3. Radiant Circles — Cybernetic Musings on Resonant Forms

Introduction

Through resonance, works of art and design are centering. In openness to expansion, they grant agency. They create closure and consummation but never stasis. They are circular. Join us to explore how Gordon Pask’s ‘conversation’ as aesthetic experience initiates ontogenetic resilience via processes that devalue established hierarchies of oppression. In the process, new ecological values are instigated and cultivated.

Via an excursion to Chinese Gardens and an installation that involves mushrooms making electronic music, we will introduce what could be called ‘technologies for floating.’ Becoming comfortable with ‘floating’ is what every embedded observer/agent needs to learn. It is essential for ‘conversation’ in the Paskian sense. How could we conceive of ‘technologies for floating’ to assist with learning to float? Performing as ‘radiant circles’ such technologies - we argue - would help us to actualise a cybernetic approach to ontogenetic resilience.

The aim of the workshop is to develop - for particular situations - ideas for the design of ‘technologies for floating’ that foster a sense of openness to the permutations of the systems we are embedded in.

Technicalities

Depending on how many participants there are, we might use the wonder platform for parts of the workshop. We will discuss it with the participants once we have gathered and after a general introduction.

You are welcome to explore the wonder platform and space at any time before we start.

You can explore the space here: Radiant Circles Studio Space on Wonder.me

Unfortunately, wonder will not run on a tablet or phone. You will need to have either Firefox, Edge or a Google chrome browser installed on a computer. Safari will not work. No other software is required. Your computer should have a camera, microphone, and audio output, but you will also need this for zoom.

Participants will be asked to create an account when they connect to the wonder platform for the first time.

Here is a brief video explaining how the wonder.me platform works