Tuesday 27th September, 2016
Brief: Cybernetic Self - Introduction
The lecture began by watching a clip of the "Kid's guide to the internet", this advertisement came out in 1990. With this advertisement we were introduced to our new brief to start off the year, 'Cybernetic Self'.
'Cybernetics; The science of communications and automatic control systems'
Our first brief as second year students is four weeks in length, in which time we will explore the themes; autopoiesis, sociomaterial and network self. All of which have interesting follow ups when digging deeper and researching each topic some more. To start, with network self we were told to consider the self presentation and social connection in the digital age. This basically refers to the use of social media in today's day and age. Breaking it down further we were told to ask; what happens to self identity when it is presented in new media environments. More research into this topic head will be found on the blog at a later date.
The second theme for the brief, sociomaterial, talks of how technologies are the materials that the social have assembled. This is made up and gathered together by ensembles of people, materials, equipment, components and institutions of which construct the platforms for many people's social presentation of themselves. It was also touched on that the technical cannot be reducible to the social, and the same goes vice versa. This theme basically goes on to highlight how social lives of people are effected by technology. Taking this into perspective, topics such as the 'notification effect' as named by a few of the ideas researchers - meaning people having either a response of anxiety or stress can come into the pool of influence for something under the heading of sociomaterial.
'Research book cover for the above 'notification effect' link'
And to finally complete the breakdown of themes, autopoiesis is the self maintenance through an organised entity through own internal process. This is the concept of something being self sustained to the point that no material that comes through them or outflows from them will effect their ability to self-maintain their lifestyle (were it attached to a person).
Following the briefs introduction, an interview clip was played from Paul Pangaro's channel on vimeo, the clip being the following. In the clip, Pangaro's interview includes topics such as cybernetics involvement with emotion, interation, autonomy and so on. He says things like the fact that he "prefer(s) to imagine that humans live in emotion". Other quotes from this clip are such as "Desires come from interaction". The premise of the ideas being put forwards by Pangaro put the thought of people losing this interaction with one another into perspective because of social media and various other socialmaterial technologies - including the other themes in part as-well.
Other notes were provided based on the briefs specifications, the projects timeline, some impulses for idea generation to kick up the project and our responses and such. And also the final output expectation of each of the respective design courses involved in the 'Cybernetic Self' brief itself.
