Hey – we’re running a workshop test in Brussels tomorrow, and we’d like some extra test audience, please forward this to anyone who might be interested.

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In this workshop we shall learn new ways to play, and learn to understand the world through play. We shall try to come to see, perhaps re-see, that collective play, such as that which young humans and animals do together is a form of collaborative genius.

In this session in particular, through embodied play we shall learn some of the core principles of emergence, self-organisation, complex adaptive systems and cybernetics. The very principles through which one can think about brains, networks, ecosystems, economies, games design, collective intelligence, and much more besides.

At the heart of this workshop lies the understanding that play and complex adaptive systems share a profound connection. Play, with its intrinsic self-organisation and embodiment, mirrors the dynamics of complex adaptive systems. By engaging in playful experiences, we gain insights into the principles of complexity, cybernetics, and emergence. Simultaneously, our understanding of play deepens through the lens of complexity. In essence, play becomes a gateway to exploring and comprehending the intricate nature of systems.

During the workshop, we will collaboratively create and explore a shared research playground. Drawing upon the principles of complexity—where simplicity gives rise to spontaneous order through the interactions of relatively autonomous agents—we will examine the tipping point at which simplicity transforms into complexity.

Play must never be subordinated or instrumentalised. Play is, and must remain. sensual, giddy, improvised, and simply fun for its own sake. Likewise we should never mistake the cajoling, backflipping and chirruping of animals for mere training for life, or evolutionary survival advantage. (Whilst it may be true that it is also those things.) First and foremost it’s vital to approach life as play, and then, to have the skills and knowledge to extract any kind of knowledge from that play at the moment that it is needed.

Orion Maxted is an artist, theatre maker and director of artscience at The Center Leo Apostel for Transdisciplinary research, at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels together with colleagues Evo Bussenairs, a researcher in mathematical anarchism, and Professor Francis Heylighen, a renowned researcher in cybernetics, self-organisation, emergence and consciousness. David Tann is a clown and researcher in biomimicry.

Please bring comfortable clothes that you can move around in.

Cost: € Free

Contact: Orion Maxted