that occurred through the application of cybernetic
understandings to the field itself. For convenience, we can take
this as initiated by Margaret Mead's paper "Cybernetics of
Cybernetics". For some reason, this transformation has not
received the recognition of the earlier version of cybernetics,
or of other, contemporaneous developments. But it is alive, and
well, if something of a shrinking violet!

In this talk, I will discuss the development of this so called
second order cybernetics, and will present some of the central
understandings and concepts. Many of them seem to me to be much
more sympathetic to artists and the arts than those of 1968, and
to bring an all together much more sophisticated world view, one
that is much less mechanistic than the original.


Ranulph Glanville studied architecture at the AA (where he was
mainly interested in electronic performance music), followed by
cybernetics (his 1975 PhD was examined by Heinz von Foerster, his
supervisor was Gordon Pask) and then human learning (1987 PhD
examined by Gerard de Zeeuw, supervisor Laurie Thomas). In 2006
he was awarded a DSc in Cybernetics and Design. He has published
extensively in cybernetics, design and learning, as well as
maintaining a modest art practice. He has taught in Universities
around the world. He is a professor of architecture and
cybernetics in the Bartlett at UCL; of research in Innovation
Design Engineering at the RCA; of Research Design at St Lucas,
Brussels and Ghent; and of Design and Research at RMIT,
Melbourne. He is also a regular visitor at a number of other
universities. He is on the editorial board of several journals
and the committee of several conferences. He has published more
than 300 papers. He researches the fundamental position of
cybernetics and the implications of this, relating this to the
activity of design and how we might do research within design.
His hobby is whichever of his interests he is not currently
actually doing.


CAS 40 - 40 years supporting the computer arts

http://www.computer-arts-society.org
====
Paul Brown - based in the UK Aug-Dec 2008
mailto:paul@paul-brown.com == http://www.paul-brown.com
UK Mobile +44 (0)794 104 8228 == USA fax +1 309 216 9900
Skype paul-g-brown
====
Visiting Professor - Sussex University
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ccnr/research/creativity.html
====

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