2010: Sweet Fruit of Cybernetics, CalArts [CSCR216]

Syllabus and Weekly Outline

Overview

Many of today’s hot technologies are descendants of Cybernetics: 1940s defense research into neurology, electronic networks, and logical models. Since its inception, cybernetics has split into diverse camps from Esalen to the Rand Corporation.

Today cybernetics provides the foundation for many popular and disruptive technologies. These systems foster the formation of like-minded communities, reverse the economics of scarcity, and make global mindshare available to individuals. We will consider the benefits and risks of social networks, giving special attention to the ways in which these technologies represent the world.

14 September – 20 September – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Introductory lecture: All things may be represented by numbers

Sometime around 510 BC Pythagoras noted that because all things may be reduced to numbers, numbers must be the essence of the world. Pythagoras gave us the famous theorem that goes by his name. He also studied music noting the relationship between numbers and tonality, making a case for what he called Universal Vibrations. The Universal Vibrations are numbers that determine names, birthplaces and time, personalities, destinies and fortunes of individuals. Maybe you already accept the idea that everything may be reduced to numbers in a world where your desires are reduced to statistics and then trafficked by machine. This class will encourage you to think critically about what’s lost in transcoding.

21 September – 27 September – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

How to generate life

presentation by misra iltus & jordan cash

5 questions

The readings proposal at least three different ways that life might be created. Some are literal and others symbolic.

How do you define life?
Is it enough for something simply to appear to be alive or must it also breathe?
How might you be fooled into thinking something is alive?
are collections of individuals (ex: slime molds) one life or numerous?
Is fire alive? are computer viruses alive??

assignment

Question for next week: How might you describe a system in order to describe it in entirety? describe a closed loop. Next week we’ll look at simple closed-loop systems and two types of feedback that causes the system to change its behavior.

28 September – 4 October – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

First-order cybernetics: feedback loops

How might you describe a system in order to describe it in entirety? describe a closed loop. This week we’ll look at simple closed-loop systems and two types of feedback that causes the system to change its behavior. First-order cybernetics (the cybernetics of Norbert Wiener, Arturo Rosenblueth, Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts) studied information as as circulates through animals and machines.

presentation by: gordon levine & doug goodwin

5 questions

audio feedback from a microphone is the classic example of positive feedback. can you think of three other examples?
how might you prevent audio feedback?
does the fantail exert positive or negative feedback on the windmill?
does point of view matter when you’re describing a system?
can you think of any examples of systems that are too complex to be controlled by negative feedback?

assignment

question for next week: can the feedback loop be used to describe society?

5 October – 11 October – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

society is an organism

presentation by: kyle doherty and kate hall

when society is thought of as an organism, societal forces become the opposing forces which keep it in balance. so law balances crime, leisure balances labor, peace counters war, etc. in this model, every element of a society has a function that maintains the stability and cohesiveness of the whole.

5 questions

if society is an autonomous creature, will it correct itself without law?
what role should government play in maintaining balance in society?
does free will upset natural balance?
is this an anti-intellectual stance?
what role does feeling play in the life of a self-regulating individual?

assignment

question for next week: what energy keeps society alive and moving forward?

12 October – 18 October – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

the invisible hand: self-regulation

In economics, the invisible hand is the term economists use to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace. This is a metaphor first coined by the economist Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and used a total of three times in his writings. For Smith, the invisible hand was created by the conjunction of the forces of self-interest, competition, and supply and demand, which he noted as being capable of allocating resources in society. This is the founding justification for the laissez-faire economic philosophy.

presentation by: youngmin esther joo

5 questions

What is the role of law in regulating society?
If you were to map the organs of our bodies to society where would you find the brain? The spleen? The (emotional) heart?
generally we think of the invisible hand as an abstraction, but how specific is it? Can it be described mathematically?
What would this hand look like? Could you draw it? Is it like a smiley face?
How do markets regulate themselves, or do they really?

assignment

question for next week: Does the representation of something as abstract as a financial market change how we think of it? If so, how do you think that might be manipulated?

19 October – 25 October – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

everything may be represented by symbols

and symbols may be calculated just like numbers. Consider John Searle’s Chinese Room argument:

I don’t understand Chinese. I’m hopeless at it. I can’t even tell Chinese writing from Japanese writing. So I imagine that I’m locked in a room with a lot of Chinese symbols (that’s the database) and I’ve got a rule book for shuffling the symbols (that’s the program) and I get Chinese symbols put in the room through a slit, and those are questions put to me in Chinese. And then I look up in the rule book what I’m supposed to do with these symbols and then I give them back symbols and unknown to me, the stuff that comes in are questions and the stuff I give back are answers.

Now, if you imagine that the programmers get good at writing the rule book and I get good at shuffling the symbols, my answers are fine. They look like answers of a native Chinese speaker. They ask me questions in Chinese, I answer the questions in Chinese. All the same, I don’t understand a word of Chinese. And the bottom line is, if I don’t understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the computer program for understanding Chinese, then neither does any other digital computer on that basis, because no computer’s got anything that I don’t have. That’s the power of the computer, it just shuffles symbols. It just manipulates symbols. So I am a computer for understanding Chinese, but I don’t understand a word of Chinese.

presentation by: marissa galin & marc chernoff

5 questions

Is it important that a Chinese speaker write this program?
Can we evaluate the results without engaging the help of a native speaker?
Let’s say the text that is being translated is a poem. Can the emotional tenor of the text be carried by this system?
How might the system interfere with the transmission?
If language can be translated into symbols, and symbols into numbers, can humanity be far behind?

assignment

26 October – 1 November – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

robots and artificial intelligence

presentation by: sara schilling & sean wasserman

Computers (and by extension robots) may be programmed to experience what appear outwardly to be emotions. These emotional systems that make for interesting play experiences for humans, possibly even going so far as to provide direct and unmediated (ie physical) communication with living beings.

Animals and humans have evolved with emotional systems playing just such roles. We may end up building emotional systems into our robots so that people can both understand them and influence the robots in the same ways that they influence each other. What’s more, performed “emotions” may offer a channel for regulating robot activities.

Do you think it’s possible that computers and/or robots will learn from these programmed demonstrations and start to feel the emotions they are portraying? You might call this the ‘build it and they will come’ strategy.

5 questions

How would a robot driven by steam power be different than one driven by electricity?
Do you think computers/robots will have a use for emotional lives?
Would an emotional computer be easier to work with than an unemotional computer?
How closely are your emotions related to performance of certain behaviors?
Does embodiment matter ie, might a small computer embedded in a robot body have different experiences than one of Google’s servers?

assignment

2 November – 8 November – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

command and control

presentation by: bianca mcclure & ryan ainsworth

Paul Baran, the father of de-centralized networks, famously described the difference between command and control by saying this: if ‘command’ is when you tell the missiles to fire, ‘control’ is telling them to to come back. This straight-ahead statement should indicate that control is a more difficult task than command.

5 questions

What is the difference between command and control in your life?
why would you want or need both in the design of a system (either living or engineered)?
Baran says that “the idea of packet-switching itself is very much cold war.” What do you think he means by that?
Why do you think that a system assembled fast/cheap/modular components would be more reliable than one assembled from custom parts? What has Google learned from this observation?
What is the difference between a message-based communication system and packet-based communication system? can you think of any natural systems that employ packet-based messages? Artwork? Other systems?

assignment

9 November – 15 November – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

blitz therapy and homeostasis: rebooting the system

Ross Ashby gave us the Homeostat and The law of Requisite Variety. He also was involved in the development and articulation of ECT, or what he called “Blitz therapy” after the sustained bombing of Great Britain carried out by the Nazis during WWII. In other words this man was responsible for building a physical metaphor demonstrating how dynamic living systems maintain stability, and then how the stability of a person could be forced to reset itself under a barrage of electricity, psychoactive drugs, and flashing lights.

presentation by: leah case & jason mcmanus

5 questions

Pickering presents cybernetics as a discipline more interested in performance than knowledge. How do you think this might relate to your practice?
Leonard mentions Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety as a way to talk about how complex control needs to be. Do you think this is a valid critique of President Bush saying ‘You’re either with us or you are with the terrorists’?
How does the bicameral nature of the brain assist Taylor’s observations of the stroke? Do you really think it’s possible to have an objective experience of your own brain functions breaking down?
Given Taylor’s insights, can you talk about the brain as a feedback device?
Do you understand cybernetics better after all this? Can you talk about it?

assignment

Question for next week: Can you imagine a less extreme way to cure mental illness than the methods proposed by Ashby?

16 November – 22 November – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

anti-psychiatry and cyber-psychedelia

presentation by: lahna saccone & gurmeet khalsa

The story of the universe is that information (which I call novelty) is struggling to free itself from habit (which I call entropy) and that this process is accelerating. It seems as if the whole cosmos wants to change into information, and that all points want to become connected. The path of complexity to its goals is through connecting things together. You can imagine that there is an ultimate end-state of that process. it’s the moment when every point in the universe is connected to every other point in the universe.

—Terence McKenna, 1998

These readings are really manageable. Read them a few times. I want you to reflect on these pieces, they are here to experience: let them play over your intellectual and feeling brains and see what you come up with. This discussion could go in so many directions. I want you to think about what we talked about last week: parallel and serial systems, feeling unity with the world, abstraction and intellect, performance (ie. Pickering’s “ontological theater”), marginality, and what it means to communicate.

NOTES FOR PRESENTATION

I hope that you poked around a little and thought about how these readings relate to cybernetics.

The Laing poems are from Knots–which is a collection of dialogs and prose poems about miscommunication. Laing was heavily influenced by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead’s double-bind theory. Bateson thought the double-bind was the leading cause of schizophrenia. Framing mental illness in this way suggests alternative treatments. You can think of Laing’s work and the double-bind theory as pushback against the Blitz therapy we talked about last week.

More on the Double-bind here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind

The dreamachine is one of these interesting artifacts from cybernetic investigations. Gysin had the idea while riding on a train. He experienced hallucinations after closing his eyes while the sun flickered behind passing trees. That led to refinements and eventually to the hypnosis-producing dreamachine. Gysin was a very creative and influential individual, not unlike Bateson.

McKenna has come in a few times in class. I hope you have read a little about him, because he builds a lovely bridge between anti-psychiatry and cyber-psychedelia.

5 questions

How might Laing talk about the video Jason showed last week (youtube/In My Language)
McKenna believes that plants are trying to communicate, even shape us with psychoactive substances. Do you think this is possible?
How might plants be communications with us? How do plants communicate with other animals (birds, bees, etc.) Does this strengthen McKenna’s case?
What effect do you think did LSD have on Laing? Does this marginalize his professionalism in your opinion?
Do you think it’s possible to have a psychedelic experience without drugs?
BONUS: Do you think the coincident emergence of the anti-psychiatry movement and psychedelia mean something? What?
ANOTHER BONUS: What influence did Grey Walter have on Gysin, Wm. Burroughs, and the Beats?

assignment

Question for next week: Intelligence exists in many forms in the body. Today we’ve been looked at some of the more exotic and indirect ways this intelligence may surface. Do you think the body could make direct and rational computations in order to survive?

23 November – 29 November – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

the body is a computer, can you add with it?

We have talked a little bit about how plants may communicate with people. This scope of plant communication runs from signs in attractive flowers and the coloration of ripe fruit to the more direct psychoactive transmissions purported by Terence McKenna. Intelligence exists in many forms in the body. We’ve been looking at some of the more exotic and indirect ways this intelligence may surface. Do you think the body could make direct and rational action in order to survive? If so, can those actions be described as computations?

presentation by: tiara jackson & calvin frederick

5 questions

If acquired immunity is a form of learning, what is a flu shot? (or how do you learn to fly a helicopter in The Matrix?)
Do you imagine your body thinking when fighting off germs?
If human experience is not the “measure of all things,” then can we even make a judgment about the true nature of our bodies (or of diseases)?
radical constructivism asserts that there is no other reality that may be accessed by human beings. What do you think about this?
One critique of the Santiago theory is that it makes epistemological claims (subjective knowing) that are confused with ontological ones (true reality). Is this a reasonable critique?

assignment

reading: The Santiago Theory of Cognition

question for next week: Do you think the body is completely serious or does it occasionally play games?

30 November – 6 December – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Gaming for Profit

Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?

READING: War Games, by Manuel Delanda
VIDEO: Split or Steal

presentation by: Darrell Watson & Kyle Boeta-Orick

5 questions

Delanda works with the idea of a machine phylum. What does this mean?
How might games be a crossover point between man and machine?
How much of your time and energy with the computer is spent accommodating the machine?
What’s wrong with the minimax model when applied to war games?
How do war games change war–when and where do you think those changes are imposed?

assignment

BONUS ROUND: feedback in popular culture

In 1967, an audio engineer named Roger Mayer met Jimi Hendirx in a pub. Mayer did acoustic research for the British Admirality (SONAR?) Mayer described a feedback procedure for adding another note an octave above the source.

presentation by: Bianca Mclure

4 questions

What does feedback add to music acoustically and conceptually?
How does it bind popular culture to the military industrial complex?
Gary Burger talks about feedback having a mind of its own. What kind of feedback is he talking about?
How does this style of performance relate to command and control?

assignment

READING: The Monks: A Brief History of Feedback
VIDEO: Roger Mayer on working with Jimi Hendrix
AUDIO: Alvin Lucier: I Am Sitting in a Room
AUDIO: Lou Reed: Metal Machine Music
AUDIO: Jimi Hendrix @Monterey Pop: Can You See Me?

question for next week: how will cybernetic thinking help you? your artwork?

7 December – 13 December – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

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2010: Sweet Fruit of Cybernetics, CalArts [CSCR216]

Syllabus and Weekly Outline

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