bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Introduction: a conference doing the cybernetics of cybernetics
Authors: Glanville Ranulph 
Published: September 2011

PurposeThis paper introduces the other papers in this issue, describing and arguing for the context in which they were written – a conference that was, unusually, based in conversation rather than reporting through the presentation of papers: and a refereeing process that continued after the initial presentation (at the conference) of the work reported, thus allowing responses to critical comments. Many of our authors do not come from scientific backgrounds, and writing papers such as we are used to is a novel experience to, and discipline for, them.Design/methodology/approachThe organisation and structure of the conference and the processes of refereeing involved are described; and the argument is made that the particularities of each are more cybernetic than the more familiar arrangements.FindingsThe conference processes were greatly valued by the authors. This is evident in the papers presented in this volume, although the convention of presenting only the final form of the paper may mean it is only evident to those who have been involved in the process of writing and refereeing.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations of the approach presented here are a combination of what we can imagine (supported by hard work) and the cultural willingness of funding sources to accept the unfamiliar.Practical implicationsThe contents of this volume, that form an outcome of the conference, show it is possible and interesting to create a “non‐standard” conference based in conversation, which searches for new questions rather than reporting answers to old ones: and that papers produced within a conversational process of refereeing and discussion allow both development of research‐in‐writing, and a good quality outcome. We can and should meet in “better” ways.Social implicationsThe conference and papers associated with it show that meetings in which a conversational approach is taken can be viable, not only as academic occasions but in their ability to generate papers of quality. This opens the academic world to different types of meeting and different ways of associating.Originality/valueThe value of this paper lies in the arguments made concerning conferences and refereeing processes. The originality is in the way these are presented as the embodiment of cybernetic understandings and processes (thus realising a cybernetics of cybernetics). The quality of the introduction is enriched by frequent references to material of generation and of record that exists as the legacy of the conference “Cybernetics: Art, Design, Mathematics – A Meta‐Disciplinary Conversation” at frequently cited urls on the conference web site. The evidence is there, as well as in this volume.
Why the arts need cybernetics for our long‐term viability
Authors: Boyd Gary 
Published: September 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to encourage critics and artists to make use of a cybersystemic perspective in their work to improve its potency and long‐term value to humankind and the larger living world. The arts are centrally involved in the competitive propagation of our deep cultural identities and involved also in the marketing needed to ensure our biological identity propagation. We need better ways to formatively evaluate the arts so that requisite life‐enhancing control variety can be universally available. Unfortunately, the arts are not widely enough understood to be the crucial system steering activities that they are, for us to realize the immense visionary guiding benefits they can offer for solving the very serious global problems of the twenty‐first century.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that proposes a methodology to enable critics and artists to make use of a cybersystemic perspective in their work.FindingsTransformative re‐education of artists and critics to develop cybersystemic leveraging of their own work is now possible by deploying via the web: systemic modeling, simulations, and educative dramatic role‐play games together with learning conversations. The essential content in education for human long‐term viability has to do with how complex system steering really works and precisely how the arts play such a central role in it all.Originality/valueEducation which specifically demonstrates how cybersystemic viability principles such as: good closings, balancing loops, requisite variety, requisite heterarchy, and multi‐level learning conversations work can be used by artists and critics to steer human activity better and so can be a big part of the solution to the severe threats that the world is now experiencing.
Multiple objectivity: an anti‐relativist approach to situated knowledge
Authors: Eglash Ron 
Published: September 2011

PurposeThe paper aims to describe the inadequate nature of both “mono‐objectivist” approaches, which deny any role of social influence in science, and relativist social constructions, which fail to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. It outlines an alternative conceptual framework that allows for the possibility of social construction of science, while preventing epistemological relativism.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilizes the cybernetic concept of recursion to show how science can bend back on itself, investigating its own foundations, without undermining its ability to improve our empirical understanding of the world. The paper makes use of several case studies to define specific mechanisms that show how the process of knowledge production in science can steer a course between reduction to a single “right answer,” and fragmentation into subjective interpretations.FindingsThe paper concludes by showing how the cybernetic recursion of multiple objectivity can also be applied to cybernetics itself. In particular, it suggests that such recursive investigations allow us to reconsider the Law of Requisite Variety, and envision an alternative form that can better account for the complexity that arises in self‐generating systems.Research limitations/implicationsThe research is unlikely to be of use to scientists looking for epistemological proof of singular right answers, or social constructivists looking for proof of epistemological relativism.Practical implicationsThe paper suggests that researchers in constructivism need not limit their work for fear that it will lead to relativist conclusions.Originality/valueThis paper fulfils an identified need to offer an alternative to current developments in the field of science and technology studies.
When is analog? When is digital?
Authors: Fischer Thomas 
Published: September 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a cybernetic way of seeing analog and digital along with a basic vocabulary for discussing assumptions underlying the use of both terms.Design/methodology/approachTakinganaloganddigitalnot as properties of observed phenomena but as properties of observers, I ask not whatisdigitaloranalog, butwhat I dowhen I use these terms. I analyze introspectively, and report on, what I think my assumptions are when using the two terms.FindingsI develop a basic vocabulary to describe engagements that I describe as analog or digital. This vocabulary is applicable beyond technical contexts and suitable also for discussing social and creative processes. It includes a kind of observer who I callmatchmaker.Research limitations/implicationsThe presented research is preliminary and subjective.Originality/valueWhile previous discussions consideranaloganddigitalas properties of observed phenomena, they are considered here as properties of observers. The presented discussion is sufficiently abstract to account for the analog and the digital at various scales, including electronic signal processing and human interaction. The author argues that discussions of engagements described as analog or digital must account for observers of these engagements, including those who act as their matchmakers.
The hypothesis of interactive evolution
Authors: Galkin Dmitry V. 
Published: September 2011

PurposeThis paper aims to formulate the hypothesis of interactive evolution as evolutionary development of interactivity in relation to complex spatial relations. It also attempts to show that interactive evolution should be considered as a crossroad interdisciplinary conceptualization of social dynamics and technological growth.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology is based on and directed by ideas, concepts and problems of the first‐ and second‐order cybernetics, theory of artificial life, social sciences and contemporary technological art. It shows that there is a need for further conceptual clarification of spatial dimension of interactivity. Clarification and formulation of the hypothesis is given through interdisciplinary analysis of artistic experiments in early cybernetic and contemporary interactive art as well as through addressing small group social interaction in social sciences.FindingsThe hypothesis was formulated of interactive evolution describing interactive evolution as a cyclic process that begins with the seeds of feedback reactivity (response), goes to the emergent conversation and developing towards the symbiotic relations (new entity evolved) that goes into the same cycle on the different level. Each evolutionary step has its spatial and structural specifics. Interactive evolution changes spatial structure of interactivity shifting space up from physical distance to new symbiotic totality of betweenness.Practical implicationsThe hypothesis can be a useful framework for modeling complex evolutionary design processes and evaluation/development of social processes such as teambuilding, organizational change and social networking.Originality/valueThe innovative aspect of the paper is that it introduces the original hypothesis of interactive evolution, shows important relational aspects of interactivity and its spatial dimensions and provides some interdisciplinary evidence for the interactive evolution (based on social science and contemporary art).
Do you like paleolithic op‐art?
Authors: Jablan Slavik , Radović Ljiljana 
Published: September 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider the history of certain modular elements: Truchet tiles, Op‐tiles, Kufic tiles, and key‐patterns, which occur as ornamental archetypes from Paleolithic times until the present. The appearance of the same ornamental archetypes at the same level of the development in different cultures, distant in space and time can be described from the cybernetics point of view as a specific kind of self‐referential systems or cellular automata present in the intellectual and cultural development of mankind. The aim of this research is to show a continuity of the development of ornamental structures based on modular elements used as ornamental archetypes.Design/methodology/approachResearch of the material from archaeological findings, history of art, painting, architecture, and applied arts.FindingsExistence of universal geometrical construction principles based on modularity.Practical implicationsCreation of new patterns or designs (e.g. TeX‐fonts, tiles, etc.) based on modularity.Originality/valueThe paper presents a new explanation of constructions of labyrinths and different Islamic patterns.
Music, memory and cognition: a cybernetic approach
Authors: Johnson Mark 
Published: September 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present an approach to the perception of music and the understanding of memory using cybernetic tools.Design/methodology/approachThe work uses a methodological approach based on realistic evaluation to deploy two well‐established cybernetic models – the viable system model (VSM) and Luhmann's model of social systems – together with Harré's “Positioning Theory” to show how the process of mental construction and perception might be conceived. Drawing on reflections following a musical performance experiment at the American Cybernetics Society Conference in 2010, phenomenal issues of perception and memory are considered against the background of feedback mechanisms with a material and social environment.FindingsThe model situates the process of improvising music, the experience of listening to music, and the experience of recalling musical events within the context of a dynamic regulatory mechanism involving individual agents in a material and social environment.Social implicationsThe paper argues that a model for memory of co‐evolution between agency and environment has ethical and political implications, drawing particularly on recent application of Harré's Positioning Theory.Originality/valueThe bringing together of the VSM, Luhmann's theory and Positioning Theory helps to give more definition to the relationship between what Harré terms “engrams” and “exterograms” thus making possible more sophisticated models of distributed cognition.
The design and validation of an artificial personality
Authors: Kadri Faisal L. 
Published: September 2011

PurposeA US patent was recently granted for an artificial psychology dialog player with two artificial personalities and aging simulation. The purpose of this paper is to expose the usefulness and scientific roots and support the commercial viability of the patent based on a new cybernetic model of personality.Design/methodology/approachThe design of the artificial personality utilizes a new four‐dimensional cybernetic model, where sentences are classified along the dimensions according to their motivational and cognitive content. The model is a dynamic nonlinear system described in box diagram form. The idea behind the model is rooted in the cybernetics concept of requisite variety and the model's characteristics predict systematic variation with age. The model explains phenomena hitherto found vague. Its predictions regarding age dependence of human behaviour over adult age is tested by online humour appreciation surveys. The methodology is to establish the validity of the model by referencing its a priori predictions against a posteriori empirical classification of survey data by applying statistical consistency tests.FindingsThe prediction was tested using score data from three online humour appreciation surveys. The results from all surveys confirm the prediction and validate the personality model. The model is indeed useful and the statistical consistency tests support the validity of the model. A novel formulation of Maturana's closed nervous system based on the model with the possibility of empirical validation was also found.Research limitations/implicationsThe media of the analysis was only humorous sentences, while the predictions of the model can be applied to other media such as other types of expressions and semiotic symbols, which are outside the scope of this investigation. Only age‐related changes were investigated. Personality‐related preferences are planned for investigation at a later stage.Practical implicationsA general age link of types of humor was not available until now, the validation of this link brings closer the realization of improvement in man‐machine interaction. Other applications include marketing and the use of the model as an educational tool.Originality/valueThe model of personality has a new structure represented as a stable continuous nonlinear system. It employs a feedback mechanism to describe homeostasis (multiplier feedback), a cybernetic regulator that is not based on the familiar negative feedback control structure. Its value as an alternative tool of analysis and prediction cuts across wide disciplines such as psychology, animal behaviour, physical science, computing, engineering and commerce.
Don't give up! Media art as an endless conversational process
Authors: Lautenschlaeger Graziele , Pratschke Anja 
Published: September 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to argue that the potential for contemporary media art production is based on the productive action itself, and that this activity supports the negotiating of understandings. This discussion is based on second‐order cybernetics principles, in which the researcher's role is considered in the observation process. It emphasizes the idea that media art is a social and aesthetic system based on conversation and autopoietic processes.Design/methodology/approachThis argument is based upon a master's research dissertation on contemporary media art production, conducted at the Center for Interactive Living Studies (Nomads.usp). The methodology is based on an immersion in an action‐centered research process: the authors conducted a literature review, interviewed 26 people, including artists, curators and theoreticians, visited several exhibitions, media art centers, and produced an interactive installation.FindingsAesthetic propositions may trigger conversational processes within different perspectives. The authors see this as related to Luhmann's writings about art as both an aesthetic and social system. Despite the utopian nature of the proposition the authors identify a second‐order cybernetic relevance in their investigation.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations are related to the intrinsic specificity of the adopted methodology. It may be possible to derive general theoretical abstractions or methods from the described investigation, but this was never the authors’ intention.Social implicationsThe authors suggest recognition of media art as a collective practice, discussing this complex activity at micro (individual goals) and macro (overall goals) levels.Originality/valueThis application of self‐reference to our reflective art and design research practice will enhance the design of future projects.
Norwich's Entropy Theory: how not to go from abstract to actual
Authors: Nizami Lance 
Published: September 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to ask whether a first‐order‐cybernetics concept, Shannon's Information Theory, actually allows a far‐reaching mathematics of perception allegedly derived from it, Norwich et al.'s “Entropy Theory of Perception”.Design/methodology/approachAll of The Entropy Theory, 35 years of publications, was scrutinized for its characterization of what underlies Shannon Information Theory: Shannon's “general communication system”. There, “events” are passed by a “source” to a “transmitter”, thence through a “noisy channel” to a “receiver”, that passes “outcomes” (received events) to a “destination”.FindingsIn the entropy theory, “events” were sometimes interactions with the stimulus, but could be microscopic stimulus conditions. “Outcomes” often went unnamed; sometimes, the stimulus, or the interaction with it, or the resulting sensation, were “outcomes”. A “source” was often implied to be a “transmitter”, which frequently was a primary afferent neuron; elsewhere, the stimulus was the “transmitter” and perhaps also the “source”. “Channel” was rarely named; once, it was the whole eye; once, the incident photons; elsewhere, the primary or secondary afferent. “Receiver” was usually the sensory receptor, but could be an afferent. “Destination” went unmentioned. In sum, the entropy theory's idea of Shannon's “general communication system” was entirely ambiguous.Research limitations/implicationsThe ambiguities indicate that, contrary to claim, the entropy theory cannot be an “information theoretical description of the process of perception”.Originality/valueScrutiny of the entropy theory's use of information theory was overdue and reveals incompatibilities that force a reconsideration of information theory's possible role in perception models. A second‐order‐cybernetics approach is suggested.
Towards digitally integrated urban places
Authors: Riether Gernot 
Published: September 2011

PurposeDigital media has been firmly established in contemporary society and now is a time of unprecedented growth and innovation in the world of digital technologies. Conversely, before and during this period, physical public space has diminished in quantity and quality. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that creating and intensifying connections between digital space and physical public space might open up new possibilities to reactivate urban places.Design/methodology/approachHistorically, art has provided a territory in which new ideas could be introduced and tested. For example, the great landscape gardens of Versailles provided a model for the later development of the urban structure of Paris. Many artists in the last few decades have experimented with how digital/virtual environments might be related to real physical space. It is reasonable to assume that these experiments will be applied in broader contexts and will most likely have impact at the scale of the city. This essay contextualizes current interactive installations within an overview of selected forward‐looking precedents.FindingsThe analysis of early experiments in collapsing the realms of virtual and physical environments demonstrates that the implications of a fuller integration have not reached its potential in contemporary applications.Originality/valueWalter Benjamin's speculation that media could contribute to urban space of heightened interaction is a promise still waiting realization. Art installations that promote interactive relations between the spectator and physical space are used as instigations for speculations at an urban scale. In particular, attention is given to the development of improved interfaces.
Future “designing” and the Chinese notions of “Li”
Authors: Robertson Alec , Men Delai 
Published: September 2011

PurposeThis paper aims to fuse some ideas within different domains perceived to have some resonance together with the purpose to assist the development of the artificial world using a novel perspective on design and cybernetics in the context of the Chinese notions of “Li”.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that reviews concepts related to the design of socio‐technical situations through a trans‐disciplinary perspective. One method used to develop ideas was participation in the American Society of Cybernetics Conference – C:ADM 2010 and enable its participants to influence initial ideas presented by the authors.FindingsThe paper provides a way of approaching the design of “dynamics” in the conceptualisation of artefacts in the widest sense of the term, and provides insights about designing future products, services and systems along with the education of designers in this.Research limitations/implicationsThe trans‐disciplinary approach to topics covered by the paper results in some compromises in disciplinary terms, and it has a more intuitive approach than might be taken within the disciplines alone. The discussion is enhanced by this approach however, researchers are encouraged to follow up particular aspects within a disciplinary approach as well.Practical implicationsThe paper includes some examples of designs to illustrate the practical application of concepts discussed and how these may be incorporated into design education.Originality/valueThe interrelationship of the Chinese notions of “Li”, second‐order cybernetics, and four‐dimensional design is an original contribution. In addition the recommendation for design education generally, and a course for engineers at South China University of Technology, Guangzhou in particular, to assist students' “innovation consciousness” is of value.