I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky.
Richard Brautigan
As our world becomes ever more uncertain the role of how art and design can actively participate and respond within this environment is of consequence. Dominant discursive arguments of today fall back on historical crutches and habit. In contrast to this we live in a technological sphere that is radically altering our communication, experience and understanding of the world. If the early experiments in design research labs such as the Architecture Machine Group at MIT served as precursor to the communication revolution that we have witnessed. Today algorithms, artificial intelligence, bio hacking, robotics, augmented reality, and machine learning are the dominant frontiers for interrogation. If one considers the current situation much of what these systems are being designed for reinforce and bias a world as is rather than the possibilities of enabling a more collective and shared tomorrow.
The symposium will engage a series of discussions about things, agency, and us. The event aims to speak to the forces that shape the way we see and understand through the eyes of a machinic world. Through human and non-human entanglements, the world today is plural and encoded as information; issues of codification, control, bias, learning, and computational creativity will be examined and discussed as open territories to actively identify and participate in the pressing complexities of this world. The symposium is organised and will be moderated by the Director of the AADRL Theodore Spyropoulos.
Theodore Spyropoulos is an artist, architect and educator. He is the Director of the Architectural Association’s Design Research Lab (AADRL) in London and resident artist at Somerset House. Theodore has previously chaired the AA Graduate School, was Professor of Architecture at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt and has been a visiting Research Fellow at M.I.T.’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. He co-founded the experimental art, architecture and design practice Minimaforms. Theodore has previously worked for the offices of Peter Eisenman and Zaha Hadid. In 2013 the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture awarded him the ACADIA award of excellence for his educational work directing the AADRL. He has been published internationally including authoring Adaptive Ecologies: Correlated Systems of Living (2013), Enabling (2010) and forthcoming Behaviours (2021). He received his PhD from UCL where his research was focused on the subjects of behaviour, participatory frameworks, human and non-human intelligence and the role of second order cybernetics within adaptive design systems.
https://drl.aaschool.ac.uk
SESSION TWO PRESENTERS:
Kenric Allado-McDowell
https://kalladomcdowell.com
Libby Heaney
Lucy Mcrae
https://www.lucymcrae.net
https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/publicprogramme/whatson/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace
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