asc60 conference program
The ASC60 Book of Abstracts is also available for download in PDF format.
american society for cyberneticsFriends Meeting Paul Pangaro and Claudia WestermannFriends Meeting Ben Sweeting | Jon GoodbunFriends Meeting + Streamed Online Follow this link to watch an online stream of the session. The core theme of cybernetics is circularity—processes in which the outcomes of action are inputs for further action. Cybernetic circularities can take many forms: runaway, homeostasis, feedback, feedforward, recursion, reflexivity, self-organisation, and more. Differentiating between these, and what they mean in different contexts, is not always straightforward. A typology of circular processes, their similarities and differences, could help introduce and clarify cybernetics and its concepts. What could such a typology be like? How abstract should it be? How embodied or experimental? Which examples and activities would help exemplify each type of circularity? Cybernetics’ concepts rest on patterns that are common across disparate contexts, resulting in their wide applicability but also in abstraction and ambiguity. In what ways could a typology help explore the ways that the same form of process might be thought of in different terms across multiple domains and contexts? Could this help deepen the criticality with which cybernetic concepts are applied? Format Conversational with further details to come. Indicative bibliography Follow this link to watch an online stream of the session. Paul PangaroFriends Meeting + Streamed Online Follow this link to watch an online stream of the session. Please feel free to add directly to the Miro board for collaboration. Introductory Session: Here we briefly review the intentions of this series of sessions each day under the same title—outline how to gather insights during your conversations and bring them together at the end of day to collect them—all in preparation of our final conversation on Tuesday at 7:30pm where we will summarize: What evidence did you see for Cybernetics offering value to modern challenges, great and small? What concepts and conversations, models and methods, can we gather and offer in future? What did you see that implies lack of impact, need for revision? Here is the full description of intention: Within the celebration of our 60th anniversary meeting we invite ourselves to critically consider the prior, current, and possible-future contributions of the discipline of Cybernetics. The recent, rich flourishing of "thinking in systems" is of course welcome, as agents at scales from individuals to nations to global populations seek methods for addressing today's wicked challenges. How can distinctions from Systems that are brought forth by Cybernetics— embrace of the bridging of machine and animal, digital and analog, reflexivity and responsibility—make a difference? Given Cybernetics from the 1940s and the activities of the ASC from the 1960s, how might self-reflection have us steer through the next 60 to 80 years? We invite all attendees to invoke their critical eye and practical experience during conference sessions and side conversations for encounters with these questions. At the end of each day we will informally gather for 30 minutes to reflect and collect our thoughts. Then in a 90-minute workshop format late in the meeting, we will collate, categorize, prioritize, and articulate mechanisms for action across timescales to be agreed, perhaps from 3 years to 10 years to 60 or even 80 years. Outcomes may become triggers to the Society’s efforts over the current 3-year terms of its governing committees and beyond. Jude Lombardi | Cliff Joslyn | Sevanne Kassarjian and the awardeesFriends Meeting + Streamed Online We are looking forward to a barbecued dinner at the Friends Meeting, with vegetarian options. Thanks to Jude Lombardi for organizing the dinner. Chaired by Cliff Joslyn, the ASC Awards session will be held during dinner. Follow this link to watch an online stream of the session. The ASC Awards were revamped for 2024, and we will honor the following luminaries in our field. established in 2024 to recognize accomplishments in growing the cybernetics community through education and/or advocacy activities. In 2024 we will award these Mead prizes: to a cybernetician new to the field, including both early career cyberneticians of distinction, and seasoned professionals in other fields who have come to work in cybernetics. for a lifetime career achievement in cybernetics and system. for achieving significant impact in the community, whether externally by applying cybernetics methods and principles in real-world applications, and/or internally via service to the ASC itself. for high achievement in transdisciplinary research in cybernetics and systems. Please note that not all awardees will be on-site or online during the award session. Jasia Reichardt, Roy Ascott and Raul Espejo wil join us on Monday morning during the DC Arts Gallery coffee break. Follow this link to watch an online stream of the session. Bill Reckmeyer | Matthew HoltDC Arts Center - Theater + Online If you want to join this session online, please follow these steps: 1> Register for the session via the Register button below. See the video link at the top of the page for more information. 2> After registering, refresh your browser. 3> Click the location displayed next to the presenters' names above to open the Zoom link. Please note that only officially registered conference delegates can access individual session links. If you experience any issues, please contact events@asc-cybernetics.org for assistance. The development of cybernetics and other systems sciences during the 1940s-1950s attracted considerable professional and popular attention, which triggered the development of related academic and industrial centers as well as professional societies. But there weren’t many places at the time where people could learn more about those new fields in an organized way. That began changing with the launching of the world’s first two degree-granting programs (Cybernetic Systems Program at San José State University and Informatics & Systems Science Program at Stockholm University) during the mid-1960s, which was followed by the establishment of similar programs around the world over the next 25 years. Unfortunately, the explosion of academic programs in these fields that occurred during those initial decades has declined markedly since then. But the recent establishment of an intentionally innovative and experimental new unit within a collegiate organization (the School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University), which is being designed to deliver a mix of non-traditional degree and non-degree learning experiences, offers a significant and much-needed opportunity to revitalize cybernetic-systemic education around the world. We are inviting people to participate in a conversation at this conference about the past, present, and future of such education writ large, as part of a project that we launched in 2023 to examine its history and influence over the past 60 years. Our primary goal in this project is to connect and collaborate with a transnational community of cybernetic-systemic educators to develop key recommendations for strengthening its educational capabilities and scaling its broader impacts. Our ultimate hope is that this can help humanity improve its ability to effectively and responsibly address the evolving challenges of the Anthropocene. We will also be hosting similar sessions at the ISSS and WOSC conferences in 2024, with the intention of soliciting contributions for a special issue about cybernetic-systemic education that we’re organizing for Systems Research and Behavioral Science. We don’t want this to be a typical presentation followed by Q&A, but prefer to spark an extended interactive conversation that is intended to focus on exploring how to strengthen cybernetic-systemic education in post-secondary settings. We plan on opening the session with a short over-view of our project, followed by brief summaries about the early days of cybernetic-systemic education programs (Reckmeyer) and ANU’s School of Cybernetics (Holt), to frame the discussion. We would then like to spend the majority of the session addressing four key questions. First – what else is known about the history and impact of such education? Second – where is such education currently being offered around the world, as either degree programs or individual courses, and what do they primarily focus on? Third – are there curricular recommendations for improving the quality and impact of such education? Fourth – are there pedagogical recommendations for improving the quality and impact of such education? We plan to close the session with a brief wrap-up to capture the highlights of our conversation and identify ways for people to continue participating in the project as we proceed. Merve SahinDC Arts Center - Gallery My intent in this paper and presentation is to investigate the intersection of three critical concepts: biological feedback, structural coupling, and language by illustrating the history of research and artwork that used the electroencephalogram (EEG). Together, these concepts offer a framework for exploring the complex interplay between brain function, communication, and environmental adaptation. An EEG machine records the electrical neural activity from the brain through electrodes placed on the scalp and represents the voltage fluctuations in the brain as a pattern of lines. EEG recordings can capture different cognitive processes involved in social interactions, such as, communication and learning. Adjacent to the EEG research and work of William Grey Walter in the field of British cybernetics between the 1940’s and 1970’s, this paper will present the work, Brain Wave Drawings (1973), by the American artist Nina Sobell. Brain Wave Drawings was an interactive installation, in which, Sobell measured and recorded the EEG data of participants who were sitting next to each other, and simultaneously, superimposed the waves onto a monitor and experimented with the adaptation of the brainwaves of two people without the use of verbal or spoken language. Participants were able to see their EEG waves through a machine interface in a biofeedback loop and learned to communicate with one another. Sobell's work explores the phenomenon of communication through biological feedback without relying on written or auditory language. The concept of communication without language has perplexed human minds, and yet, nonhuman organisms from cells to dogs, heavily adapt themselves to environmental changes based on biological feedback. Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela named this adaptive strategy, “structural coupling”, which is described as the process of perceiving, recognizing, and conceptualizing the natural or social environment. This involves forming mental representations of the environment and adjusting behavior based on biological perceptions and evaluations in a consensual domain. Brain Wave Drawings investigates a similar inquiry. Sobell extrapolates the possibility of structural coupling as a communication method by solely using the biological feedback of EEG. The implication of this project potentially opens a dialogue on human, nonhuman, interspecies, and machine communication based on the notions of feedback and environmental adaptability. Sami Imad Harb | Benjamin StevensonDC Arts Center - Gallery In the 1950s, first-order cybernetics began as a dominant paradigm in the field of family therapy (FT), which holds the observed as separate from the observer. In the late 1960s and 1970s, this paradigm shifted to constructivist, second-order cybernetics (C2) which sees the observer as circularly connected with the observed. Although a large portion of the FT field abandoned C2 (and systems theories) for a postmodern paradigm in the 1980s and 1990s, we argue that C2 has an “afterlife” (Thacker, 2010) in psychotherapy. That is to say, this paradigm has an enduring influence beyond the field’s ostensible abandonment of it. Our objectives are to critically reflect on (1) the afterlife of C2 and (2) FT’s shift from C2 to postmodernism. Firstly, we construct the afterlife of C2 in psychotherapy with reference to contemporary systemic-dialogic therapies such as open dialogue for psychosis (Seikkula & Olson, 2003). Secondly, we explore FT’s retreat from C2 through its critiques (e.g., Hoffman & Cecchin, 1993; Anderson, 1997) as well as various theoretical movements such as social-constructionism and hermeneutics. We discuss critiques of interpretations of C2 (e.g., Keeney & Kenney, 2012) to highlight how it was not falsified, but rather abandoned for a different paradigm. We also describe how postmodernism overlaps with C2 to a degree. Thirdly, we illustrate how C2 was a vital force in FT before its exit. We draw on the past life of C2 including Bateson’s (1956) theorizing of psychotherapy in psychosis, second-order family systems therapy (Hoffman, 1985), and Barnes’ (1994) de-construction of theory in psychotherapy. We attempt to demonstrate that epistemological and ethical reflexivity was enacted by the FT field when C2 was alive, and that contemporary psychotherapists could enhance reflexivity through considering the historical literature of C2. We propose to conduct a short presentation followed by a group-based conversation. Firstly, we will present PowerPoint slides to contextualize: the historical influence of C2 on FT, the paradigm shift away from C2 towards postmodernism, and the meaning and ramifications of an ongoing afterlife of C2 in psychotherapy. Secondly, we will present a series of semi-structured questions to partly guide the discussion, such as: (A) How is C2 an interesting paradigm for psychotherapy; (B) How and why did FT abandon C2?; and (C) What is the afterlife of C2 in psychotherapy?; and (D) How might we imagine the future of C2 in psychotherapy? We will sensitize the discussion to the conference’s three thematic strands by considering: the history of C2 in psychotherapy; the role of interpretation, language, and critiques of C2 in its paradigmatic exit; and C2 as method/technique. Group members will be encouraged to engage in active co-participation in the dance of questioning and responding/answering. Walk After the Park session, we walk to the Zoo to support the session of this year's scholarship recipient Annan Zuo "Languaging the Umwelten, Formulating Interspecies Enkinaesthesia." DC Arts Center - Theater Grab a coffee from the Gallery or from across the street. Chris DantaDC Arts Center - Theater Part 1: One of the ways in which humans understand their relation to machines is by analogy to biological processes. We think of machines as resembling us in somehow being alive and somehow evolving over time. The American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick observed in his 1972 speech, “The Android and the Human,” that in the last decade, “our environment, and I mean our man-made world of machines, artificial constructs, computers, electronic systems, interlinking homeostatic components—all this is in fact beginning more and more to possess … animation.” Dick cites cybernetics as directly inspiring his analysis in "The Android and the Human." As Norbert Wiener (whom Dick had read) writes in his 1948 book Cybernetics: "the modern automaton lives in the same sort of Bergsonian time as the living organism." But well before the emergence of cybernetics in the 1940s, already at the end of the nineteenth century, the English authors Samuel Butler and George Eliot were thinking of machines as living and evolving organisms. This paper examines how writers like Dick, Butler and Eliot rethink what it means to be human by attributing life to their technological environment. It discusses various speculative rhetorical techniques that writers use to look at the human from the perspective not just of another living organism but also of the surroundings of the human themselves. It shows how writers biologize machines by figuring them as cryptic nonhuman organisms that can merge with and act on behalf of their physical environments. It argues that underlying the techno-anthropologies of writers like Dick, Butler and Eliot is an environmental understanding of life as the dyadic relation between the organism and its surroundings. Part 2: This session connects to the conference theme of "reimagining technicity" and could be used as the starting point of a discussion about the origins of cybernetics in nineteenth-century evolutionary thinking. The conversation would address the following question: what does it mean to say, as Wiener does in Cybernetics, that "the modern automaton lives in the same sort of Bergsonian time as the living organism"? The purpose of the participants in the conversation would be to interrogate the idea that life is not restricted to biological organisms, but somehow emerges from the interrelation and interaction of machine and organism. The session would orient itself both backward in time to the historical debates about vitalism (that Wiener saw himself as resolving) and forward in time to the current debates about the technological singularity. Many today are willing to entertain the science-fictional possibility of AI coming to life, or gaining sentience, through the technological singularity. Our reimagination of living technicity is, in this sense, a pressing social concern. A session on the issue of how automata exist in the same time and social space as living organisms would thus provide valuable historical and conceptual insights into our current discussion of AI. DC Arts Center - Gallery Seiichiro HonjoDC Arts Center - Gallery Brands are becoming increasingly important to organizations such as companies, non-profit organizations, and individuals. Beyond being a name or symbol to distinguish a product or service from others, a brand is understood to be a system of recognition and perception by customers. In recent years, a new brand management approach has emerged. In traditional brand management, a company establishes a fixed brand identity of what it should be, observes and measures the brand image as perceived by customers, and then works to make the brand image conform to the brand identity through communication. In recent brand management, however, brand identity itself has become variable, as seen in brand activism, where companies are required to act flexibly and change their brand identity in response to social issues. Furthermore, in our highly interdependent society, companies have become components of an ecosystem, and the target audience for brand management has expanded to include not only customers but also various stakeholders. We draw parallels between brand management and cybernetics, likening the former to first-order cybernetics and the latter to second-order cybernetics. In the former case, the brand identity is fixed, and the system can be described without regard to the existence of the observer, the company. In the latter case, however, the company changes in the course of various interactions, so it is necessary to consider a system that explicitly incorporates the observer. In the former, companies may fall into the trap of regarding customers as objects of manipulation. In the latter, on the other hand, stakeholders, including customers, become partners in value co-creation and social problem-solving, and the brand is used as a mediator. This study aims to develop vocabulary and methods for effective brand management in recent years by considering traditional and recent brand management and cybernetics in parallel. Furthermore, we strive to deepen the vocabulary of cybernetics from the perspective of the practice of brand management. This study will provide a foundation for brand management that brings value to society, rather than viewing customers as objects of control, and will open up new areas of cybernetics practice. While brand image exists in the subjective perceptions of each stakeholder and influences their behavior, language is involved when brand image is shared with others or when the researcher measures the brand image held by stakeholders. Considering brands within the ecosystem of many stakeholders will contribute directly to exploring "languaging in/for action." Annan Zuo (with support from Frederick Steier and Claudia Westermann)Zoo + Online We recommend all attendees, also on-site attendees, install Zoom on their mobile phones before. If you want to join this session online, please follow these steps: 1> Register for the session via the Register button below. See the video link at the top of the page for more information. 2> After registering, refresh your browser. 3> Click the location displayed next to the presenters' names above to open the Zoom link. Please note that only officially registered conference delegates can access individual session links. If you experience any issues, please contact events@asc-cybernetics.org for assistance. What we understand is often mistaken for the entirety of what can be understood. The Earth is a mosaic of sights, sounds, textures, smells, and flavours, along with countless other phenomena that the human sensory system is yet able to capture. Every creature navigates the world through its own sensory universe, accessing only a fraction of reality's fullness. The term "Umwelt," introduced by Uexküll in 1909, describes the specific portion of the environment that an animal can sense and interact with, essentially its unique perceptual realm. It's commonly believed that what distinguishes humans from other species is our use of language, which indeed enriches our Umwelt, making it remarkably expansive. While it's true that language extends the boundaries of our perceptual world, assuming that all reality is linguistic confines us within our own linguistic constructs. The academic discourse tends toward objectification and generalization, but there are phenomena that are not easily objectifiable and cannot be described in scientific language. Researchers study the sensory worlds of other animals to better understand human sensory mechanisms and to inspire new technologies. By objectifying and purposing subjective phenomena, we transform other species’ Umwelten into a different mode of existence - one that may not truly or faithfully represent their agency or the reality itself. Language not only shapes our perception but is also rooted in it. Animals are more than mere substitutes for human subjects or sources of inspiration; their existence is not confined to human perception and description. They have worth in themselves, and a language system that is solely built upon the human Umwelt is not able to reveal it. Language is not an external addition to the Umwelt but an integral component that reshapes it. The act of languaging, according to Humberto Maturana, involves establishing and maintaining "consensual domains”, thereby holding the promise of connecting the Umwelten of different species. Applying the concept of Enkinaesthesia - the common animal ability to perceive and be sensitive to the sensitivities of others, this session explores the process of languaging the Umwelten between humans and other species through empathetic entanglement and affective coengagement. Instead of employing “formal” scientific language, this session proposes an “informal” approach to understanding the Umwelten of other species through affection, empathy, and coaction. The session, proposed to take place at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, will integrate an academic presentation with participatory sound simulations. This session consists of six chapters alternating between traditional speeches and collective sound simulations that amplify progressively. Throughout the event, participants will be invited and capture the acoustic Umwelten of both themselves and the surrounding animals using portable devices such as smartphones. These sound samples will subsequently be collected, edited, and woven into a collective acoustic tapestry, creating a continuous auditory loop that enhances the collective Umwelt. The session will last approximately 50 minutes. Eryu Ni | Yubo LiuDC Arts Center - Theater + Online If you want to join this session online, please follow these steps: 1> Register for the session via the Register button below. See the video link at the top of the page for more information. 2> After registering, refresh your browser. 3> Click the location displayed next to the presenters' names above to open the Zoom link. Please note that only officially registered conference delegates can access individual session links. If you experience any issues, please contact events@asc-cybernetics.org for assistance. The proposal focuses on"Reimagining Technicity" for ASC 60 conference. We aim to integrate design, action, and technology. Combining cybernetics and design practice, we aim to create diverse, sustainable community environmental systems tailored to the aging society within the Chinese context, fostering new dialogues between the body, time, and space. Context: We believe that in the era of artificial intelligence, the relevant theories of cybernetics hold important guiding significance in design practice, particularly in offering new perspectives on second-order cybernetics within contemporary architecture, and in exploring its scope and potential. Problem: During the second half of the 1960s, cybernetics exerted its influence on architecture. However, propelled by advancements in computing power, virtual technology surge, and ubiquitous display screens, the influence of cybernetics on architecture has recently broadened its scope. Therefore, today's developments in information technology offer new possibilities for imagination. We will integrate ethical issues with Chinese characteristics, address the realities of the current aging society, incorporate cybernetics theory into the context of Chinese architecture, and engage in design practice to provide better life and psychological care for the elderly. Method: Inspired by the Fun Palace, based on the methodology of cybernetics, we will use algorithmic technologies such as solar penetration algorithms and integrated sensors to replicate modern cybernetic systems within the framework of an aging society. Through the interaction of human and social behaviors, we will construct a computationally generated space, paths, and traffic systems. Concurrently, virtual reality games will be utilized to archive the memories of the elderly, establishing digital heritage technology, facilitating a conversation and interaction across past, present, and future time and space. In essence, our focus will span six different scales: body scale, interior scale, building scale, city scale, territory scale, and planetary scale. We'll strive to achieve long-distance communication across time and space with relatives, recreate scenes from the past, and create virtual models of 'old buddies' for interaction with former companions. Additionally, the living cabin will be designed to be movable based on factors like sunlight and other physical conditions. Results: Using cybernetic language logic to build a suitable living system for the elderly opens the way to connect the future and the past through the means of playing. Implications: Exploring and transcending the existing boundaries of architecture not only impacts the dissolution of barriers between science and humanity, but also prompts us to rethink the conversation theory and system of cybernetics, facilitating a deeper understanding of the impact of time and space from a broader perspective. Additionally, we are paving the way for innovative behavioral design techniques. This session will have two parts – a presentation for about half of the session time and a conversation with the conference participants for the remaining time. Walk This is a #NewMacy walk. We'll listen. Andrei CretuDC Arts Center - Theater Communication and language are notoriously hard to conceptualize in a convincing way, and recent developments in the field of artificial language generation have added to the complexity of the problem and made the need for coherent theoretical approaches even more acute. Drawing on critical insights contributed by authors such as Donald MacKay, Gordon Pask, Ranulph Glanville, Humberto Maturana, Klaus Krippendorff and Annetta Pedretti, this paper argues that a framework for understanding communication can be developed on cybernetic and system theoretic foundations, and offers a few suggestions for its formulation. Communication, just like control, fundamentally involves a cybernetic observer whose actions are guided by a goal and a predictive model of how the goal would be achieved. Communication thus presupposes a method for constructing and maintaining models as well as a method of translating these models into goal-oriented actions – messages. To fully model a communication event, it is necessary to account not just for the generation of messages, but also for the goal setting and model building processes of participants. Based on a fundamental rethinking of the classification of behavior proposed by Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigellow, this paper proposes a distinction among at least 3 basic types of black box models: models of reactive systems (which can be analyzed into simply reactive, conditionally reactive and programmable), adaptive systems (systems with the ability to modify their own transfer function, in pursuit of a goal), and autonomous-adaptive systems (characterized by the additional capability to select the goals toward which they adapt). Further, it demonstrates how these models and the goals that they enable the observer to formulate and reach (or fail to reach) are isomorphic to cognitive models at work in linguistic communication. Lastly, it discusses the implications of the proposed framework for the definition of cybernetic agency and significance for formal and functional theories of language. Conversational session: Participants will be invited to critically evaluate the theoretical framework by attempting to apply it to the identification and analysis of predictive models underlying different samples of discourse ranging from everyday interactions to media and scientific discourse. This can take the form of a game where participants will be encouraged to provide examples of languaging supporting or undermining the distinctions drawn in the presentation and to play at guessing the content of predictive models that underlie examples provided by other participants or the context where a given expression is likely to yield a certain outcome. Additional examples will be offered illustrating how the generation and interpretation of language is shaped by cybernetic models guiding the behavior of speakers and listeners and how, in a circular fashion, cybernetic models themselves are shaped by the outcomes of linguistic and non-linguistic interaction. Finally, participants will be invited to reflect on the meaning of current developments in the field of artificial language generation in light of the distinctions and criteria introduced in the presentation and to speculate on possible future evolutions and the role of cybernetics in bringing clarity to the paradoxes of artificially intelligent systems. Your Choice Lunch / attendees choose their own lunch place in the area. In the afternoon, sessions will start at 14:00 in the DC Arts Center and at 15:00 in the Friends Meeting Dulmini PereraDC Arts Center - Gallery Thermodynamic (entropic) explorations on how life forms remain themselves through time and sustain forms of autonomy negentropically, i.e., by differing their own end, has been a subject of interest for many cyberneticians. Recent discussions that connect explorations in cybernetics, ecology, and technology emerging from disciplines as diverse as philosophy of technology (Bernard Stieglar, Yuk Hui), anthropology (Thomas Hylland Ericksen, Peter Harries-Jones), Design (Frederick Steier) have foregrounded the issues related to the complex ways designed technological systems/environments contribute to ongoing entropic processes that, in turn, result in the erasure of diversity not only at a biological and cultural level but also in terms of technological diversity. Moreover, they have pointed out how technological systems, in contributing to the erasure of the plurality of time of multiple lifeworlds (organisms, societies), also contribute to the erasure of differences in the response abilities necessary to maintain these systems' flexibility and ecological health. This presentation contributes to this discussion by exploring a less known aspect of the anthropologist and cybernetician Gregory Bateson's work related to reworking Norbert Wiener's concept of negentropy to 'bio-entropy'. Drawing a connection between technology, ecology and time, Bateson pointed out how the discrepancy between how humans work with change through notions of an explicit order generated and propagated through modernity and an ecological order of change that is more implicit became a source of ecological error. More specifically, I will look at ideas developed through encounters with the technological and world-building experiments of Warren Brodey (a cofounder of Ecology, Tool, Toy Company) and a proponent of 'soft technology' and Antol Holt, mathematician and game designer, a proponent of 'coordination technology' who were both extremely critical of the ecosystemic issues generated by technological systems based on the modernist 'mechy-max' cosmology of clock time. They playfully explored ways of rethinking 'response' in ways that take into account the implicit and unfolding orders of plural living systems. In Brodey's playful work inspired by his work with blind children just as much as his work with scientists such as W. S. McCulloch, responsive technologies (in the form of material with specific memory capacities interfaces, etc.) become environments that support the multiple senses of the whole body that link plural unfolding rhythms of contexts. Anatol Holt attempted to rethink what computers could do if they were organized in ways to think about time as 'coordination time'. Holt worked with ‘Petri nets’ dealing with stochastic systems and the notion of 'concurrency' to show how such complex ideas could find representation in a modelling language. Working through children's games, "Find-the-momma", or "Pat-a-cake", he described things and persons through participation-in-process, response and relationship, Holt explored the possibility of how new process languages can bring about new forms of organization. In the first part of the presentation I will present their explorations by providing glimpses into the broader challenges of thinking response-in-time, in the second part I invite the audience to conversationally explore what ‘serious time games‘ could mean for our present. Erik ZepkaDC Arts Center - Theater The combination of Varela's embodied cognition with Popper's evolving knowing. Arthur's technological progression with Uexkull's organismally projected umwelt. Meadows' systematic approach with the bottom-up explorations of Dennett. These authors suggest ways to build up a model for scientific development that follows the complexity of our apparatuses and the concurrent change in our empirical questioning. Tractable knowledge poses fallible problems that engage and exchange in a community that then morphs over time. These concepts concern discussion and elaboration, as well as formal posing that allows for plurality, difference and a gradual approximation of consensuses. To probe these topics, we will look at a series of formalizable real world examples (listed above) and discuss how they intersect to make patterns that create order and causal bases which then respond to their given environments. In this way we will propose a formal epistemology in dialog with cybernetic concepts, laboratory methodology and practical behaviour and problems. Conversation Outline We will start with a question Ant Colonies Over the following 30 minutes, together we will brainstorm how these systems change, and how navigating them might relate to knowledge. In the final 5 minutes I will summarize what the group has proposed, using it to elucidate concepts and authors from the abstract, and suggest connections for interested participants to follow up on to keep learning. Glauce Rocha de OliveiraDC Arts Center - Gallery Natural languages, images, technologies (whether “writing” or “artificial intelligence”). What do they have in common? Roughly speaking, they are all sociohistoric constructions whose meaning-making process is dependent on the different and diverse contexts of production and reception of their interpreters (producers or consumers), culturally “localized”. Therefore, as sociohistoric systems, they embed and have gained status of objective discourses in accordance with the regimes of truth (Veyne, 1984) they “speak from”. For example, vision, from a traditional Western perspective, is taken as the most credible and objective sense, since light mediates what is “out there” being observed; therefore, we still accept that “seeing is believing”, and “what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG)”. Photographic images and video footage, for example, are taken as documents, undeniable proof of a reality which is “out there”, and whose meaning is stable and transparent. Digital technologies are firmly believed to be value-free, objective, when it comes to their relation to reality and data (construction, or mining). Why do we still rely on this so-called “objectivity”? Because, like language, we still believe they all refer to an independent/objective reality “out there”—as letters refer to specific sounds, or meaning is “attached to” words or images in line with a logocentric perspective. We have been taught so, and we have forgotten that our Western dominant cultures taught it, and made us believe that from a materialistic, utilitarian, graphocentric, and patriarchal ontology. As Sol Worth (1981, p. 33) poses it, we have forgotten that “correspondence (…) is not correspondence to “reality” but rather correspondence to conventions, rules, forms, and structures for structuring the world around us.” It is high time we challenged such an ontology. Contrary to the traditional Western approach to vision, I carried out research on visual literacy, visuality, and virtuality as reality (2002, 2008) based on a constitutive approach to language (Bakhtin, 1992; Maturana, 2001) and critical literacy as coined by Menezes de Souza (2008), who calls attention to such constitutive nature of language and advocates the importance of perceiving how we were culturally taught to perceive. From such researches, I would like to present three characteristics of visuality (simultaneity of spaces, hierarchy stablished from a viewer’s perspective, and affinity groups) to contribute to the discussions and advancements of systems thinking and cybernetics in a context where we, as human beings, are all challenged by pressing issues, such as: wars, post-pandemic, economic, political, humanitarian, social, environmental crises, non-critical approaches to technologies/data/artificial intelligence, just to name a few. With this conversational session (20-min-presentation + 20-min-discussion), I aim to have and open up a space to challenge the fundamentals of development/(post)-modernity, and Eurocentric notion of humanity, which constitute all of us—or to put such fundamentals in parenthesis as Humberto Maturana once taught us. By doing so, I also aim to discuss how visuality can help us identify other possible orders (ontologies?), which can encompass our inherent diversity, and co-exist with different Others and systems. References Charissa N. TerranovaDC Arts Center - Theater In this talk, I use cybernetic teleology – or, purposeful behavior – as a heuristic device to explain “mind” in contemporary interspecies art and bioart. Though both genres of art involve living organisms, scale can separate them. Interspecies artists are usually interested in nonhuman meso-mammal ethology, while bioartists engage microorganisms using biotechnology in wet labs. A close reading of Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow’s “Behavior, Purpose, and Teleology” (1943) shows how cybernetic teleology is situated, contextual, and collective. “By behavior,” they argued, “is meant any change of an entity with respect to its surroundings.” From this, I deduce that “mind” is similarly environmental, shared, reflexive, and overlapping with other minds. Not only was second-order cybernetics thus embedded in its first-order, but cybernetic teleology was always already what I call "somateleology." My neologism somateleology shifts teleology from the abstract, metaphysical, and linear to the material, embodied, and circular. This ensures its specificity in space and time while recognizing the observer effect – the fact that looking at something transforms it according to the perceiver and perhaps also the perceived. Environmentally specific somateleology builds on cybernetic ideas about how “behavior” means situated purposeful action with a goal, or bodies in feedback. Embodied somatic agency replaces what Donna Haraway called the “unregulated gluttony” of disembodied vision that operates within science and first-order systems, or “the godtrick of seeing everything from nowhere,” like William Paley’s God-Creator. Through somateleology, I argue there is no such thing as a mind without other minds, an intelligence without other intelligences, or a consciousness without other consciousnesses. These entities are fundamentally plural, interactive, and relational. Artworks by Rachel Mayeri, Ian Ingram, Ken Rinaldo, Anna Dumitriu, Adam Zaretsky, among others, show kinetic bodies in feedback performing “mind” as a matter of parasitic, commensal, mutualist, and symbiotic relationships. This an interactive dialogue consisting of: DC Arts Center - Gallery Grab a coffee from across the street Thomas FischerFriends Meeting The proposed conference contribution will review and reflect upon a systems-and-cybernetics-focused undergraduate Design Ethics course currently delivered at a design school of a university of science and technology. The course will conclude around the time of the ASC’s 60th anniversary meeting. The course examines various topics relevant to design ethics in broader systemic contexts, including social inequality, natural resource exploitation, overconsumption, cultural and biological diversity, animal welfare, automation, intellectual property, and artificial intelligence. Students examine these topics along with their system implications in multiple steps: Initially, students are guided through the preparation and delivery of individual seminar presentations on each topic. Each presentation is then followed by a group discussion in class. Based on each class discussion, each presenting student then uses generative artificial intelligence tools to develop a visual narrative projecting a desirable “solarpunk” vision in a poster format of how their respective topic could be addressed in the future. The aim is to enable students to creatively develop speculative, optimistic outlooks in challenging times, with a view to highlighting their future designerly responsibility in making desirable and justifiable choices on behalf of others. The presentation will cover the selection of seminar topics, a review of selected study materials, students’ presentation materials, in-class discussions, a presentation of outcomes, and a review of student reflections on their learning experiences in this course. The described systems-and-cybernetics-inspired approach to design ethics teaching, going beyond critical analysis by also engaging in optimistic future casting, is somewhat unique. It is hoped that this contribution to the conference can inspire an exchange about the further development and possible proliferation of this approach. DC Arts Center - Theater Grab a coffee from across the street. William SeamanDC Arts Center - Gallery “Languaging” or “doing language” is a collaborative dialogic activity or a process of making meaning and building knowledge through language to solve complex problems. (Gross and Crawford 2022, p. 22) This workshop will discuss a research platform enabling research related to Sentience / Sapience / Neosentience production via the Unreal Game Engine and a multi-perspective network of research areas (data bases). The research relates to a new form of AI, Neosentience (Seaman’s coin). The use of Large Language Models (LLMS) is used to help build bridges between the study of the entailment structures in the human body leading to sentience/sapience, and the potential to build on that knowledge to help inform the exploration of biomimetics and bio-abstraction in articulating this new approach to AI through research into Mind/Brain/Body/Environment relations. The central idea is to build a system that enables researchers and the general public to define new bridges leveraging human knowledge, current forms of LLMs, a game engine as interface, a diverse network of databases, and related visualization/navigation system During the workshop I will focus my short introduction to the problem of building interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary and transdisciplinary bridges related to Sentience, Sapience, and Neosentience research. In particular I will discuss briefly how the human body could inform a new holistic approach to AI through biomimetics and bio-abstraction. I will discuss my approach through Llama and Mistrel (The Insight Engine 2.0), open-source Large Language Models, and some tactics for prompt engineering that deal with combinatorics related to different research areas. I will then form a circle (or just have audience participation) and have a discussion about how people in our audience might approach this problem. This might also include a discussion of conferences (i.e. Macy) and aspects of the history of cybernetics that the participants might bring. I would seek to video the discussion and also have participants suggest a series of relevant papers or books (a list they might send to me after or during the conference) as well as discuss relevant papers/books in the conversation part of the workshop, that might also discuss related bridging concepts, or could be used as seed concepts. Cited Reference: Gross, Esther S., and Crawford, Jenifer A. (2022). Integrating Language Skills, Practices, and Content in Equitable TESOL Lesson Planning. In Jenifer Crawford & Robert A. Filback (Eds.), TESOL Guide for Critical Praxis in Teaching, Inquiry, and Advocacy (pp. 1–22). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Benjamin Bacon | Mateus van StralenWalk Talk in the theater. Benjamin BaconPark or DC Arts Center - Theater Anything said is said by an observer - Humberto Maturana’s Theorem Number One Anything said is said to an observer - Heinz von Foerster’s Corollary Number One Probe II: Subaudition is part of the Probe Series of robotic art installations that investigates how machine systems logic could live in physical space and manifest in machine-human social dynamics. The series frames machine perception as “alien” and explores the societal implications of machine life colonization. These machine beings operate as invasive lifeforms that are simultaneously observers of human behavior and activity, as well as artificial agents that inevitably form an interrelationship with the subjects of their investigation. Probe II investigates spoken word and speculates on how robotic lifeforms might interpret or misinterpret human language. The installation consists of a binary set of machines that apply machine learning methods of speech-to-text recognition toward exploring the concept of “subaudition,” a reading between the lines, through the translation, degradation, and misinterpretation of meaning in spoken language into binary information transmitted between the two machines. Together, the two machines mimic the human ear and language processing system in the brain, where audio signals are picked up and translated into an internal language to the body, in this case, the robotic body. The cybernetic and perceptual framework of the Probe Series centers around the design of the human-machine observer-observed relationship. As Heinz von Foerster postulates in his 1979 “Cybernetic of Cybernetics,” two observers constitute the elementary nucleus for a society and are formed by the use of their language. Specifically, Probe II utilizes the gallery space as the perceptual sphere for the audience to interact in a micro-societal system with the machines that signal back to them and, through constant analysis and reinterpretation of data, generate a reappropriated sense of human reality. This session is a conversational walk-and-talk in the DC Art Center or nearby at a park. The session will be 45 minutes, with a 15-minute presentation of ideas and a 30-minute discussion. The author will prepare booklets with images of the Probe Series and background material to share with participants. The session aims to further explore the interrelationship of human-machine society and the implications of how our own technologies act as a reflection and imitation of what it means to be human and how different levels of signals, interference, noise, and error lead to misinterpretation by both. As Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley question in Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design, “Even a machine might ask itself if it is human and some machines may well be more human than people. The question are we human? Is from the beginning a hesitation about the relationship between ourselves and everything around or inside us.” The author is interested in this macro relationship between man and technology and its individualized manifestations on the microcosm scale of human-machine societies. Shantanu Tilak | Marzena BogackiFriends Meeting Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS) is a machine learning technology created by McGraw Hill. It contains concepts specific to science and mathematics that students can be exposed to base on their current skill level (Craig et al., 2013). Using ALEKS’ data, teachers can understand what topics students master, and those they struggle with in real-time, as they get answers right or wrong. The tool assesses topics students know, and those they need to master; generating questions that can sharpen students’ skills and allowing teachers to view problem-solving live. In conjunction with peer support, ALEKS has shown scope to assist late adolescents with learning difficulties in mathematics (Thomas, 2017). An interplay between ALEKS output and live teacher assistance may also help heighten confidence in mathematics. Such support may particularly benefit neurodivergent high schoolers with ADHD, who face issues with content retention, structured problem-solving and decision-making. In this pre-experimental case design study, we use Gordon Pask’s (1975) conversation theory to explore whether twin high schoolers (50% non-binary, 50% trans male) with combined and inattentive ADHD benefitted from live teacher support relying on ALEKS output in precalculus class and developed greater self-efficacy to think about precalculus concepts. Survey results showed that compared to baseline, where both students solved ALEKS problems and waited for post-class feedback, live teacher feedback through real-time observations of ALEKS activity increased conceptual differentiation self-efficacy for both students. The teacher modified class binders to match ALEKS topics and created tests using multiple ALEKS outputs for subsequent semesters based on end-semester student feedback. Our study highlights potential to use a bilingual sensibility (Pangaro, 2021) to reimagine classroom technicity; combining tools and teacher agency to heighten the nimbleness of live classroom feedback for students with ADHD. Conference Format Contextualization References Friends Meeting We have not ordered a coffee delivery but have a coffee machine running in the kitchen. Note: Jude's Bee session will be on the roof. You could decide to stay in the room and drink coffee. Howard Silverman | Claudia WestermannDC Arts Center - Gallery As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the globe, it became evident that there had been a lack of attention to the idea of care. Daily news in many countries was marked by helplessness and emergency decrees. An entire planet seemed to have forgotten what it meant to live. Care emerged as the oblivion of modernity. Yet writing about care is hardly new. Pre-pandemic theorists of care range from Confucius and Plato, through Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, to Michel Foucault and María Puig de la Bellacasa. In cybernetics circles, consider the care implicit in Norbert Wiener’s The Human Use of Human Beings, or in Humberto Maturana’s emphasis on languaging, Ranulph Glanville’s on control as enabling, and Annetta Pedretti’s on weaving, flowing, and rhythms. In this workshop we host a participatory inquiry to juxtapose cybernetics and care, positing and probing analogies, distinctions, and involutions. We present this session in fishbowl format, inviting audience members to join us in conversation. This circle begins with two seated participants and an empty chair. Anyone may take an open chair, and seated participants may voluntarily relinquish their chairs. A full circle may be enjoined by indicating or standing silently behind one of the players, who then cedes the chair. After exiting, one may rejoin again later. Initial propositions and provocations A similarity between cybernetics and care is their boundlessness, their participation in the infinite. We are living cybernetics, whether or not we appreciate it. Likewise, we all experience being cared for, which thereby invites reciprocities. Both cybernetics and care begin with the intimacies of proximate relations. Like cybernetics, care is explicitly transdisciplinary, attracting scholars from across academia. Both defy easy definition or description. Pluralities coexist. The ethics described by Heinz von Foerster is an ethics of care (or a version thereof). It is an ethics that manifests without becoming explicit. Responsibilities and rewards reside in actions themselves. A cybernetic politics, one that reflects this ethics, would be a politics of care. Theorizing on a politics of care would be complemented by recent theorizing on cybersystemic governance. A cybernetics of care points to a post-liberal imaginary. Mateus van Stralen | José dos Santos Cabral Filho | Diego Fagundes | Erica MattosPark or DC Arts Center - Theater Purpose / Context This article explores alternative strategies in the design of academic conferences, critically reflecting on the organisation of the 18th Brazilian Congress of Systems(CBS18). While sharing and developing knowledge in specific areas are the primary goal of academic meetings - including congresses and symposiums - these events traditionally focus on keynote presentations by reference scholars and parallel sessions of paper presentations. Social interaction moments, such as coffee breaks, dinners, and post-conference gatherings, often aren't the main focus. However, feedback frequently points to these periods as crucial for productive and pleasurable conversations. Based on this understanding, the CBS18 innovated by prioritising moments that foster conversation and collective learning. Furthermore, the organisation was based on a preliminary meeting inspired by Stafford Beer's parallel conversation models, setting a structure for authors to contribute and interrelate the congress themes. Design/methodology/approach Our approach is based on a critical reflection on the experience of organising a non-traditional congress, correlating it with other Brazilian Congresses of Systems held in Brazil, along with bibliographical references. Findings Our approach, which emphasises conversational dynamics and collective learning, aligns with the principles highlighted by Verbeke (2015) and reflects the collaborative knowledge construction discussed by Durrant et al. (2015) and Sweeting & Hohl (2015). By integrating systemic and cybernetic principles into the event's content and organisation, as advocated by Margaret Mead and explored in Richards (2015), we not only embraced Mead's self-reflective practice but also advanced the discourse on academic conference formats. This convergence of non-traditional formats, interactive sessions, and iterative content development processes exemplifies an engaged, participant-driven model of academic discourse, underscoring the congress's contribution to evolving scholarly communication methods and fostering an active, inclusive intellectual community. Originality/value This article correlates the CBS18 design and outcomes with the discussions presented in the references, highlighting the congress's contribution to the ongoing evolution of academic conference formats. The focus on interactive sections with the sharing of food and systemic card games and the round table conversations at each paper presentation section offers a model that encourages active participation and learning and reflects the self-adaptive and reflective qualities central to these disciplines. Session / Thematic Strand This presentation can be part of a conversational session exploring how cybernetics reflects on cybernetics conferences and connects with the archiving archiving thematic strand. The session will be divided into two parts, one lasting 20 minutes and the other 15 minutes. First, we will conduct an interactive session with the audience/participants, providing an overview of the first activity we held at the CBS18 congress – the Systemic Breakfast. Participants will be divided into three groups of beginners and experts in cybernetic thinking, representing a diverse range of ages. Each group will receive a systemic card game, fostering discussions on the application of cybernetics to a congress on cybernetics. Additionally, we plan to provide some Brazilian food for participants to enjoy while engaging in group activities. In the second part, we will deliver a brief presentation detailing our experience at the CBS18. Paul PangaroFriends Meeting Please feel free to add directly to the Miro board for collaboration. Sunday Session for gathering insights during today's sessions and conversations—all in preparation of our final conversation on Tuesday at 7:30pm where we will summarize: What evidence did you see for Cybernetics offering value to modern challenges, great and small? What concepts and conversations, models and methods, can we gather and offer in future? What did you see that implies lack of impact, need for revision? Here is the full description of intention: Within the celebration of our 60th anniversary meeting we invite ourselves to critically consider the prior, current, and possible-future contributions of the discipline of Cybernetics. The recent, rich flourishing of "thinking in systems" is of course welcome, as agents at scales from individuals to nations to global populations seek methods for addressing today's wicked challenges. How can distinctions from Systems that are brought forth by Cybernetics— embrace of the bridging of machine and animal, digital and analog, reflexivity and responsibility—make a difference? Given Cybernetics from the 1940s and the activities of the ASC from the 1960s, how might self-reflection have us steer through the next 60 to 80 years? We invite all attendees to invoke their critical eye and practical experience during conference sessions and side conversations for encounters with these questions. At the end of each day we will informally gather for 30 minutes to reflect and collect our thoughts. Then in a 90-minute workshop format on Tuesday at 7:30pm. we will collate, categorize, prioritize, and articulate mechanisms for action across timescales to be agreed, perhaps from 3 years to 10 years to 60 or even 80 years. Outcomes may become triggers to the Society’s efforts over the current 3-year terms of its governing committees and beyond. Your Choice Dinner / attendees choose their own dinner place in the area. Some might want to join the theater sessions in the evening. These will start at 19:30. Registration is required. Claudia JacquesDC Arts Center - Theater The Art of the Viral Universe Video 09:50 September 2021 Through my window in Ossining, New York, I documented light and water reflection, refraction and absorption in the Hudson River and vegetation from 2017 to 2022 for a project called OdetoaRiver.com. This ongoing observation became a profound study of the river's dynamic systems and their interaction with the environment, reflecting cybernetic principles of feedback loops and environmental responsiveness. Between March 2020 and May 2021 while in lock down because of Covid-19, the sight of the river offered me moments of sanity in an insane time in our reality. The video shared here is a notebook, a meditative visual diary, an observer creating meaning in an attempt to stay in sanity. Inspired by Carla Rae Johnson, The Art of the Viral Universe notebook series, which in turn is inspired by Martin Luther King in The Arc of the Moral Universe, this visual notebook reflects events occurred between March 2020 and May 2021, along with Flora Lewis, The Quantum Mechanics of Politics narrative, published in the New York Times in 1983. Flora’s insight on political changes and human nature through quantum mechanics seems more relevant than ever in the current context and attempt to stay in sanity. It also resonates with the cybernetic understanding of complex systems' behaviors, making her analysis particularly pertinent in today's context. Music by John Banrock who so gracefully allowed me to edit and reedit to fit the visual mood. https://www.dropbox.com/s/i78fschksdmaxb8/insanity2_1.mp4?dl=0 Vivian XuDC Arts Center - Theater Skin Series is a new media artwork that explores the mediation and alteration of the human umwelt through the intervention of wearable sensory apparatuses. Inspired by the work of Estonian cybernetic biologist Jakob von Uexküll, Skin Series experiments with the malleability of organism-environment relationships, and utilizes the human skin as an interface and venue for proposing wearable prosthetics that remap human sensory communication channels towards more-than-human perceptual worlds. Through this, the work explores the co-adaptation of man and technology, framing the two as a hybrid cybernetic system, at the same time, drawing attention to the role of environmental triggers on sensory perception that, in turn, changes behavior. This series puts forth art as a vehicle for playful inquiry in re-configuring the balance between man, technology, and environment in ways that are neither function-driven nor user-driven, but rather strives to deconstruct the human and the anthropocentric experience. The series currently consists of two wearable experiments: the Electric Skin and the Sonic Skin. The Electric Skin consists of a matrix of custom-designed capacitive touch sensors that act as probes that reach out from the user into the environment. The electrical fluctuations in the environment sensed through the sensors trigger the modularly designed control circuits to vibrate on the wearer’s body. In this sense, the Electric Skin acts as an information capturing system that amplifies environmental signals onto the human body. The Sonic Skin contours the human form with a directional sound wall generated from a chest plate of matrixed ultrasonic transducers. The journey of the sound projected from the body is audible to the audience and illustrates the real-time physical relationship between the wearer and the environment. The Sonic Skin acts as an information projection system that sends signals outwards from the wearer’s body into the surrounding environment. Proposed Format Jude LombardiDC Arts Center - Theater In 1992, I attended my first ASC conference as a participant and left as a video ethnographer. Over the past 30-plus years, I have captured many ASC-related proceedings, as well as created a variety of movies that I often present at ASC happenings, such as ASC Conferences, Speakers Series events, and the #NewMacy's group. For the ASC60, it is my intention to create a 20-30 minute montage movie of vignettes from the video I have collected over the decades. The montage movie will relate to the themes of this conference: languaging, archiving and technicity. The screening will be followed by a conversation. Yi Luo | Jesse ShellDC Arts Center - Theater and Online If you want to join this session online, please follow these steps: 1> Register for the session via the Register button below. See the video link at the top of the page for more information. 2> After registering, refresh your browser. 3> Click the location displayed next to the presenters' names above to open the Zoom link. Please note that only officially registered conference delegates can access individual session links. If you experience any issues, please contact events@asc-cybernetics.org for assistance. In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence and generative AI, the ethical dimensions of technology development and application have never been more critical. As we seek innovative ways to engage and educate users about the complexities of AI biases and ethical practices, gamification emerges as a powerful tool to transform passive observers into active participants. Gamification leverages the intrinsic motivations that drive human behavior — such as the desire for mastery, achievement, and social interaction — to make learning and engagement more effective and enjoyable. By applying these principles to the context of AI ethics, we can create experiences that inform and inspire users to take action and advocate for responsible AI practices. The colloquy is co-hosted with Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games and author of The Art of Game Design. He is also a Distinguished Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. The goal is to explore gamification's potential to cultivate a community of ethically aware and empowered technology users. Key discussion topics will include integrating game design principles into AI interactions to educate users about value misalignment, employing narrative techniques to foster empathy, and creating user-centered gamified experiences. Furthermore, the colloquy will examine the impact of these methodologies on enhancing ethical awareness and empowerment in AI. The discussion will focus on digital products and services where gamification strategies can be integrated. We will explore the implications for broader societal and industry practices, emphasizing how gamified education can foster ethical transformations within the tech industry. Additionally, the dialogue aims to raise awareness about ethical AI and inspire practical strategies for incorporating gamification into AI products. We will discuss scenarios in which the introduction of gamification is appropriate and where it should be avoided during the development process of digital products. By leveraging gamification, the colloquy aspires to make AI literacy education more accessible and provide insights into the strategic implementation of gamification within the design of AI products. In the first 20-30 minutes, the panelists will delve into the key topics outlined above. Following this initial discussion, the session will open up to the audience for an interactive segment. We welcome the audience to ask questions about the discussion content, share their opinions about applying gamification in AI products, and discuss ways to educate users and encourage developers to build ethical AI. This interactive segment aims to foster a lively exchange of ideas and contributions on the ethical dimensions of AI and the role of gamification in promoting responsible technology practices. David FamilianDC Arts Center - Gallery Introduction First, I will reflect on my research process during the last four years and then discuss how it relates to cybernetics, to computational art, and ultimately to this exhibition. Then, I will discuss my overarching curatorial objective to present works that are not merely didactic or illustrations of complexity but those that allow the viewer to directly experience the tension of order and disorder, predictability and uncertainty, and a deeper understanding of the dynamic elements of complex systems. Finally, I will focus on the five works from the exhibition commissioned through our Black Box Projects initiative, which started in 2013. Exhibition Question: I’m interested in your feedback (pun intended) about how the overall exhibition conveys different aspects of complex systems. For instance, we saw how in Laura Splan’s Baroque Bodies (Sway) by looking deeper into the structure of the double helix and chromatin, she finds DNA and proteins that have myriad, interacting factors that affect epigenetics, reproduction, health, etc. What other works did you find especially compelling in revealing different characteristics of complexity? Cybernetics Question: What I have discovered in my research is that it seems that discipline-based, siloed scientific researchers do not really engage with the transdisciplinary nature of cybernetics. Additionally, it seems that the US scientists do not acknowledge the rich history of British cybernetics, especially in its focus on biology and psychology. Do you agree with these observations and if so, how can this gap can be bridged by fostering more transdisciplinary approaches? The “Wicked Problems” Question: Adapting to seeing the world as a complex system is more than a paradigm shift—it is how our mind needs to adapt from material to process, substance to pattern, and linear narrative to a dynamic process. Barry Richmond has said must understand complexity and utilize systems thinking in order to “simultaneously see the forest and the trees.” Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, professors of design and urban planning at UC Berkeley, coined the term “Wicked problems” for daunting issues that require unraveling using systems thinking (climate change, economic equality, social unrest, just to name a few). While systems thinking originated over 50 years ago, most people do not understand how many of the “wicked problems” we face all share an underlying structure. How do we better communicate “complexity” and complex systems? And how can everyone––scholars and the general public––better understand systems thinking when our survival on this planet is at stake? Juliana Mariano Alves | Adler Looks JorgeFriends Meeting Motivated by past discussions about the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC)'s purpose and organizational structure, we set on a journey to conduct an organizational diagnosis of ASC using the Viable System Model (VSM). Additionally, this study responds to the current board's aspirations to strengthen ASC’s institutional capacity to address membership growth, project proposals and global expansion. ASC was founded 60 years ago, in 1964, in Washington, DC, with the purpose of driving advancements in cybernetics as an inter/trans/meta-disciplinary field. Through conferences, seminars and discussions, in presence and online, ASC continues to coordinate efforts to be at the forefront of both thinking and practice in this domain. These past six decades brought several changes in society, academia’s funding for cybernetics and the general interest in the field. How are ASC’s activities reflecting its purpose and adapting to an ever-changing environment? As members of the executive board, we have reviewed ASC’s structure and strategies for managing complexity in policy-making and policy implementation. We focused on two key aspects of governance: steering and regulation. In our VSM diagnosis, we observed how the actual organizational structures try to match the environmental complexity. In the next phase, we plan to hold a participatory process to gather contributions from the ASC board and members, propose changes, or challenge our initial diagnosis of the organization-in-focus. This aims to understand the perspectives from inside and outside of the ASC’s VSM and identify needed changes. The focus is on the internal coherence of the system, which emerges from the interconnectedness of its constituent components. The ultimate goal for this diagnosis is to identify the necessary and sufficient preconditions for the viability of ASC as an organization in a highly changing environment. Along the way, strengths are likely to be identified, and VSM dysfunctions or pathologies may surface. In the process, we also look at how languaging plays a role in the members’ perception of ASC as an organization and its role within cybernetics. Jose Cabral FilhoDC Arts Center - Gallery This session, by exploring an erotic gaze into cybernetics concepts, proposes to consider play as a viable concept to expand the language of cybernetics. Play is one of the most ubiquitous and fundamental activities for human beings, if not for all living being. It is a purposeful action, but it is in principle an action without a function, even if it can be used to develop abilities. Play implies the presence of indeterminacy; it revolves around an uncertainty core. In essence, the activity of playing happens around a black box, necessarily a non-trivial black box. Play may be considered as a conversation-like activity that manages non-trivial black boxes, not as a way to whiten them, but rearticulate their position. Within an erotic framework, cybernetic control (whether by restriction or management) can be nuanced as a kind of play and that may help us to amplify the discussion on reflexivity and other issues. Considering the logical circularity of desire, several essential concepts of cybernetics may gain new flavours. The observer as a desiring being, for instance, is caught in an intricate web of reflexivity that poetically dissolves the prominence of objects and puts emphasis on the reflexive process. The issue of distinction is problematized and reimagined in a completely different manner if we consider that everything said is said to a desiring being. Similarly, automation ceases to be the cancelation of desire through its anticipation and externalization. Instead of serving as the eradication of otherness, automation may foster interaction among people, allowing for the emergence of a new level of dialogue. Moreover, play, by articulating determinacy and indeterminacy in games, shows the possibility of overcoming transgression as the main Western strategy for achieving innovation. Bringing play into into the discourse shift focus to the conversational aspects of control and communication, potentially opening new avenues for connecting cybernetics to the most essential and intriguing feature of living beings - the ability to love one another. Stuart Umpleby | Tatiana Medvedeva | Allenna Leonard and othersFriends Meeting Stuart Umpleby and Tatiana Medvedeva: The Technology of Participation, facilitation methods created by the Institute of Cultural Affairs, are a set of methods that help people develop plans for working together. These methods are used to lead people through an exercise where they define their vision of the future, identify obstacles to achieving the vision, and then formulate plans to remove the obstacles. In recent years the authors have used these methods in several organizations. This presentation explains group facilitation methods in terms of a theory and describes two examples of such exercises in organizations in two countries: Bosnia and Russia. This will be followed by a conversation with Allenna Leonard on how these particular technology of participation methods compare to the Viable System Model. We are looking forward to a vivid discussion that will hopefully be joined by many others. DC Arts Center - Theater Grab a coffee from the Gallery or from across the street. DC Arts Center - Gallery + Streamed Online This is a long coffee break, during which we will talk to the 2024 ASC Awardees who were unable to join us for the Awards Ceremony on Saturday due to time zone issues. We will list the names of the awardees who will be present at a later point. Live stream: https://vimeo.com/event/4297388 Friends Meeting Coffee served on the side during session. Claudia Jacques | Carlos VidalesDC Arts Center - Gallery Cybersemiotics theory (based on the work of its founder, Søren Brier) is an interdisciplinary field that combines conceptual elements of cybernetics, semiotics, information theory, systems theory, and phenomenology to study and understand complex systems, particularly those involving communication and meaning. It explores the relationship between information, communication, cognition, and the creation of meaning in both natural and artificial systems. In this sense, we consider that cybersemiotics can be considered a contemporary development of cybernetics that places particular attention on the meaning-making processes that were absent from cybernetics since its beginning in the 1940s. Pondering on the idea of a second-order reflection on the history of cybernetics (archiving archiving) as a way to link the past with the future, we consider it important to discuss the concepts of machine, communication, and meaning in theory and practice as a way to move from cybernetics to cybersemiotics.Contemporary technological development has tended to emphasize topics such as information processing, data analysis, software and computational development, algorithms, AI, and the like, but these kinds of topics and discussions seem to ignore that there is always an observer from whom that information, that data or that software is relevant or, significant. Cybersemiotics is based on second-order cybernetics but it considers that it is necessary to include a semiotic theory of sign production to understand meaning emergence in natural and artificial systems. Then, our main goal is to propose cybersemiotics as a contemporary theoretical development of cybernetics by placing special attention on the theoretical and practical developments of concepts such as machine, communication, and meaning while also, exploring through ludic exchanges the significance in practice of the observer's interpretive role, further elucidating how meaning is construed within complex systems. Li Hengjie David | Thomas FischerDC Arts Center - Theater The proposed contribution reviews a recent effort to re-interpret a classic cybernetic device, W. Ross Ashby’s so-called “Ashby Box,” as a contemporary, batch-manufactured electronic device. The Ashby Box is the physically implemented, electromechanical forerunner of Heinz von Foerster’s conceptual “Non-Trivial Machine.” Most common technical machines are engineered and expected to present limited numbers of invariant input-output relationships (think pocket calculators and vending machines). Such machines are, therefore, analytically determinable, i.e., predictable on the basis of some observation. The Ashby Box, by contrast, implements a vast number of input-output mappings, thereby evading analytical determination. With this property, the Ashby Box (as well as its conceptual successor, the Non-Trivial Machine) is a centerpiece in cybernetic critiques of the quasi-mechanized roles of humans in social and organizational contexts. To make the puzzling hands-on qualities of the Ashby Box more broadly accessible and hopefully to thereby stimulate broader interest in the above-mentioned cybernetic critiques, the authors have recently developed a contemporary reinterpretation of the Ashby Box in the form of a microcontroller-based, battery-powered, hand-held electronic device. As did the original Ashby Box, the newly designed device features a minimal interface consisting of two toggle switches and two LEDs that prompt the user to engage in ultimately futile attempts at analytical determination. The proposed conference contribution will review the technical specification and circuitry, along with its underlying design and development process and the manufacture of this device. Conference participants will be invited to interact with the device and to jointly speculate on potential educational uses of this cybernetic demonstration piece. Paul Pangaro | Mark V Sullivan | Kate DoyleFriends Meeting A “generation” typically refers to a group of people born and living around the same time, sharing common history and experiences, as in “during the great depression,” or “after the advent of digital cameras”, or “in the time before widespread cellphone usage.” Understanding the unique dynamics and impacts of different generations can be challenging: How do we surface tacit differences in vocabulary, worldview, and values? What are the big barriers to reaching shared understanding and resonant values that, once removed, can lead to effective collaboration? Exploring these generational differences may unveil insights and reveal cognitive and cultural blindspots. It may also lead to dialogue that fosters innovative and creative approaches to pressing societal issues. We believe that Cybernetics is critical in addressing societal issues and surely it has faced the challenges of transdisciplinary conversation from its inception. Today’s cybernetic conversations must directly encounter the challenges of trans-generational collaboration, which today exist in more-dense layers than before — widening differences of education, experience, media, social interaction, culture — even beyond what Margaret Mead articulated in her 1970 work on the “generation gap”, an earlier wave of awareness of the demands of cross-generational interaction. Mead explicitly called out “co-figurative cultures” where elder and younger generation collaborate to provide what is necessary but missing from their respective generation’s knowledge and practice. She also noted that Every generation has a trilogy of commitments: To the past, heritage; to the present, ongoing cultural patterns; to the future, adaption and survival. [1] This conversation session draws on participants and experiences in prior “Colloquies for Transgenerational Collaboration” (CTC), hosted previously by the #NewMacy Meetings in association with ASC, RSD12, and Carnegie Mellon University. This session will provide an introduction to the Colloquies thread at ASC60th, where a series of Colloquies will be held, some continuations and some novel. Participants in prior CTC sessions, including Kate Doyle, Mark Sullivan, and Paul Pangaro, will open with brief statements that offer cross-critiques of prior experiences, for roughly the first 30 minutes. Thereafter they will engage other CTC participants and the audience in general with issues of sharing language, understanding, wordviews, values, and intentions across generational differences. Session is hybrid, total 75 minutes in length. [1] Mead, Margaret. 1970. Culture and Commitment: a study of the generation gap. Garden City, NY: American Museum of Natural History. https://archive.org/details/culturecommitmen0000unse_k3k8/page/n7/mode/2up. R. Eva King | Frederick SteierDC Arts Center - Gallery This session introduces a quantum theory-based theoretical model for cultural transformation. Braiding concepts from cognitive science, quantum theory, and Indigenous ways of knowing, the model includes quantum social learning (QSL) theory and key cybernetic elements such as framing and Maturana’s languaging. The model becomes a complex adaptive system where each system is entangled with the others. Quantum theory provides many concepts that allow us to move past binary or Cartesian thought. The theoretical model in this paper focuses primarily on entanglement, which is when two or more objects are connected in space-time over a distance. Entanglement can be applied as a metaphor to create transdisciplinary bridges between normally siloed systems in theoretical models. As technology exponentially increases, most cultures rely more on technology than the natural world around them. Reclaiming Indigenous ways of knowing brings important concepts such as relationships and value for the natural world into the larger system. Many Indigenous cultures already see much of the world through a quantum lens. Language then serves as the entanglement to cultural change, much as Maturana describes. Cognitive science describes the critical period, or crucial learning time when humans create frameworks to experience the world. Machine learning also has a critical period, as do animals, such as the imprinting of birds on parental figures. Understanding the commonalities will help us to transcend into a time/ space of a more-than-human world. This on-site, hybrid session will include a 15-minute introduction via PowerPoint to the theory and model of QSL and cultural transformation, followed by a 25-minute playful, scholarly, open discussion with the scholar and their mentor. Guillermo Sánchez Sotés | Thomas Fischer | Christiane M. HerrDC Arts Center - Theater This study investigates the difference between research “as done,” and research “as reported” by giving an account that aims to faithfully portray an academic research project “as done,” and relating it to its formal report. While the process of researching is similar to that of design, reported academic research often omits the presentation of instances of deviation resulting from the acquisition of new and unexpected insights or failures encountered along the way. We provide a review of the first author’s recently conducted Ph.D. project that initially aimed to investigate the street-level production and use of temporal and informal structures in the city of Suzhou (China) through participatory research-by-design. However, the project evolved from street-level participatory field research to more theoretical aspects of urban development and architectural theory formation through appropriations. This shift was a consequence of a combination of reasons: The language barrier between the local population and the Ph.D. candidate, a native Spanish – as well as English speaker; local suspicions towards outsiders enquiring into operations of often highly competitive and, in their physical presence, no more than tolerated and sometimes outright illegal structures; and eventually, a decree by a University in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that ongoing field Ph.D. research projects be converted into lab or desk research projects. With this case study, we present an account reflecting the openness often observed in the design process as analogous to the development of academic research. This viewpoint provides an alternative perspective on the characterization of academic research “as reported” that is equally justifiable and viable – one that conceptualizes it as a journey rather than solely in rational and deterministic terms. It is hoped that this contribution to the conference can foster a discussion on the nuanced expansion of academic vocabulary, aiming to facilitate a deeper understanding and engagement with the complexities inherent in research practices. A seminar-style meeting venue with an opportunity to project visual material would be most helpful for the presentation and discussion of this proposed contribution. Sofia Penabaz-Wiley | Brett Reed NeeseDC Arts Center - Theater In Stafford Beer's "What is Cybernetics" lecture, he mentions that "[cybernetics] started in Mexico City of all places." This intrigues us. In spite of living in the place where Beer claims this discipline started, this is a version of the history we had not been told. What happens if we dig into that footnote? Are there archives that tell that story in greater detail? Why is this story just a footnote? How is the story of cybernetics -- and the way we tell that story -- connected to the very power structures cybernetics aims to address? And, on our 60th anniversary, what does it mean to be an American Society of Cybernetics if we exclude this part of the story in our histories which traditionally start in media res at the Macy Conferences in New York City, New York, United States of America? These are questions we propose to raise under the thematic strand of "archiving archiving." We imagine a 45 minute open round-table conversation on the connection of Mexico to the development of cybernetics with the members and friends of the ASC who can provide much greater insight than is publicly available. We imagine this conversation itself be translated into Spanish (to provide greater access to Mexican academics) and archived in the Experimental Glossary -- in this way, we would be archiving archiving. We intend to spend the last 15 minutes of the session developing an "action plan" to go about archiving what materials might exist in Mexico. However, we are also prepared for the possibility that conference participants may not know much more than us about this story. If that is the case, we can use this session to broaden the dialogue and address the question of the place of archiving in general, since so many of the archives we do know about are not digitized and still physically located in a physical place -- and even if they were digitized, they would still exist in a place, with political, geographical, ecological and physical constraints associated with that place (or places). In this case, we can address questions such as: How do the political and geographical contexts of an archive influence the interpretation and accessibility of its contents? This, too, is a second-order turn on the theme of archiving that we believe will prove to provide a valuable contribution to the conference. Kimberly BlacuttDC Arts Center - Gallery What are the consequences of machine intelligence on the physical landscape and how do those consequences affect our experience within the landscape? If we can map and understand those consequences, we may be able to envision alternatives that increase our agency as we act upon those landscapes. How can we map and represent the infusion of machine intelligence into physical landscapes? What language, models, and visualizations can we use to investigate the manifestations of algorithmic recommendation systems on the physical landscape and how can we describe and classify novel forms of interactions with the landscape that are catalyzed by digital networks? How are algorithmically recommended routes distributed by GIS-informed platforms such as Google Maps or Waze creating feedback loops that shape the dynamics of our physical surroundings and our experience of them? The layered mapping that reveals intersections of ecological systems has been used in fields like landscape architecture to understand the influences and interdependencies of different ecological systems (such as hydrology, topography, soils, vegetation, pedestrian and vehicular circulation, and more) within the same physical landscape. Machine intelligence could be treated as a type of ecological system which can be geospatially mapped and similarly layered to help us better understand potential conflicts and synergies between the technical layer(s) and other ecological systems within the landscape. Maps may be used to represent our understanding of the relationships between elements within a landscape and especially to understand what the landscape affords us (Google maps can tell us where we can walk, where we can drive, where we can eat); in turn, our understanding of those maps may shape our perception and actions upon that landscape (we will act upon the recommendations). Your Choice Lunch / attendees choose their own lunch place in the area. In the afternoon, sessions will start at 14:00 in the DC Arts Center and in the Friends Meeting Frederick Steier | Stuart Umpleby | Bill Reckmeyer | Larry Richards | Pille Bunnell | Allenna Leonard | Lou Kauffman | Paul PangaroFriends Meeting + Streamed Online In the spirit of a Cybernetics of Cybernetics as central to our American Society for Cybernetics, we offer a panel of former presidents of ASC bringing forth reflections on the life of our ASC with possibilities for our future. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz equated the idea of culture to “the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.” As a way of marking, at age 60, our identity of, and who we are as ASC, please join our assembly of former ASC presidents in enacting the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. In true ASC fashion, this session is intended to be highly interactive and emergent. Panelists, listed in order of being ASC President: Stuart Umpleby, Bill Reckmeyer, Larry Richards, Fred Steier, Pille Bunnell, Allenna Leonard, Lou Kauffman, Paul Pangaro This session will be streamed online. If you are a registered conference delegate or presenter, you can click the location information above to access the online stream. Daniel Rosenberg-MunozDC Arts Center - Gallery We increasingly inhabit a world filled with interactive things that shine, beep, and keep us busy. Designed to seek and grasp our full attention, these technologies–such as mobile computing, IoTs, and XR–detach us from our immediate surroundings and the people around us [6, 7]. Although research in human-computer interaction (HCI) has proposed technologies for calmer, slower, and more embodied experiences [8, 4, 1], most solutions are interfaces to another space–we can talk to people who are not here, we can read information about somewhere else. Instead of tuning us out, can we design technologies to help us tune in to our immediate physical surroundings [6]? Cybernetics can answer this question. Driving from the research of biologists Maturana and Varela, I examine the concept of surroundings, showing how our reality is brought forth through our actions (doings) within an environment to which we are structurally coupled [5]. Using the feedback-loop model of interaction proposed by design theorist Pangaro [2], I explore how the surroundings could be added as a third system, expanding the interaction between the person and the computer. Finally, the work of design theorist Glanville, brings the discussion to design. I use his theory of design as conversation [3] to investigate how designers can integrate tuning to surroundings as a goal within the creative process. I propose a 1-hour conversational session. Following a 10-minute presentation, participants will be divided into three groups; each will discuss one of the following questions: (1) how can we describe our physical surroundings from a cybernetic perspective? (2) what is the role of our surroundings as a system that provides the context for the interaction between person and computer? (3) how designers can integrate tuning to surroundings as a goal within their creative process. After discussing separately for 30 minutes, participants will present their insights to each other through written descriptions and diagrams. Each group will have 5 minutes to present. References Friends Meeting We have not ordered a coffee delivery but have a coffee machine running in the kitchen. DC Arts Center - Gallery There is a machine with limited capacity running in the kitchen. Peter JonesDC Arts Center - Gallery The English-speaking information ecosystem has been transformed by technological evolution, from television to New Media, from legacy and newspaper media to social media and the wide range of internet services. Earlier media transformations had expanded freedoms of expression in response to the expansion of information within a medium, according to McLuhan’s theory of media as the “extensions of man.” McLuhan’s Laws of Media theory further suggests that each extension enhanced some capabilities of communication, and erased or obsoleted others, and retrieved other capabilities from former media. These cycles of media change follow a pattern McLuhan labelled the “tetrad of media effects” as the function of media as systems of effects perpetrated enduring, and often insidious effects on human cognition and social evolution. We can observe that positive leverage of cybernetic principles enabled human communications through electronic media to flourish – individual accessibility, transparency, immediate feedback, adaptability, and social context creation. I suggest these same functions have also exponentiated the technogenic platforms of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2020) and surveillance governing (Monahan, 2010), which lend themselves to platforms for information and cognitive warfare (Miller, 2023). From a constructivist perspective two relevant theories are adapted as a coherent methodology, for a reflexive assessment of actions and effects in sociotechnical complexity. McLuhan’s media ecology theory (the Tetrad), and the (Jones) Systemic Theory of Change (SToC) model. The Tetrad analysis describes the changes of state of media from ground to changed forms, and enables reimagining the next stages of media evolution in a social ecosystem. It enables analysis to identify potential future outcome states of a medium. Systemic ToCs are model forms used to describe multiple change processes to account for higher complexity and multiple agencies over long durations. Multiple new media platforms in Web 2.0 have evolved to become massive global content production and user surveillance systems, as McLuhan had predicted. With US government and Wall Street insiders scheming a corporate piracy of Tik-Tok, under false premises of Chinese spying, Silicon Valley is poised to grab a new level of private-public control of media infrastructure. With the recent Congressional lawfare against Tik-Tok to secure the growing channel for US financial capitalism, several significant, long-term risks to human wellbeing and societal institutions emerge. Conversation proposal: The topic of the talk lends itself to an informal workshop, whereby after the paper talk a workshop could be held with small groups using paper and markers to create media tetrads for a chosen media system, adopting a cybernetics perspective. Following brief instruction and dialogue prompts, groups or individuals can create tetrad models and discuss them in the larger group. The Media Tetrad can be theorized as a 3rd order effects system that has very limited direct control, but is leveraged by the selection preferences of multiple “media tribes” or adopters of specific technologies, such as recently observed in the Tik-Tok ecosystem. DC Arts Center - Theater You can check whether the coffee machine in the gallery produces enough coffee; otherwise, grab a coffee from across the street. Juliana Mariano Alves | Michelle Bonatti | Sandro Luis Schlindwein | Fred Newton da Silva Souza | Frank Gudim Silva | Markus SchwaningerDC Arts Center - Theater Rapid global changes generate increasing demand for resources such as water, energy, and food, threatening the survival of humanity. An approach gaining prominence among policymakers and researchers is the concept of the "water-energy-food nexus" (hereinafter referred to as the “nexus”). The promise is that this approach would be capable of driving the implementation of a cybersystemic vision aimed at enhancing policy coordination, promoting synergies, and managing trade-offs among the sectors that comprise the nexus. The challenge encompasses three sectors and policy areas with distinct institutional and organizational structures operating at different levels, from the local to the global. In this context, the state of Tocantins in Brazil stands out strategically due to its vast territorial extension and extraordinary environmental diversity. The Cerrado biome constitutes 91% of the Tocantins territory, making it the second state with the largest preserved area of the biome in Brazil. The state of Tocantins also stands out for its significant contribution to agricultural production and energy generation, as well as for encompassing a major portion of the largest entirely enclosed watershed in the country: the Tocantins-Araguaia, with large hydroelectric power plants installed on the Tocantins River. As a part of the MATOPIBA region (an acronym for Maranhão - MA, Tocantins - TO, Piauí - PI, and Bahia - BA), Tocantins is the primary grain producer in the northern region of Brazil, yielding about 5.6 million tons and cultivating grains across 1.5 million hectares during the 2019/2020 crop season. This configuration provides a rich context for understanding the complex interdependent relationships of the nexus in shaping and sustaining human experience. This article addresses the governance and management of nexus interdependence through the lens of organizational cybernetics, offering an integrative perspective for understanding a fragmented landscape. The aim is to understand the capacity of the systems that comprise the nexus to respond, learn, adapt, and evolve not only as practical challenges but also as invitations to engage with emerging understandings and logics in search of integrative improvements. Therefore, this research can contribute to diagnose and design better mechanisms for the coordination and coherence of cross-sectoral policies. Format: Using a short video as a starting point, the presentation will prompt a brainstorming session to explore the interdependence between the water-energy-food nexus, motivating the audience to reflect on and take action regarding the topic. Claudia Westermann | Frederick SteierDC Arts Center - Theater It is within the context of a notion of ubiquitous crisis that the call by artists, designers, scholars in art and design disciplines, as well as indigenous researchers from a wide variety of backgrounds for renewed reflection on the methodologies employed in processes of inquiry recently seems to have led to broader response. The rise of interest in non-orthodox research methodologies has also led to a push in attention for critical and systemic transdisciplinary methodologies, including cybernetic modes of research, with their focus on including subjective observers. The 2024 publication The Blind Spot by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson mentions – albeit briefly – cybernetics as one of the modes of inquiry that defines a new desirable approach to research as it incorporates subjective experience in its research method (2024). The book, however, does not cover cybernetic history, and Norbert Wiener’s early and explicit contribution to the discussion, entitled ‘The role of the observer ’ (1936), for instance, is not mentioned. The open-access essay collection Cybernetics for the 21st Century, edited by Yuk Hui and also published this year (2024), explicitly explores the possibilities of cybernetics with its subjective observer as a research methodology for contemporary times. The collection also includes contemporary inquiries from scholars beyond the Anglo-American and central-European contexts in which cybernetics is typically discussed. As valuable as these publications are, there is cybernetic expertise on what it means to observe observing that they have not touched upon. I would like to use this session to re-enquire the particularity of cybernetic second-order observation. Ranulph Glanville’s objects, in this context, for example, could immensely enrich the debate (1975). Other participants of this conference may bring their cybernetic observation examples to this session. If the weather permits, we can take all of these insights with us to the Zoo because it will help us to turn this session into a journey that is somewhat Batesonian (1972). References Bateson, Gregory. [1972] 1987. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc. Frank, Adam, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson. 2024. The Blind Spot. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Glanville, Ranulph. 1975. A Cybernetic Development on Epistemology and Observation Applied to Objects in Space and Time (as Seen in Architecture), Unpublished PhD Thesis. London: Department of Cybernetics, Brunel University. Hui, Yuk, ed. 2024. Cybernetics for the 21st Century: Volume 1: Epistemological Reconstruction. 1: Epistemological Reconstruction vols. Hong Kong: Hanart Press. Wiener, Norbert. 1936. “The Role of the Observer.” Philosophy of Science 3 (3): 307–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/184668. Arantzazu Saratxaga Arregi (with support from Larry Richards and Kate Doyle)DC Arts Center - Gallery The aim of this session is to present the hermeneutics of listening, especially in the work of Heinz, Foerster, Ranulph Glanville and Gregory Bateson. Introduction: Discourse frequently revolves around a purported transition from the inaugural epoch of cybernetics to its subsequent iteration, colloquially denoted as the shift from the first order to the second order of cybernetics. The change of direction is due to a change in the object of research, and the turning point is set by default from control systems via communication to observing systems. This shift does not mean a discontinuity, but rather a continuation of communication as the concern of a new epistemological current called constructivism. Aim: With regard to the aim of the conference, "Revision, redefinition and interpretation of the cybernetic vocabulary", I would like to trace the turn to second-order cybernetics back to a fundamental element: The hermeneutics of listening. My contribution is to examine listening in the works of Heinz von Foerster, Ranulph Glanville and Gregory Bateson from a hermeneutic-philosophical perspective and to place it at the center of the dialogical principle. Gregory Bateson said that the content of information is determined not by the sender but by the receiver. He expressed the dissolution of the separation between active and passive communication roles in favour of the communication cycle: Each participant in the communication process is an agent who, upon receiving, differentiates information. Similarly, according to Heinz von Foerster, the responsibility of communication lies in the hermeneutics of listening. Problem: The question and core problem of the article is to connect the hermeneutics of listening with the operation of differentiation. Perception, the operation of reception that Heinz von Foerster has repeatedly emphasized, is an act of taking in information. This reception is an operation of differentiation. It is in this context that the panel's concern should be seen. For it is not only based on the dialogue principle of second-order cybernetics, but also establishes the epistemic basis in a constructivist manner through communication. Method: Panel presentation (20 minutes) + panel discussion (30 minutes). Bill ReckmeyerDC Arts Center - Gallery I have been conducting a broad research project over the past decade – currently titled Homo Cyberneticus: Creating, Understanding, and Managing the Anthropocene – that focuses on the science and history of humanity’s rapidly-evolving cybernetic capabilities, especially over the last 500 years. I’m particularly concerned about how our increasingly sophisticated and powerful cyberneticity has empowered us to individually and collectively generate an unprecedented com-bination of interconnected people-centric and planet-centric issues over a comparatively short period of time – issues that are now becoming so consequential that they are threatening the habitability of Planet Earth for our species as well as many other forms of life. I’ve come to the view that human cyberneticity is the most significant and anomalous phenomenon in the known universe, because it creates a profoundly multi-dimensional agency (individuals, groups, organi-zations, communities, nation states) that enables people to transcend many of the physical constraints that pervade the universe as a whole and also many of the biological constraints that characterize life here on Earth. I’ve found there are two major features at the heart of these capabilities. One feature concerns the scientific nature and historical evolution of human agency, autonomy, and identity writ large. Critical examples include the tensions between democratic and autocratic activities as human agents seek to maximize their own freedom by controlling the freedom of other agents. The other feature concerns the scientific nature and historical evolution of human technicity more specifically, in terms of how people have developed technologies that help us steer and shape our interactions with the world we experience. Critical examples range from technologies that amplify our manufacturing and transportation capabilities to those that enhance our communication and computation capabilities, including the potential impact of artificial intelligence on many of these technological activities. I don’t want this to be a typical presentation followed by Q&A, but prefer to spark an extended interactive conversation that is intended to focus on exploring how people can use their human cyberneticity and technicity to improve the prospects for our species. I plan to open with a brief summary of my research project to frame the discussion and then spend the majority of the session addressing three major questions. First – what are the major challenges that humanity is facing as a result of our increasingly potent cybernetic capabilities? Second – how do these challenges illuminate the mix of positive and negative consequences of human cyberneticity, as enacted consciously and unconsciously during the emergence of our modern global world? Third – how can humanity act more effectively and responsibly, in terms of intentionally using our cybernetic and technical capabilities, to build a more equitable and sustainable future while there is still the time and opportunity to do so? I would close the session with a brief wrap-up to capture the highlights of our conversation. Paul PangaroDC Arts Center - Theater Please feel free to add directly to the Miro board for collaboration. Monday Session for gathering insights during today's sessions and conversations—all in preparation of our final conversation on Tuesday at 7:30pm where we will summarize: What evidence did you see for Cybernetics offering value to modern challenges, great and small? What concepts and conversations, models and methods, can we gather and offer in future? What did you see that implies lack of impact, need for revision? Here is the full description of intention: Within the celebration of our 60th anniversary meeting we invite ourselves to critically consider the prior, current, and possible-future contributions of the discipline of Cybernetics. The recent, rich flourishing of "thinking in systems" is of course welcome, as agents at scales from individuals to nations to global populations seek methods for addressing today's wicked challenges. How can distinctions from Systems that are brought forth by Cybernetics— embrace of the bridging of machine and animal, digital and analog, reflexivity and responsibility—make a difference? Given Cybernetics from the 1940s and the activities of the ASC from the 1960s, how might self-reflection have us steer through the next 60 to 80 years? We invite all attendees to invoke their critical eye and practical experience during conference sessions and side conversations for encounters with these questions. At the end of each day we will informally gather for 30 minutes to reflect and collect our thoughts. Then in a 90-minute workshop format on Tuesday at 7:30pm. we will collate, categorize, prioritize, and articulate mechanisms for action across timescales to be agreed, perhaps from 3 years to 10 years to 60 or even 80 years. Outcomes may become triggers to the Society’s efforts over the current 3-year terms of its governing committees and beyond. Your Choice Dinner / attendees choose their own dinner place in the area. Some might want to join the theater sessions in the evening. These will start at 19:30. Registration is required. Peter Vander AuweraDC Arts Center - Theater + Online You may join this session via this Zoom link. An engaging conversational workshop crafted to elicit compelling language that embodies the human elements within cybernetics. Attendees will be encouraged to participate actively by offering cybernetic terminology, which will be visually depicted in an immersive cloud-like interactive video installation accompanied by a bespoke soundscape. The session opens with an artistic cinematic cybernetic dream sequence. Through facilitated brainstorming sessions with the audience, participants will have the ability to fine-tune word generation. They will discuss the Paskian Knobs required to steer randomness and the style of the outcome. The session closes with a cinematic cybernetic song outro. The total duration is between 45-60 minutes. This session will be delivered remotely with remote interactions with the audience. An experience room is available for on-site participants, allowing them to engage collectively in this conversational setting. Please access the session 10 minutes before the starting hour, as the performance already starts during the virtual walk-in of the audience when visual and auditory segments set the stage for the experience. Cinematic cybernetic dream introduction: 2 min Jean Chu | Paul PangaroDC Arts Center - Gallery According to Statista’s 2022 survey of internet users in the United States, nearly half of the respondents (48%) consider themselves addicted or somewhat addicted to digital devices. Diving deeper into the demographics, there is a significant portion of internet addiction among younger ages; 13-17 (73%), 18-24 (71%), 25-34 (59%), 35-44 (54%), 45-54 (40%), 55-64 (39%), and 65+ (44%), according to a 2023 study from Gitnux. It is worth noting that technology has had an inevitable impact on our everyday lives while also changing how younger generations interact with the world. Recently, there have been discussions on combating technology addiction, especially with social media. For example, more than 40 states and the District of Columbia have filed lawsuits against Meta, arguing that "Facebook and Instagram deliberately manipulate their apps in ways that addict kids and teens," according to PBS News. At the same time, technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Extended Reality (XR) have begun to evolve and have sparked widespread attention over the past two to three years, with legislation and ethical issues still in formation. That is to say, we are now at a pivotal point in defining and shaping the future of how we want these new technologies to manifest in society. We believe that finding a balance between human well-being and emerging technology will be an opportunity and should be addressed among educators and practitioners. In this session of 75 minutes total, we will focus initially on the individual use cases of interdependent themes (e.g., social media, communication apps). We will then analyze the behaviors in terms of user needs and business model strategies. Finally, based on the defined scenarios and business needs, we will explore the potential of AI and XR technologies for these social themes, aiming for positive impact and symbiotic relationships between humans and technology.To foster discussion for the final 45 minutes we will invite participants from diverse generations, such as Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z, to share their perspectives on the interdependency of technology in their lives. By the end of the discussion, we hope to inspire business practitioners, designers, and educators on how technology can adhere to ethical principles and responsible use, and harmonize with human well-being. DC Arts Center - Gallery Ray L IsonDC Arts Center - Gallery You are invited to join a workshop that inquires into the design of learning systems to effect embodied second-order understandings and capabilities of participating learners. A learning system can be understood and designed as a social technology and, with cybersystemic reflexivity on the part of designers, can bring awareness to participants of the centrality of languaging in all that we do when we do what we do. The Applied Systems Thinking in Practice (ASTiP) group at the UK's Open University have pioneered the design of 'learning systems' that enable cybersystemic understandings and practices to be experienced, and thus embodied as part of a tradition of understanding out of which a learner thinks and acts. Vignettes and interactive exercises drawn from a module 'Managing Change with STiP' (26 weeks of supported on-line study) will offer inquiry structure and will be used to offer experiences to ASC participants. The Module is based around the co-published books 'Systems Practice: How to Act' and 'Social Learning systems & Communities of Practice' with an on-line learning-platform design based on Moodle. It has been studied by 1600 + students since 2010 (see https://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/modules/tb872 ). The workshop is relevant to all three themes of the conference as the modules, and the overall STiP programme has developed an extensive cybersystemic glossary and other resources to help learners. TB872 | Managing change with systems thinking in practice | Open University DC Arts Center - Theater Shantanu Tilak | Roo ShamimDC Arts Center - Theater Spatial Experiences involving tools such as virtual and augmented reality (VR, AR) focus on enhancing our understanding of complex systems by examining the interrelationships, collective action, and contextual factors in one-to-one and many-to-many human-computer interaction. Traditional quantitative data analysis and UX methods often overlook these distributed understandings of learning and collaboration in favor of more individualistic modes of analysis. This idea of understanding the diversity and context driven facets of social systems has been termed as “warm data” in cybernetic literature (Bateson, 2017; Johnson & Lee, 2021; Rodriguez, 2021). The concept of spatial data is rooted in dynamic and contextual interactions between living systems. It embodies the idea of warm data, and can lend much to a space of flows in our digitized world (Castells, 2010); in understanding how information can be effectively recreated and disseminated to facilitate transfer to real-life application. In practice, implementing spatial computing involves facilitating environments where participants can learn from and with each other informally and formally (Dick, 2021), thus gaining a deeper understanding of the system's dynamics and developing solutions that are informed by this collective learning. It also emphasizes the importance of the tone and atmosphere in understanding the “experience dynamics” of a system, which can significantly affect how relationships within the system are perceived and understood from multiple perspectives. In essence, spatial computing can enable the creation and naturalistic measurement of collective action between humans and computer devices not constrained by a specific medium (Pask, 1975; Tilak & Glassman, 2022). Through research and practice that focuses on gauging the quality of spatial computing experiences, designers and scholars can glean a deeper understanding of user behaviors, preferences, and emotional states. Such insights can generate essential data for creating engaging personalized educational and service experiences, improving product designs, and interface features (Boletsis & Karahasanovic, 2020). This data can be particularly useful in industries like education, retail, healthcare, entertainment, and smart home technologies, where understanding and predicting user behavior and interactions within a system can significantly enhance the effectiveness of products and services. Workshop Contextualization Our efforts not only aim to engage audience participants in practical activity, but also maintain a community of inquiry that discusses possible techniques and platform to design engaging spatial experiences post-conference completion. References Your Choice Lunch / attendees choose their own lunch place in the area. In the afternoon, sessions will start at 14:00 in the DC Arts Center. Allenna LeonardDC Arts Center - Gallery This introductory exercise in using the Viable System Model will give people a chance to engage in a process and play the role of ‘consultants’ advising a small business. Participants will be given a short description of each of the Viable System Model’s five management functions with questions from each perspective and a one page case study of a small business. The business includes camp site rental, a retail store offering camping, outdoor clothing and provisions and non-perishable food and seasonal Christmas tree sales. They will meet in their ‘system’ group, discuss questions with each other and with people in other ‘system’ groups. In the last ten minutes, they will report and make recommendations. This introductory exercise will give participants an opportunity to try out the VSM on a simple case, arrive at some answers and, hopefully encourage them to read the books and apply the model to their own lives (in a personal VSM) or to their organizations. DC Arts Center - Gallery Benjamin Bacon | Vivian XuDC Arts Center - Gallery Systema Cosmologic considers how the notion of extended reality may be used as a navigational toolkit for facilitating the social dreaming of alternative futures within a technological framework. This work looks at extended reality (XR) technology as a prototypical tool for conceptualizing new and alternative constructs of reality from a cybernetics and systems perspective. The authors are interested in reality as both a subject matter, as well as a material and a medium for interrogation and experimentation. This work critiques current mainstream siloed discussions and practices in XR that focus on individual aspects from perspectives of computer science, art history, media theory, and creative practice and seeks instead to reframe discourse around a unifying framework of cosmology. From this perspective, we look to the fields of physics, metaphysics, and spirituality in considering how practices of science, thought, and culture may guide current and future practices around reality media. We are interested in developing an actionable theoretical framework that can be interpreted into a manual of methods, a vocabulary and language, for generative worldbuilding that intermingles reality at different scales. Our focus is on the interplay of relational dynamics between operating agents within an XR world system that can present unique and, at times, alien umwelts that expand beyond human experiences towards more-than-human perspectives. With this objective in mind, we will generate a series of experimental worlds and experiences through the application of this framework and method to bring this discourse to a larger audience through participatory workshops. The workshop will be broken down into three parts. The first part introduces participants to the ideas and framework of Systema Cosmologic. The second part of the workshop familiarizes the participants with the reality-building toolkit and guides them through a world-building thought exercise. The third part of the workshop is an open discussion with the participants on evaluating methods and frameworks of world-building based on their discoveries. Ideal participants should come from varying disciplines and backgrounds. This workshop will be run by Benjamin Bacon (Duke Kunshan University) and Vivian Xu (DePaul University) from the Design, Technology and Radical Media Lab (DTRM). DC Arts Center - Theater Paul PangaroDC Arts Center - Theater Please feel free to add directly to the Miro board for collaboration. Tuesday and Final Session for gathering insights during today's sessions and conversations—all in preparation of our final conversation this same evening, Tuesday at 7:30pm, where we will summarize: What evidence did you see for Cybernetics offering value to modern challenges, great and small? What concepts and conversations, models and methods, can we gather and offer in future? What did you see that implies lack of impact, need for revision? Here is the full description of intention: Within the celebration of our 60th anniversary meeting we invite ourselves to critically consider the prior, current, and possible-future contributions of the discipline of Cybernetics. The recent, rich flourishing of "thinking in systems" is of course welcome, as agents at scales from individuals to nations to global populations seek methods for addressing today's wicked challenges. How can distinctions from Systems that are brought forth by Cybernetics— embrace of the bridging of machine and animal, digital and analog, reflexivity and responsibility—make a difference? Given Cybernetics from the 1940s and the activities of the ASC from the 1960s, how might self-reflection have us steer through the next 60 to 80 years? We invite all attendees to invoke their critical eye and practical experience during conference sessions and side conversations for encounters with these questions. At the end of each day we will informally gather for 30 minutes to reflect and collect our thoughts. Then in a 90-minute workshop format on Tuesday at 7:30pm. we will collate, categorize, prioritize, and articulate mechanisms for action across timescales to be agreed, perhaps from 3 years to 10 years to 60 or even 80 years. Outcomes may become triggers to the Society’s efforts over the current 3-year terms of its governing committees and beyond. Your Choice Dinner / attendees choose their own dinner place in the area. Some might want to join the theater sessions in the evening. These will start at 19:30. Registration is required. Paul PangaroDC Arts Center - Theater Please feel free to put reflections directly into post-its in the Miro Board. Read-out and collaboration on the future of Cybernetics and the ASC, based on daily sessions that gathered insights such as: What evidence did you see for Cybernetics offering value to modern challenges, great and small? What concepts and conversations, models and methods, can we gather and offer in future? What did you see that implies lack of impact, need for revision? All the above as precursor to this session's conversation. Our intentions overall: Within the celebration of our 60th anniversary meeting we invite ourselves to critically consider the prior, current, and possible-future contributions of the discipline of Cybernetics. The recent, rich flourishing of "thinking in systems" is of course welcome, as agents at scales from individuals to nations to global populations seek methods for addressing today's wicked challenges. How can distinctions from Systems that are brought forth by Cybernetics— embrace of the bridging of machine and animal, digital and analog, reflexivity and responsibility—make a difference? Given Cybernetics from the 1940s and the activities of the ASC from the 1960s, how might self-reflection have us steer through the next 60 to 80 years? We invite all attendees to invoke their critical eye and practical experience during conference sessions and side conversations for encounters with these questions. At the end of each day we will informally gather for 30 minutes to reflect and collect our thoughts. Then in a 90-minute workshop format on Tuesday at 7:30pm. we will collate, categorize, prioritize, and articulate mechanisms for action across timescales to be agreed, perhaps from 3 years to 10 years to 60 or even 80 years. Outcomes may become triggers to the Society’s efforts over the current 3-year terms of its governing committees and beyond. DC Arts Center - Theater Meet and discuss if you like. Thomas J McLeishDC Arts Center - Theater Have you ever worked with ChatGPT and wondered... Why does it seem to make stuff up? It is easy to be overwhelmed by the speed at which AI technology is moving and the very technical nature of the technology’s core. Yet there is a need for more voices and perspectives to be engaged with it to illuminate, discuss, and resolve ethical considerations in the discussion of what we build and why we are building it. Design tools, methods, and frameworks are emerging that make it easier for a non-technical designer to engage with building an AI agent. This workshop addresses getting tools into the hands of more designers and thinkers so that we can collectively have a richer conversation about the future of AI from a humanistic perspective. Specifically, tools that enable the authoring of Agents. The tools and methods we will use empower users to not just be consumers of AI technology but active authors of their own AI experiences, fostering a deeper understanding of the issues at stake and enabling speculation and critique of AI through the reflection on their experience as an author. Workshop Description: This 90-minute interactive workshop aims to demystify the process of creating conversational AI agents, empowering non-technical decision-makers to engage with AI technology through hands-on practice. Participants will explore the capabilities of AI by building and modifying conversational agents, fostering a personal understanding of AI's potential and risks. Learning Outcomes: Understand foundational concepts of an AI agent, including preparing instructions and structuring information.[1] | Experience the creation of conversational AI agents firsthand through a guided, hands-on prototyping session. | Attendees will leave with an online demonstration AI agent they have authored, reflecting their individual and group efforts. Target Audience: Non-technical designers, decision-makers, leaders, and professionals across various industries, as well as educators and academics interested in practical AI applications. The workshop is well suited to handle 15 participants. More attendees may be accommodated.[2] Format and Activities: Introduction and briefing on AI and conversational agents [1] Technically Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with Large Language Models (LLMs). [2] Attendee count and workshop setup will be established through collaboration with ASC organizers. [3] We will use an existing web-based tool called ZeroWidth and perform tasks similar to using a text editor or filling out an online form. Renee V. Wallace | Eve Pinsker | Jude LombardiDC Arts Center - Gallery Community change conversations are taking place every day to inform policy development, land use zoning, neighborhood plans, and master plans. The desires driving the change conversations range from chickens to compost to climate, all in the context of community. Tensions generally exist in the conversations, with desires at polar opposites for or against the change. Once decisions are made the conversations generally cease and rarely is there deliberate, and intentional effort to repair and restore strained community relationships. The change happens and we don't continue the conversations for a variety of reasons. The change comes, everyone returns to the norms of their lives with the polarized desires intact, awaiting the next battle of the opposites based on assorted scenarios of those seeking rights that the policy or plans grant or those responding to violations and nuisances they are charged with because of the policy or plans. What we need, and often lack, are deep conversations hosted in spaces where continuity can be sustained over time, beyond the public decision-making process, to move into the future with respect, regard, grace, and love. How do we facilitate these real conversations in ways that we desire, in ways that create a new norm in our communities that supports restoring relationships while making the change? Renee V. Wallace, Jude Lombardi, and Eve Pinsker will initiate the workshop conversation with approaches for designing and sustaining conversations to make the shift from polarization. DC Arts Center - Theater DC Arts Center - Gallery Renee V. Wallace | Mark SullivanDC Arts Center - Gallery + Online Renee V. Wallace, a Community Practitioner, and Mark Sullivan, an Academic Practitioner, will engage Community scholars and Michigan State University scholars in a collequy centered on their interests in societal changes that address wicked challenges in majority minority urban cities like Detroit and Flint MI (e.g. chickens, compost, climate; moving from food apartheid to food access to food security to food sovereignty; eradicating inequities and injustices; creating pathways for equitable participation). We will build on the session: ReThinking Community - Sustaining Conversations after Public Decision. Described below: Community change conversations are taking place to inform policy development, land use zoning, neighborhood plans, and master plans. The desires driving the change conversations ranges from chickens to compost to climate, all in the context of community. Tensions generally exist in the conversations, with desires at polar opposite for or against the change. Once decisions are made the conversations generally cease and rarely is there a deliberate and intentional effort to repair and restore strained community relationships. The change comes, everyone returns to the norms of their lives with the polarized desires intact, awaiting the next battle of the opposites based on assorted scenarios of those seeking rights that the policy or plans grant or those responding to violations and nuisances they are charged with because of the policy or plans What we need are real, deep conversations hosted in space/places where continuity can be sustained over time to move into the future with respect, regard, grace and love. Paul Pangaro | Ketan AgrawalDC Arts Center - Theater The frightening pace of AI infiltrating our interfaces, workplaces, and personal mindsets has yet to reach a peak—despite the recent rampage that is GenAI. Our concern for the on-going “Pandemic of ‘Today’s AI’” began at the start of #NewMacyMeetings [1] in March 2020 and continued through October 2023 as part of RSD12-Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University [2]. The first 30 minutes of this 75 minute session will offer reflections since RSD12. We have realized, for example, that Generative AI is not sometimes spot-on and sometimes “hallucinating” [3]. Rather, it's always exploring the same pathways and maximizing conditional probabilities—in other words, “it's always hallucinating all the way down." Some researchers claim that continuing to scale the compute, data, and parameters of Generative AI systems will lead us on a smooth path to “artificial general intelligence,” while others see fundamental limitations in the current approach [4][5]. Some are excited that large-scale open-source models are democratizing the tech—but how open are they? [6] All this begs the question, are we getting better conversational partners or just incrementally better Q&A for search—albeit with gross inaccuracies? The remaining 45 minutes will explore intersections of Cybernetics and AI by engaging the audience’s concerns and desires, impressions and fears of GenAI. Our format will not be typical Q&A but aims to create the experience of what we would want from a co-equal conversational collaborator; for example, challenging assumptions, reframing questions, and arguing for alternatives. We want to embody interactions that explore the cybernetics of Conversation Theory and simultaneously suggest features for a co-equal computational agent. Through experience and play, we will explore what is needed for “GenAI” to become a conversationally-generative, productive, and exciting "agentic AI" [7]—where responsibility for creativity is shared. One outcome of the session will be a collection of cybernetic attributes that we want from GenAI, with directions for how we might get them. References [1] #NewMacyMeetings Manifesto: Conversations for Action, https://doi.org/10.21428/0e270dcf.980f6f01. Available at https://newmacy.pubpub.org/pub/newmacy-manifesto2021/release/2?readingCollection=9827008a. [2] K. Agrawal & P. Pangaro, “Colloquy: Intersections of Cybernetics and AI”, RSD-12 Pittsburgh: Colloquies for Transgenerational Collaboration, October 7, 2023. [3] Juras Juršėnas, “Can We Stop LLMs from Hallucinating?”, Medium, Available at https://towardsdatascience.com/can-we-stop-llms-from-hallucinating-17c4ebd652c6 [4] Kaplan et al, “Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models”. Available at https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2001.08361. [5] Bender et al, “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?”. Available at https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922. [6] M. Knowlan, “Llama and ChatGPT Are Not Open-Source”, IEEE Spectrum, July 27, 2023. Available at https://spectrum.ieee.org/open-source-llm-not-open. [7] W. Knight, “Forget Chatbots. AI Agents Are the Future”, WiReD Magazine, Mach 14, 2024. Available at https://www.wired.com/story/fast-forward-forget-chatbots-ai-agents-are-the-future/. Iannis BardakosDC Arts Center - Gallery + Online Registered participants can join the session via Zoom. Click the link provided in the location section above. This session revisits the research-creation framework encountered in art and design-related polydisciplinary academic environments through the polysemic concept of the "membrane." Membranes serve as both literal and metaphorical thresholds that delineate conceptual or tangible spaces. They provide a lens through which various forms of distinctions can be interpreted and understood. The extended metaphor of a membrane—conceived as a barrier, a veil, or a semi-permeable interface—finds application across diverse fields, serving as an analytical tool to articulate nuances of separation. Through the study of membranes, one can define boundaries and gain insights into limits and definitions. The active engagement of a membrane as a medium, an intermediary agent between observers of separated domains facilitates separation as a form of bridging. Physical membranes demonstrate this connection through elasticity, tearability, or dissolution, which alter the barrier between different spatial domains. Moreover, membranes can be perceived as dynamic relational entities that mediate interactions between distinct domains. Considering the membrane as a domain in its own right enables exploration of liminality and transitional spaces, thereby enriching our understanding of interstitial zones. This type of membrane opens new dimensions and allows for the discovery of the in-between, within which we can voyage, dialogue, or simply cross. Session structure: Laboratory is understood here as space that is not a static space but a dynamic, interactive trans-informational hub, encouraging users to engage, relate, and reflect on the myriad interpretations and applications of membranes, thus fostering a deeper, experiential understanding of them across different contexts of mediation. The metaverse laboratory is designed to facilitate the flourishing of the polysemic nature of a membrane through integration of image, text, video, sound, and 3D elements. It aids the experienced and new "techno-explorer" in an exposition of the membrane concept, inviting play and discovery with words, forms, and sounds from the world of Cybernetics. The theoretical focal point of this proposal is the concept of membranes, a notion embodying the categorization, aggregation, and demarcation of soft versus hard boundaries, enclosure and exclosure. The focus of the activity lies in the remediation of acquired data within a virtual spatiality, creating a lived lexicon of the membrane. Your Choice Lunch / attendees choose their own lunch place in the area. In the afternoon, sessions will start at 14:00 in the DC Arts Center. Claudia Westermann | Kate DoyleDC Arts Center - Theater Drawing inspiration from the narrative of Mimsy Were the Borogoves, the theme for the 60th-anniversary meeting of the American Society for Cybernetics considers language at play in the connections of pasts, presents, and futures. living cybernetics | playing language further suggests that cybernetic languaging, in all forms and media, shares a logic that is informed by understandings of processes of living as they exist and may exist. Playing is a means to reach out into possible futures, to initiate the not-yet-existent. While the 60th anniversary meeting aims to engage the values of conversations in the present and in-presence, two special journal issues, as well as a proceedings volume that captures the conversations and carries them into the future, are planned as well. Reflecting the conference theme and the anniversary occasion, we have given this proceedings volume the tentative title An Experimental Glossary. If the idea of a glossary links to reductionist ideas of language with fixed definitions, a cybernetician's task is to turn these constraints into possibilities. The idea of a glossary has some tradition in the ASC. Definitions for cybernetics that can be taken more or less seriously have had a place on the ASC's website for many years, and they have been featured in previous publications. Among these examples, Allenna Leonard's Cybernetic Bestiary from 2008 is one of the more experimental examples. In this workshop session, we would like to explore what it means to create an experimental glossary. We will introduce the session with some examples of cybernetic glossaries, link them to the idea of a new language, touch upon the idea of wordplay, and show some examples from the field of experimental literature. The main intention of this workshop session is to develop a basic structure for the Experimental Glossary. We hope our experimental acting will carry the glossary into a new realm where language becomes languaging. The session relates to all three strands of the conference as the idea of an experimental glossary is a form of archiving archiving that incorporates languaging as expressed technicity. Marko KardumDC Arts Center - Gallery + Online Registered participants can join online via the Zoom link provided in the location section above. The title "From Newspeak to Cyberspeak and Back Again: How They Used to Do It in the East and What Does the West Do Today" aims at exploring the evolution of language manipulation and control, drawing parallels between historical practices in the East and contemporary dynamics in the West. Slava Gerovitch's book on Newspeak and cybernetics serves as a lens to examine the historical roots of language manipulation in the Soviet Union, showcasing how ideologies shaped language and communication practices. This old practice of cybernetics in the East is contrasted with the present-day phenomenon of political biases in large language models in the West. These models, such as GPT, often reflect societal biases present in their training data, influencing the language they generate. By comparing historical instances of Newspeak with contemporary challenges in cyberspeak, the theme highlights the enduring relevance of language manipulation and its implications for society. It prompts reflection on the ethical and societal implications of language control, emphasizing the need for transparency, accountability, and fairness in the development and deployment of language technologies. Through this exploration, the theme aims to foster critical dialogue on the intersection of language, ideology, and technology in shaping past, present, and future communication practices. This will be a hybrid session lasting 40 minutes and divided in 3 parts: First Part (10 minutes): Introduction to Cybernetics in the Soviet Union Second Part (10 minutes): Analysis of Cybernetics in the Soviet Union According to Slava Gerovitch Third Part (20 minutes): Discussion on Contemporary Language Technologies Sofia M. Penabaz-Wiley | Brett Reed NeeseDC Arts Center - Gallery + Online Registered participants may join via the Zoom link provided above in the location section. This proposal is for an additional multimedia form of the story, Mimsy Were the Borogoves, with the researcher's Spanish translation recorded in voice and video. This is for the Archiving Archiving section of the conference, as the story has significance not only in the introduction to the 60th Anniversary of the Society, but also in that it is meaningful to the philosophy of Cybernetics. There are 28 countries with Spanish as the official language several of which are also historically important to Cybernetics, so it seems reasonable to make the story available in Spanish multimedia. A Spanish audiobook version of the story could not be found and for people with certain disabilities, audiobooks or videos can be essential. The contribution at the conference will last less than one hour, consisting of a previously recorded video presentation with some aesthetic embellishments such as visual or audial enhancements, preceded by a short live introduction by the reader/translator. DC Arts Center - Theater DC Arts Center - Gallery Coffee will be available in the kitchen from around 15:30 onwards. Eve PinskerDC Arts Center - Theater One of the strengths of the cybernetic tradition within systems theory is its emphasis on embodied understanding and the interdependence of “mind” or mental phenomena and the perceptions and lived experience stemming from being bodies in the world. The phenomenon of improvisational play is one reflection of this (Bateson, 2000; Nachmanovitch, 1991). Verbal play in pairs or groups can include storytelling, playing with the voice, imagined languages, or multiple languages that may or may not be known to the partners or the audience. Combining verbal expression with movement and gesture opens up further possibilities for conversation and communication. This also provides a potential vehicle for community building: relatively few people know that the improvisational comedy and theater training stemming from Viola Spolin's and Paul Sill's work in Chicago started from Spolin's experiences as assistant to social worker and sociologist Neva Boyd at Hull House in the 1920's, where Boyd developed improvisational games as a vehicle for the immigrant children at the settlement house to acclimate to American culture and each other. The proposed playshop will offer 60-90 minutes (depending on what the schedule allows) of participatory improvisational movement and storytelling that can serve as a fun and energizing way to create, witness, and reflect on emergent patterns, and gives people a change to move and wake up after sitting in seats watching presentations. The facilitator has experience in multiple embodied improvisational traditions including Theatre of the Oppressed, butoh, contact improvisation, modern dance improvisation, and theater games from the lineages of Spolin, Sills, and Del Close; but most of the forms used in the playshop will come from Interplay (www.interplay.org). Interplay is an evolving set of improvisational forms using voice and/or movement initially developed by Cynthia Winton Henry and Phil Porter in the US that emphasizes incrementality and accessibility to people who do not consider themselves dancers, poets, or actors. The facilitator is an accredited Interplay leader and has been practicing Interplay since 1996. After initial warm-up exercises designed to help people extend their movement vocabulary (physical limitations are not a barrier - people can move as much or as little as they care to or are able) and vocal possibilities, we'll experiment with several Interplay forms that combine movement and storytelling, and witness and perform for each other in pairs and as a group. For those who are comfortable with doing so, we can request an opportunity to showcase these improvisational forms for the larger conference group in an evening performance. Jean ChuDC Arts Center - Gallery + Online This workshop is a continuous exercise built on the Colloquies: Design and Tech Addiction. We will address the pressing issue of tech addiction and its impact on mental health, and how design practice can offer positive interventions. As AI, AR, and VR become omnipresent, the potential for technology to disrupt our mental well-being has become a significant concern. This session will explore how diverse facets contribute to this problem and how design can help create more humane interactions with technology, fostering a symbiotic relationship between humans and digital tools. Adopting the Transition Design Framework by Terry Irwin and Gideon Kossoff, the workshop is planned to be a compressed version of the framework: Background: Thinking systematically and cybernetically Participants Your Choice Dinner / attendees choose their own dinner place in the area. Some might want to join the theater sessions in the evening. These will start at 19:30. Registration is required. DC Arts Center - Theater Meet and discuss if you like.Saturday 15 Jun 2024
2:00 PM
Registration Desk Open
3:00 PM
Opening of the Conference
3:20 PM
5:20 PM
Towards a Typology of Circularities
6:00 PM
Cybernetics is Dead! Long Live Cybernetics! Relevance, Value, Futures — ASC at 60
6:15 PM
6:30 PM
Dinner and ASC Awards
Margaret Mead Prize
Heinz von Foerster Award
ASC Travel Scholarships
ASC Fellows
Warren McCulloch Award
Norbert Wiener Medal
Sunday 16 Jun 2024
9:00 AM
Cybernetic-Systemic Education: Past, Present, Future
9:15 AM
The History of EEG Research in Cybernetics and Artistic Expression: Biological Feedback and Structural Coupling
9:55 AM
The life, death, and afterlife of second-order cybernetics in family therapy: Reflections on the paradigmatic shift to postmodernism
10:00 AM
#NewMacy: Walk from the Park to the Zoo
10:15 AM
Coffee Break
10:30 AM
Dear AI Reader: Nonhuman Perspective and Evolutionary Thinking in the Human-Machine Relation
10:35 AM
Coffee Break
10:50 AM
Brand Management as Cybernetic Practice
11:00 AM
Languaging the Umwelten, Formulating Interspecies Enkinaesthesia
11:15 AM
Interactions between the body, time, and space — Within the design practice of the Chinese context
11:30 AM
12:00 PM
12:30 PM
#NewMacy: Walk from the Zoo to the DC Arts Center
12:45 PM
Models in language: A cybernetic framework for understanding communication
1:10 PM
Lunch break until 2:00 or 3:00 PM
2:00 PM
The Ecological Relevance of the Serious Time Games of Gregory Bateson, Anatol Holt and Warren Brodey
The Systematic Evolution of Laboratories of Cognition
How Can Evolving Systems Produce Knowledge?
With this provocation, I will introduce (5 mins) a few clear and tangible example systems to think about:
Bacterial Quorum Sensing
Sculpting with Various Metals
Packing Different Suitcases
Travelling to Conferences2:40 PM
Visuality: A Possible Encounter with Cybernetics
2:45 PM
Bodies in Feedback: Somateleology as Mind in Contemporary Art
3:20 PM
Coffee Break / self serve
Reflections on a Systems-and-Cybernetics-Focused Design Ethics Course
3:30 PM
Coffee Break / self serve
3:40 PM
Languaging In/For Action – Building Bridges Between Disciplines Through Large Language Models and Data Bases Exploring Multiple Relevant Areas of Research
3:45 PM
The weather is too hot, talk in the theater
4:00 PM
Subaudition
4:05 PM
Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS) as a cybernetic feedback mechanism for high schoolers with ADHD in mathematics classrooms
This session will be held in a format that involves both traditional presentation formats, and a group level demo of the ALEKS technology, specifically for the mathematics high school classroom. The authors will present their mixed methods research data to viewers to show how their students with ADHD diagnoses benefitted from live review procedures accompanying the use of ALEKS. Following this, a demo will be provided for viewers to show how to navigate ALEKS and use it to individualize instructions, and viewers will be invited to interact with the tool in real-time.
4:30 PM
Coffee in the kitchen
4:40 PM
Cybernetics of Caring / Caring through Cybernetics
4:45 PM
Meeting - Playing - Learning: Strategies for learning environments in academic gatherings
4:50 PM
5:50 PM
Cybernetics is Dead! Long Live Cybernetics! Relevance, Value, Futures — ASC at 60
6:15 PM
Dinner break
7:30 PM
Insanity
In The Quantum Biology of Politics7:50 PM
Skin Series: Perceptual Prosthetics Through Sensorial Worlds
Artist talk: 15 min | Demonstration (small scale): 15 min | Discussion: 25 - 30 min8:50 PM
ASC 60 Years... 30 with Me
Monday 17 Jun 2024
9:00 AM
Colloquies: Gamification for Responsible AI Empowerment
Cybernetics, Computational Art, and Complex Systems
This presentation focuses on the relationship between Cybernetics and the science of adaptive complex systems through the lens of an exhibition I am currently curating at the Beall Center for Art + Technology. Part of the Getty’s initiative, PST Art: Art and Science Collide, my exhibition Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty explores the nexus of complex systems in both contemporary art and science.9:15 AM
Playing VSM language at ASC: A Diagnosis Through the Viable System Model (VSM)
9:40 AM
Playing With Non-trivial Black Boxes: Cybernetics for loving and living
10:00 AM
Organization Development Using Technology of Participation Methods + Conversation on Participatory Management
10:20 AM
Coffee Break
Coffee Break with 2024 ASC Awardees
10:30 AM
Coffee to go with the session
11:00 AM
From Cybernetics to Cybersemiotics: The quest for meaning and communication in theory and practice
Productizing a Demonstration of Non-Triviality
11:30 AM
Opportunities and Challenges in Transgenerational Collaboration
11:40 AM
Quantum Social Learning: A model for cultural transformation using quantum entanglement
Review of an Academic Research Project as Done
12:20 PM
Mexico and the place of Place in Archiving Archiving
What ecological impacts should be considered in the maintenance and creation of digital and physical archives?
In what ways can modern technology be leveraged to overcome the limitations imposed by the physical location of archives?
How can archivists ensure equitable access to archives, particularly those in politically sensitive or geographically remote areas?
How does the language used in and about archival materials influence public perception and power dynamics within historical narratives? How can we use technology to overcome these limitations and make the histories more accessible and less colonial?Notes on Cybernetic Environments: Mapping machine intelligence as a system in the landscape
1:10 PM
Lunch break
2:00 PM
A Cybernetics of ASC: Stories we tell ourselves about ourselves as the braiding of our history and future
Tuning to Surroundings: a cybernetic response to human attention sequestered by digital screens
2:30 PM
Coffee in the kitchen
3:00 PM
Coffee in the kitchen
How Media Ecologies Become Technocratic: The invisible revolutions of change cycles
3:15 PM
Coffee Break / self serve
3:30 PM
The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: an integrative lens on a fragmented landscape
4:15 PM
Observing Observing
The Hermeneutics of Listening: Receiving and making distinctions. A dialogue between Heinz von Foerster, Ranulph Glanville and Gregory Bateson
5:00 PM
Homo Cyberneticus: Cyberneticity, Agency, and Technicity in the Anthropocene
5:30 PM
Cybernetics is Dead! Long Live Cybernetics! Relevance, Value, Futures — ASC at 60
6:15 PM
Dinner break
7:30 PM
Claim your Cybernetic Word - A conversation and video installation
Brainstorm on Paskian Knobs: 10 min
Two to four brainstorming sessions with the audience on cybernetic words, each session organized around a certain theme 10 minutes each (20 or 40 minutes)
Live Gen AI generation of a cybernetic song based on words collected: 5 min
Live Worldcloud generation for video installation: 5 min
Cinematic cybernetic song outro: 2 min8:30 PM
Tuesday 18 Jun 2024
9:00 AM
9:15 AM
Colloquies: Design and Tech Addiction
10:15 AM
Coffee Break
10:30 AM
Experiencing second-order cybernetics in practice through the purposeful design of a learning system
This module is about effecting systemic and systematic change in uncertain and complex situations, change that can transform situations for the better.
www.open.ac.uk10:50 AM
Coffee Break
11:10 AM
Salon Spatial: Affordances and applications of spatial interfaces in context
This design workshop will use practical and conceptual avenues to equip designers with the mindset and methodology to craft engaging educational and service experiences using spatial computing tools. It will span 2 hours, and involve slide-based content, a practical spatial prototyping jam, a salon-style share-out presentation by the audience, a question and answer session, and setting up of a WhatsApp community to enable participants to share future insights in this realm with one another, and workshop organizers. A breakdown of the format is provided below, using a list of structured, bulleted points indicating varied facets of the workshop:
1:10 PM
Lunch break
2:00 PM
Camping and More: A Viable System Model Mini-Case-Study Workshop
3:30 PM
Coffee Break
3:45 PM
Systema Cosmologic
4:00 PM
Coffee Break
4:15 PM
5:45 PM
Cybernetics is Dead! Long Live Cybernetics! Relevance, Value, Futures — ASC at 60
6:15 PM
Dinner break
7:30 PM
Cybernetics is Dead! Long Live Cybernetics! Relevance, Value, Futures — ASC at 60
9:00 PM
Open Theater hour
Wednesday 19 Jun 2024
9:00 AM
Crafting Knowledge Artifacts: A Non-Technical Workshop for Building and Discussing an AI Agent
Why does it forget what we are talking about?
Why is it saying what it is saying?
I feel like I am a consumer.
I am not being heard in this conversation.
I wish I could author my own agent.
Live demonstration of a functioning conversational AI agent that resembles our goal.
Hands-on prototyping session to build and tune a conversational AI agent.[3]
Create a basic conversational agent.
Add instructions to guide the behavior of the agent.
Add knowledge to give more specific context for the agent's interaction.
Group collaboration and design refinement
Presentation and feedback session
Reflection and discussion on AI's broader impact.ReThinking Community: Sustaining Conversations Beyond Public Decision-Making
10:30 AM
Coffee Break
Coffee Break
10:45 AM
A Colloquy: ReThinking Community - Sustaining Conversations after Public Decision-Making
Colloquies: Intersections of Cybernetics and the Pandemic of "Today's AI"
12:00 PM
12:15 PM
Membranes Unveiled: Interfaces of the In-between
1:10 PM
Lunch break
2:00 PM
Living Cybernetics: An Experimental Glossary
Then and Back Again - From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: How They Used to Do It in the East and What Do We Do Today
2:45 PM
Multimedia Spanish translation of "Mimsy were the Borogoves" - "Misébiles estaban las lorogolobas"
3:30 PM
Coffee Break
Coffee with "Misébiles estaban las lorogolobas"
3:45 PM
Embodied Understanding: Playing with Language and Movement (a "playshop")
4:15 PM
Hybrid Workshop: Mitigate Tech Addiction through Design
This workshop, rooted in the principles of transition design, addresses tech addiction through the lens of systems thinking and feedback loops. By understanding the systemic causes of tech addiction and mapping possible interventions in the adaptive world, participants will explore how technology design can evolve to enhance mental health, promoting a healthier, more symbiotic relationship between humans and digital tools. This approach may even change the trajectory of interdependent fields by fostering communication between practitioners and educators within the field.
This workshop aims to cultivate a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of tech addiction and to encourage participants to engage in deeper conversations and ideate potential solutions. We are looking for participants who:
6:15 PM
Dinner break
7:30 PM
Open Theater evening