On Roger’s mind July 12, 2024
Colleagues
I just started reconnecting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahum_(artist). He is also known Nahum Mantra and Nahum Romero Zamora. See the email exchange at the end of this blog.
I just turned 74 years old and have discovered that I am e-connected with tens of thousands of friends and colleagues; this leads to email floods, on both the receiving and giving ends, and other AI-DySfunctions (but there are no e-pills yet that I have found useful).
Some of the connections were for a short time ( a workshop), some for a long time ( Annick Bureaud, Directrice of Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et Technosciences (https://leonardo.info/olats ), others for 50 years (Wolf Dieter Peter Rainer -AI cant find him existing on line except https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wolf-Dieter-Peter-Rainer .
Do you matter if AI can’t find you online?
Some continuous connections, some with interruptions….
For several years I worked with Isabel Meirelles and Maximilian Schich https://www.schich.info on applying the emerging science of complex networks to the arts and humanities. The final editorial https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_e_01484 is a good place to start.
Suddenly this interest re-started through a collaboration with Fred Turner ( also known in AI as “FredTheHeretic” as there are too many Fred Turners in AI-land) and with Robert Stern and with Tina Qin and with Paul Fishwick…
Bob discovered recently that without plate tectonics there would be no life on Earth, or anywhere else (check this out Nahum): https://personal.utdallas.edu/~rjstern/pdfs/SternBook23.pdf
The several of us are trying to start C4ES or the Non-Center for Emergence Studies at UTDallas.
We have been researching the topic of emergence in complex systems ( autopoiesis etc). And published a brief (hah) history of emergence : https://athenaeumreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/EMERGENCE-AthenaeumReview9.pdf
And we applied theory to practice in order to understand why the Arts and Humanities emerged at our University with no strategy, plan, or seed funding. Article is in press. But we generated desirable hate emails because some of our anecdotes were not totally true.
I called this blog ‘surgence’ because surgence refers to the act or process of emerging, rising, or becoming prominent or noticeable. It typically involves a sudden or rapid increase in intensity, popularity, or importance but also swelling in surges or waves that may go up or down. What is a phenomenon that goes sideways, not up or down? e-tectonics?
By CSS ( Coincidence, Synchronicity and Serendipity – thank you David Peat https://fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/books/stone.htm ) I am working with Antonia Moran and others on a project called “Surgence”: https://artscilab.utdallas.edu/2024/04/04/compassion-as-medicine-literature-as-the-catalyst/ applying the humanities skills of literature to improve compassion, not just sympathy and empathy, through neuroscientific processes.
Nearly finally, to prevent e-blog indigestion, I need to mention, above the e-noise, the CiberVillage project non-centered in Bogota Columbia: https://festivaldelaimagen.com/en/portfolio-item/ciber-villages-2/
We are a group of evil-lagers trying to develop software to create desirable feedback loops in a group of people. All suggestions welcome.
This has led to tectonic connecting to Alan Boldon’s Weave Global: https://weaveglobal.org/. We are working on the idea of a ciber-weave workshop at the UTD IQ https://richardsoniq.com/iq1302/ . Contact us if you would like to participate.
So, let’s return to Nahum. He is a friend from last century and he chaired the ITACCUS committee that I co founded https://www.iafastro.org/about/iaf-committees/technical-committees/committee-for-the-cultural-utilisation-of-space-itaccus.html . Committee for cultural utilization of space ( inner and outer).
Nahum is a space nut, an art nut, a semi-mystic and someone who is an influencer by accident, not by design.
Nahum says today:
Dear Roger,
I am glad to know you are working on this front; the situation is dire, I’d like to know more about what you are cooking. Last year, I was part of a think tank at ESA to create future scenarios with other experts, and the climate scientists have basically given up any hope, which is terrifying. Despite the pessimism, in theory, we can be optimistic in practice. At KOSMICA, we have been working on some workshops for organisations, but also online, about Radical Imagination precisely to come up with good radical ideas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVMS2R3Q0Yw&ab_channel=KOSMICAInstitute
https://www.kosmicainstitute.com/education/the-black-canvas/
On other news, I am working on a secret project, but I am happy to tell you about it. I am writing my first movie, and I’ve managed to get a really good production house to support it. It’s a fiction feature film, and the atmosphere/air is a character! Will take still a long time to finish it but it’s personally quite exciting!
Abrazos from Berlin,
Nahum
Check out the Black Canv-ass:
https://www.kosmicainstitute.com/education/the-black-canvas
You will be introduced to our Black Canvas Methodology, traveling on a conceptual journey to a point of darkness where new stories and paradigms can be crafted.
Both in practice and theory, you will learn radical imagination, social dreaming, critical consciousness, and various types of futurisms (such as afrofuturism and indigenous futurisms).
.You will discover techniques to identify assumptions and biases, as well as how to disrupt your own thought patterns.
.You will be guided on how to embrace chaos and create within the unknown, abandoning linear thinking to operate in ambiguity and uncertainty.
.Learn communication skills by effectively conveying ideas and creations through compelling and bold storytelling,
.A toolbox of creative strategies will be provided, applicable at any time, regardless of your current state of inspiration or the mood of the muses!
OK OK watch out for subliminal AI-advertising it costs human money to participate but not alien money.
Max Schich responds:
Regarding your draft blog post, please clarify how it would contribute to solve climate change or on what basis we could be “optimistic in practice”.
Please consider rephrasing “the Arts and Humanities emerged at our University with no strategy, plan, or seed funding”. This argument implicitly shades the contribution of a large amount of people, who started arts and humanities from scratch at UT Dallas, and who contributed over time. Case in point: The colleagues you attracted to UT Dallas, including myself, worked with you several (in my case eight) years to build an Arts & Technology program and to advance the Arts and Humanities, initially under the impression that you would go on to lead the ATEC program. There were literally three-digit million sums of “seed funding” floating around towards this aim, and all the people you attracted worked their asses off to co-create and perform strategy, plans, concepts, research, and curriculum, while increasingly exposed to an unbelievable amount of well-defined (not emerging) toxicity and sidelining from several directions. Several faculty and students were eventually thrown under the bus very actively and without basis in substance, while others were “observing and noticing, but not meddling”. “Emergence” is not the right term or an excuse to explain these dynamics.
“Nature cannot be fooled” – Richard Feynman
Kind regards, Max