tfw you realize that Stanislavski’s method acting system is actually an embodied systems theory, making Marlin Brando the architect of embodied cybernetics
A diagram of Stanislavski‘s system, based on his “Plan of Experiencing” (1935), showing the inner (left) and outer (right) aspects of a role uniting in the pursuit of a character’s overall “supertask” (top) in the drama.[1]
Stanislavski’s system is a systematic approach to training actors that the Russian theatre practitionerKonstantin Stanislavski developed in the first half of the twentieth century. His system cultivates what he calls the “art of experiencing” (with which he contrasts the “art of representation“).[2] It mobilises the actor’s conscious thought and will in order to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes—such as emotional experience and subconscious behaviour—sympathetically and indirectly.[3] In rehearsal, the actor searches for inner motives to justify action and the definition of what the character seeks to achieve at any given moment (a “task”).[4]
Sep 25, 2023Neo-Cybernetics is a novel interdisciplinary movement at the forefront of the third wave of cybernetics, dedicated to studying the complex dynamics of human society, technological change and the ecosystems we are immersed in.
Neo-Cybernetics: Navigating Complexity, Designing TomorrowDaniele Nanni·FollowingPublished inNeo-Cybernetics·7 min read·Sep 25, 20233672Neo-Cybernetics is a novel interdisciplinary movement at the forefront of the third wave of cybernetics, dedicated to studying the complex dynamics of human society, technological change and the ecosystems we are immersed in.
In this intro podcast to his new media mix offer, Seth Godin talks a lot about ‘systems’ (as if they existed in the world per se, but never mind). Worth listening and worth tracking his new book, which is actually a media mix product covering book, podcast, chocolate bars, the chance to be interviewed, etc…
(Confusingly, it seems that https://akimbo.link stopped tracking podcasts and providing show notes and transcripts >2 years ago, but the home page there is now mostly promoting this)
Lots of colleagues would greatly appreciate this book. But don't get it yet. A new version is coming out with annotations by Evan Thompson and Ezequiel Di Paolo. I've known for a long time that Varela was amazing, but wow! https://t.co/tTtOXUFDvD
A new, updated edition of the 1979 classic from one of the foremost authors in cognitive science and theoretical biology, with the original text as well as more than 200 citations to current scientific developments.
Francisco Varela’s Principles of Biological Autonomy was a groundbreaking text when it was first published in 1979, putting forth a novel theory of how living systems produce and maintain themselves. This new edition, edited and annotated by cognitive scientists Ezequiel Di Paolo and Evan Thompson—revised and complemented with introductory essays for each part of the book—contains a wealth of ideas relevant to current projects in theoretical biology, cognitive science, systems theory, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of biology. Over 220 margin annotations supplement the reading of the text, linking to subsequent research and broader contemporary debates.
This foundational book introduces the key concept of autonomy derived as an elaboration of the idea of autopoiesis (the self-production and self-distinction) of living organisms. Varela covers topics in systems theory, neuroscience, theories of perception, and immune networks, and offers a participatory epistemology that goes on to be further developed in later enactive literature. These ideas are compelling not only for historical reasons but also because they still illuminate current efforts in developing the enactive approach toward wider and more challenging goals (language, human cognition, ethics, environmentalism, etc.).
This was a special event focusing on learning and communication of systems thinking for practitioners, decision-makers and executives, through the new essay and booklet ‘opening the box’ and features four SCiO chapter leads: Jan de Visch (Belgium), Miguel Pantaleon (Spain), Namrata Arora (India) and Tony Korycki (UK).
The team has been working for several months on an initiative to explore how we communicate systems thinking, its benefits and impact, so will be speaking about the latest book(let) from SCiO publications, the message behind their essay, and inviting thoughts and discussion from attendees.
opening the box: systems thinking for transformative conversationsSeptember 2024Tony KoryckiJan De VischThis was a special event focusing on learning and communication of systems thinking for practitioners, decision-makers and executives, through the new essay and booklet ‘opening the box’ and features four SCiO chapter leads: Jan de Visch (Belgium), Miguel Pantaleon (Spain), Namrata Arora (India) and Tony Korycki (UK). The team has been working for several months on an initiative to explore how we communicate systems thinking, its benefits and impact, so will be speaking about the latest book(let) from SCiO publications, the message behind their essay, and inviting thoughts and discussion from attendees.
Grounded in contemporary landscape architecture theory and practice, Cybernetics and the Constructed Environment blends examples from art, design, and engineering with concepts from cybernetics and posthumanism, offering a transdisciplinary examination of the ramifications of cybernetics on the constructed environment. Cybernetics, or the study of communication and control in animals and machines, has grown increasingly relevant nearly 80 years after its inception. Cyber-physical systems, sensing networks, and spatial computing—algorithms and intelligent machines—create endless feedback loops with human and non-human actors, co-producing a cybernetic environment. Yet, when an ecosystem is meticulously managed by intelligent machines, can we still call it wild nature? Posthumanism ideas, such as new materialism, actor-network theory, and object-oriented ontology, have become increasingly popular among design disciplines, including landscape architecture, and may have provided transformative frameworks to understand this entangled reality. However, design still entails a sense of intentionality and an urge to control. How do we, then, address the tension between the designer’s intentionality and the co-produced reality of more-than-human agents in the cybernetic environment? Is posthumanism enough to develop a framework to think beyond our all-too-human ways of thinking? For researchers, scholars, practitioners, and students in environmental design and engineering disciplines, this book maps out a paradigm of environmentalism and ecological design rooted in non-communication and uncontrollability, and puts a speculative turn on cybernetics.
Chapters 8 and 9 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Upscaling of the Cybernetic Imagination Part 1: The New Machine in the New Garden 1.A Transformation Formula 2. The Technology-Nature Edge: From Pastoralism to Anthropocene 3. The Human-Technology Edge: From Ready-made Artefacts to Dematerialized Humans 4. The Human-Nature Edge: The Three Waves of “Nature Study” 5. Posthumanism, Co-Production, and Assemblage Part 2: Posthumanism, the Environment and Intelligent Machines 6. Searching for Nonhuman Agency 7. From Nonhuman Agency to Speculative Ontology 8. Coproductive Intelligence Part 3: The Cybernetic Environment 9. Cybernetics and Landscape: From Uncertainty to Opportunity 10. Reframing Cybernetics 11. Sensing as Coding: The Episteme of the Digital Age 12. The Rise of Intelligent Agents: A Non-Model-Centric Paradigm 13. Actuating Leads to Attuning: Cultivated Wildness 14. Cultivated Wildness and Speculative Ecology Conclusion: Design and Cybernetic Environment
Author(s)
Biography
Zihao Zhang is a designer, educator, and scholar in landscape architecture. He currently serves as an assistant professor and interim director of the landscape architecture program at the City College of New York.
SCiO Global mini-Conference and AGM 2024 Sat, Sep 28th, 202409:00 – 14:00 GMT+1
SCiO meeting on Saturday 28th with contributions from Systems Practitioners: Eva de Hullu – Perceptual Control Theory – an ‘inside-out’ approach to systems thinking Miguel Pantaleon – 10 Years of Systems Thinking Practice: Learnings from the Struggle Gavin Roberts – Exploring a multi-agency system – requisite variety, complexity, systems laws and a bit of a whack Joan O’Donnell – Self-organising beings: the art and practice of embodied wisdom and in between those we’ve got the (short!) AGM
Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) provides a general theory of functioning for organisms. At the conceptual core of the theory is the observation that living things control the perceived environment by means of their behavior. Consequently, the phenomenon of control takes center stage in PCT, with observable behavior playing an important but supporting role. The first part of the paper explains how the PCT model works. This explanation includes a definition of “control” as well as the basic equations from which one can see what is required for control to be possible. The second part of the paper describes demonstrations that the reader can download from the Internet and run, so as to learn the basics of control by experiencing and verifying the phenomenon directly. The third part of the paper shows examples of the application of PCT to different areas of psychological research including learning, developmental psychology, social psychology, and psychotherapy. This summary of the current state of the field celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the first major publication in PCT (Powers, Clark & MacFarland, 1960)
This paper is an attempt to understand the content of, and motivation for, a popular form of physicalism, which I call ‘non-reductive physicalism’. Non-reductive physicalism claims although the mind is physical (in some sense), mental properties are nonetheless not identical to (or reducible to) physical properties. This suggests that mental properties are, in earlier terminology, ‘emergent properties’ of physical entities. Yet many non-reductive physicalists have denied this. In what follows, I examine their denial, and I argue that on a plausible understanding of what ‘emergent’ means, the denial is indefensible: non-reductive physicalism is committed to mental properties being emergent properties. It follows that the problems for emergentism—especially the problems of mental causation—are also problems for non-reductive physicalism, and they are problems for the same reason. Like Recommend
The study of consciousness has considerably increased in the last few years. Research has been mainly focused on its neurological aspects, but the intrinsic nature of consciousness is usually completely neglected. In this contribution, we present a new onto‐epistemological general metamodel that we developed to interpret complex partly autonomous systems (like living systems). Our metamodel is not based on the usual space‐time‐energy framework of mainstream Newtonian science, but involves two elemental categories: the domain of objects and the domain of relations. Furthermore, and most importantly, we show that the combination of these two aspects gives rise to the system as a holistic, self‐referential and existential entity. We will then use this onto‐epistemology to interpret the nature of consciousness, which, in this model, is a meta‐physical, meta‐relational self‐referential entity. Collapse
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