Embracing Complexity in Design

ART IN THE SCIENCE OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS
An International Exhibition-Workshop
Wednesday 13th – Saturday 16th June 2007
Brighton University, Grande Parade & Lighthouse Media Centre, Kensington St

Programme

Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Contributors Profiles | Download the programme

Wednesday 13th June,
Lighthouse, Kensington St

13.00 Registration, Foyer, Lighthouse

13.30 Introduction & Welcome, Conference Room, Lighthouse
Jeffrey Johnson, The Open University and Sue Gollifer, University of Brighton

14.00 Conference Room, Lighthouse
‘Arts Work with People: Metaphorical Approaches to Complexity - Embodied and Cross-Arts practice’, Mick Wallis, University of Leeds

A brief and partial outline of ways in which arts might articulate science. Arts Work With People (AWP) is a collaboration between arts charity & Isabel Jones, Salamanda Tandem, Nottingham and the School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds. Their methodology helps people (especially with severe access needs) to find artistic metaphors for their own complex relations with the world. The aim here is to explore the application of the AWP methodology to the articulation of scientific complexity from the point of view of the scientist.

16.00 Foyer, Lighthouse
Coffee Break

16.30 Conference Room, Lighthouse
Open Discussion, Art in the Science of Complex Systems
Jeffrey Johnson, The Open University & Eve Mitleton-Kelly, London School of Economics

Artist Julian Burton makes work that visualises how companies operate in specific relation to their approach to change and innovation. He is a strategic artist and facilitator who 'makes pictures of problems to help people talk about them.' Clients include public and private sector organizations such as Barclays, Shell, Prudential, KPMG and the NHS. This is a simple and direct method of using art as a knowledge elicitation tool in the science of complex systems and the starting point for this event.

17.30 Close

20.00 Foyer, Lighthouse
Event launch and exhibition private view

An exhibition of work by artists Julian Burton, Michael Petry, Paul Brown, Dave Everitt, Glen Davidson, Mark Palmer, Karen Cham & Jeffrey Johnson

22.00 Close

Thursday 14th June,
Lighthouse, Kensington St

9.30 Through the Looking Glass, an experiment in refining the intuitive intellect and engineering serendipity
Karen Cham, The Open University

The artist is an expert in modes of representing; visualisation, simulation and embodiment; this process is a complex methodology in practice. In this way of working answers are precursors to questions and wholes are more apparent than parts. In a spirit of experimentation and holistic learning an artistic ‘answer’ will be presented and promoted as a catalyst for a body of further work. Collation of this work will become examples of research material in further explorations of the notion of creative processes as complex thinking.

10.30 Break

11.00 Complexity and Interactivity; Learning to Put Participation First
Dr Mark Palmer, University of the West of England

‘New’ media has often been attracted to the ‘new’ sciences of chaos and complexity. Its as if the notion of the butterfly flapping its wings were nascent in the images of romanticism and creative sensibility However, properly realised Interactivity and Complexity demand a participation in the unfolding of events that leaves behind notions of solitary creative vision. This paper will examine these issues and the kinds of practice that might arise as a result of these demands.

12.00 Lunch

13.00 Digital Lounge, Lighthouse
‘Arts Work with People: Metaphorical Approaches to Complexity - Embodied and Cross-Arts practice’, Mick Wallis, University of Leeds

An introductory participatory workshop on on Boalian body work exploring artistic representation in different mediums.

15.30 Foyer, Lighthouse
Coffee Break

16.00 Hostprods
Andy Gracie, Digital Research Unit, Huddersfield
hostprods is a multi-disciplinary art project working with technological and natural systems that feature elements of installation, sound, video and biological practice and involve the convergence of technological and natural systems. The underlying focus of hostprods activities involves a study of organic intelligence, emergent systems and the placing of technological agents in situations where they are able to share information and behaviors with natural systems, to expose the machinic nature of networked ecologies. The project uses a strong foundation of scientific theory and practice to question our relationships with environment and the notion of the ‘other’.

17.00 Magic in 4D: Reflections and the future.
Alec Robertson, De Montfort University & Dave Everitt, Artist

This presentation will overview the ECiD2 Magic in Complexity Event hosted at SMARTlab, UEL. Initial conclusions will be summarised and the event Website will be demonstrated. This will be followed by a discussion session on issues for the future relating to 4D design, performing arts, and complexity.

17.30 close

Friday 15th June,
Lighthouse, Kensington

At intervals: Embedded Poetry Readings
Carol Bellard-Thomson, Director of Language Learning, University of Kent (retired)

Poetry readings in between today’s presentations and are a precursor to the later discussion

9.30 The DrawBots – from chaos to creative behaviour
Paul Brown, University of Sussex

The DrawBots project (aka “Computational Intelligence, Creativity, and Cognition: A
Multidisciplinary Investigation”) is a three-year AHRC-funded interdisciplinary research project that is using evolutionary and adaptive systems to create a robot that can draw. The project also addresses related concepts including personality, signature, and autonomy as well as the selection of goal-oriented criteria for qualitative (as opposed to quantitative) outcomes.

10.30 Break

11.00 Artistic Forms and Complexity: What Do They Have to Do with Each Other?
John Casti, The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and The Kenos Circle, Austria

This presentation is a discussion of the many notions of complexity, in order to explore whether any of them can begin to address our everyday concept of the “complexity” of an artistic form.

12.00 Processes in Conversation
Glen Davidson, Artstation

Beginning with a case study of Locomotion (1984), a participatory visual artwork performed within a closed kinetic architecture, this presentation will chart the work of Artstation in relation to complexity theory. From the conversation theory of Gordon Pask, to 3D topological representations of symbolic and evocative themes within conversations, the projects of Artstation embrace complexity intentionally and both methodologically and practically. Artstations further proposes to apply their methodologies in the science of complex systems through application in the workplace

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Is art suffering from science envy?
Dave Everitt, Artist

Taking my own live art and art-technology practice as a departure point, I examine the rationale behind the investigation of complexity in art practice together with the necessity for artists working with technology to collaborate, look at research into cooperation, and suggest experimental artworks as research, based on the questions raised.

15.00 Lizbeth Goodman
Collaborative research into the transdisciplinary fields of technology development and art, e-health, e-inclusion, haptics and ‘artsci’ and will be conducting interviews

16.00 Break

16.30 Colourless green ideas sleep furiously; language as a complex system
Carol Bellard Thomson, Kent University (retired)

An informal discussion of the proposal that methodologies from linguistics are models of complex systems that could serve as blueprints for the development of complex systems science.

17.00 Opera, Music and complexity; an Introduction
Andrew Lovett, Composer

The starting point for this presentation is a paper by Barry Truax (1992) on music and Complexity. I’m especially interested in the relationship between performer and composer - and they way that both contribute to the “complexity” of a performance

18.00 Close

Friday 15th June,
Sallis Benny Theatre, Grand Parade

19.30 Opera, Music and complexity; live performance
Frances M. Lynch, Charlotte McClelland, Paul Bull

"King Harald's Saga" by Judith Weir
a comedy opera for one voice, true exposition of complex systems

"Lullaby" - by Paul Barker
a beautiful exposition of simple vocals given complex development

"Daughters of Sarah" - by Andrew Lovett
extract from his opera "Abraham on trial" with live & pre-recorded electronics - an

"Cathedral of Trees" by Judith Bingham
a sumptuous piece of writing exploring arpeggios & extended melodic thought as a meditation.

"I walk alone" - traditional Scottish folk song

"Aubade" & "Lament" by Paul Barker
wordless vocal music with a strong ability to communicate directly through the emotions & the systems within the music itself. The piece ends with chocolate cake which the audience may wish to help eat!

20.15 Informal close
Sallis Benney Theatre Bar

22.00 End

Contributors profiles

Carol Bellard-Thomson is a poet and a writer. She recently retired from her post as Director of Language Learning at the University of Kent, where she was responsible for the development of the infrastructure of the new university of the Transmanche. She previously created and directed the Language Centre at Lancaster University, prior to which she was Acting Head of the Department of Modern Languages and Head of French at the University of Dundee. Research and publications are in the field of English and French stylistics, developing computer tools for stylistic analysis, the development and management of tertiary language-learning bodies, and 16th-century French language and literature. Recent publications are on corpus linguistics for the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME) Journal and the Lancaster University Centre for Researching English Language (UCREL) Technical Papers. Carol is a former member of the national Association of University Language Centres and a founder member of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA).

Paul Brown is Chair of CAS, the Computer Arts Society and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics and Department of Informatics, University of Sussex. He is an artist and writer who has specialised in art, science & technology since the late 1960s and in computational & generative art since the mid 1970s. His international exhibition record spans four decades and includes the creation of both permanent and temporary public artworks. He has participated in shows at major venues like the TATE, Victoria & Albert and ICA in the UK; the Adelaide Festival; ARCO in Spain and the Venice Biennale. His work is represented in public, corporate and private collections in Australia, Asia, Europe, Russia and the USA. He is currently visiting professor and artist-in-residence at the CCNR, University of Sussex

Julian Burton is a change consultant, artist and visual facilitator, working in organisations, providing a process: Visual Dialogue, to support leaders in dialogue. He provides a visual perspective on important issues and challenges in meetings; before, during and after. His main skills are listening, synthesising and visualising concepts; developing visual symbols, metaphors and stories that create and hold a reflective space by catalysing and stimulating constructive dialogue.

John Casti is an accomplished mathematician and acclaimed writer, and one of the most outspoken advocates of complexity science. John received a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Southern California in 1970, and taught at the University of Arizona, NYU, Princeton, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna, Austria, and the Technical University of Vienna. In 1986, Casti left IIASA to take up a position as a Professor of Operations Research and System Theory at the Technical University of Vienna. He was a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, where he spent years working on the application of biological metaphors to the mathematical modelling of problems in economics, finance and road-traffic networks. He is also a talented popular science writer and author of more than 20 books exploring a broad range of subjects, from the foundations and frontiers of science to the intricate workings of logic and the human mind. Some of his most acclaimed work is dedicated to the emerging paradigm of complexity, and to its implications for technology, biology, the social sciences and economics.

Karen Cham is Lecturer in Digital Media, Faculty of Technology, The Open University & Visiting Lecturer for the Post Graduate Diploma in Digital Media Arts at the University of Brighton. Karen has been working with audio visual technology since 1987 making performance, installation & screen based works. Since 1995 she has also used digital media in a creative, consultative & managerial capacity across both the public & private sectors. Commissioned by Video Positive, Running Out of Time Festival & London Film & Video Access her artwork has been exhibited/performed at the Tate Gallery Liverpool, the ICA London & The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. She has recently published written works for CHArt conference and M/C Journal and digital video for Video in the Built Environment, California and the 35th Rotterdam Film Festival. Current research interests include media semantics, digital semiotics, computational media aesthetics, algorithmic and data driven video.

Glenn Davidson is Co-Director & Lead Artist of Artstation http://www.artstation.org.uk/
A unique independent live art and technology partnership, Artstation consists of artists Glenn Davidson and Anne Hayes, who are "innovators in performance, art, video, installation, interactivity and technology systems." Formed in 1989 and based in Cardiff, Wales, Artstation is involved in events and exhibitions in galleries, museums and public spaces; lectures (including slide, video, computer presentations); education sector workshops and INSET for all levels; 3D Design consultation to design teams; training for technology in design; landscape and architecture; digital/video animation; and 3D modelling and multimedia project production.

Dave Everitt a creator who mixes special interests and long-term lines of inquiry with creativity, a process that spawns new directions and ideas in a recursive process. He produces art, music or sound, and has also produced text-based work. He is a self-taught hacker in certain areas of mathematics and programming, and an information addict with a huge interest span and an almost pathological aversion to specialisation. He has delivered seminars on emerging interfaces and their implications for artists/audiences and accessibility, and have a special interest in art-technology and disability.

Sue Gollifer is a Principal Lecturer in Fine Art Printmaking, in the School of Arts and Communication and the Course Leader for the Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Media Arts (DMA) and for the MA in Printmaking and Professional Practice. Her primary research is on 'The impact of new technology within the practice and pedagogy of Fine Art' and she has presented a number of evaluative and analytical papers on this subject at major international conferences. She has been a professional artist / printmaker for over 30 years, exhibiting work regularly throughout the world and her work is held in major national and international public collections. She has established a number of international artistic and educational contacts, particularly in Europe, the United States, Eastern Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Lizbeth Goodman is Director of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute and Magic Gamelab at UEL. She is also Director of Studies for the UEL practice-based PhDs: a cohort of 28 professional new media artists and engineers conducting collaborative research into the transdisciplinary fields of technology development and art, e-health, e-inclusion, haptics and ‘artsci’. Her main field of speciality is the creation of learning games developed WITH, not only for, people with disabilities and other communities of ‘non-standard gamers’, including children and young people around the world. She is the lead evaluator for the Microsoft Community Affairs Clubtech educational technology and games project (which has reached 4 million disadvantaged young people to date) and is the Director of the Trust Project for children in hospital, using gaming and haptics to enhance the physical well being and learning of those with limited physical ability. Lizbeth founded the Trust Project in 2001 and has helped it to grow and find sponsorship (with BBC R&D, Singapore Gamelab, NYU, The Carl Sagan Trust and Children’s Health Fund et al) in many cultures over the years. She is also founder and Director of the SafetyNET Project and global NGO- which provides skills training for women and children survivors of domestic abuse.

Andy Gracie is an artist producing work situated that creates situations of exchange between organic and synthetic systems in order to allow new emergent behaviours and information systems to develop. His work has evolved from interactive and generative sound installations into pieces that involve robotics, artificial intelligence, biological practice, living organisms and custom electronic systems. He has exhibited his work across the UK as well as in France, Spain, USA, Japan, Mexico and Australia and been commissioned by Arnolfini Live in Bristol, Organismos in Madrid and Barcelona, and AV06 in North East England. He has also exhibited at ISEA, Artbots, Radar and at the Capital of Culture ‘Robots!’ exhibition as part of Lille2004. His most recent completed major work – 'Autoinducer_Ph-1' (in collaboration with Brian Lee Yung Rowe) has been awarded honorary mentions from Vida9.0 and Ars Electronica 2007. Conferences include Transmediale (Berlin) , Dias de Bioarte (Barcelona), Rules of Engagement (York), AV06 (Middlesborough) and FLAIRS (Florida) as well as at various UK universities, University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and the Kapelica gallery, Ljubljana. He has had published articles in Aminima magazine, the journal of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the catalogue for Break2.3 in Slovenia He is a member of the Digital Research Unit at the University of Huddersfield.

Jeffrey Johnson is Professor of Complexity Science and Design at the Open University. His PhD is in mathematics and he is a chartered engineer. He coordinates the European ONCE-CS project (Open Network of Centres of Excellence in Complex Systems) and is a partner in GIACS (General Industrial Applications of Complex Systems) coordination action. He is Principle investigator of the Embracing Complexity in Design project funded by AHRC/EPSRC under the Designing for the 21st Century initiative. He is Vice President of the European Complex Systems Society, and Director of the International Open University of Complexity Systems in Paris. He has published four books and many papers on subjects including artificial intelligence, robotics, machine vision, multi-agent systems, complexity, and hypernetworks.

Andrew Lovett is a composer. He specialises in electroacoustic composition, particularly combining small groups of instruments or soloists with computer-generated material. His work has been performed in Germany, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, Canada, Cuba, the USA and throughout the UK.
In 1997 he co-founded the ensemble ReSound, and in 1998 the Cambridge Digital Arts Festival, both with an accent on the performance of electroacoustic music with virtuosic instrumental performers.

Frances Lynch is Director of Vocem Electric Voice Theatre . She is a performer, teacher, musical director and composer who has worked in France, Germany, Japan, Sweden and the UK with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the COMA Summer School and at the MOMA in Oxford,
In 2004 Frances performed John Cage’s Songbooks at the Barbican, London as part of the BBC Symphony Orchestra's Uncaged weekend. She developed the SHE project at BAC in London which then toured to Mexico, Spain, Norway, Italy.

Eve Mitleton-Kelly is founder and Director of the Complexity Research Programme at the London School of Economics; visiting Professor at the Open University; Coordinator of Links with Business, Industry and Government of the European Complex Systems Network of Excellence, Exystence; Executive Co-ordinator of SOL-UK (London) (Society for Organisational Learning); and Advisor to European and USA organisations. She is also a co-investigator of the Embracing Complexity in Design Project. EMK's recent work has concentrated on the implications of the theories of complexity for organisations and specifically on strategy, IT legacy systems, organisational learning, the emergence of new organisational forms, the 'design' of organisations, post merger integration, and the development of enabling environments. She has developed a theory of complex social systems and an integrated methodology using both qualitative and quantitative tools and methods. Her first career between 1967-83, was with the British Civil Service in the Department of Trade and Industry, where she was involved in the formulation of policy and the negotiation of EU Directives.

Mark Palmer is the first Watershed Senior Research Fellow in Digital Media at Bristol UWE. He is involved with research into issues of user involvement and its theorisation within a creative context. His work emerges out of a history of collaborative practice that included the award of a New Technology Arts Fellowship by the University of Cambridge and an AHRB fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts. Having been a sculptor and installation artist he began using computers in the early 90s and began working with immersive virtual reality as a research student. His research interest lies in creative genuine multi-user environments that involve all participants equally. He is presently working on a number of projects, including one using an adapted games engine. He has published on the philosophy of Deleuze and Spinoza and the implications of the new sciences for our understanding of digital media. He has worked on the CADE committee, is an editor of Digital Creativity and was elected as CADE’s chair in 2003.

Michael Petry has a Bachelor of Arts in mathematical science and fine art from Rice University, Houston, Texas in 1981 which has underpinned an extremely successful 21-year career as a multimedia artist, writer and curator. Petry’s visual work focuses on installation art but includes work also includes performance art, music and painting. His installation works are usually impermanent – relics, souvenirs and photographic documentation are their only remnants. His work explores science and art, the interchange between the two and how that interchange has been perceived. His g. His performance piece Uncle Mikey Fine Art Game Show, was performed at the 1993 Venice Biennale. He also performed an opera titled An Englishman, an Irishman, and a Frenchman (based on the lives of W. H. Auden, Oscar Wilde, and Jean Cocteau) at the National Gallery in Bonn in 1998. More recent installation works have included materials ranging from soil and sand to painted clothes and paper jewelry, and each installation is typically accompanied by music composed specifically for the subject.

Alec Robertson is at the Faculty of Art & Design De Montfort University. His research interests include dissemination problems of design research; conceptual modelling for design innovation forecasting, and '4D Design'. He is an advocate of the 'Research Exhibition' as an alternative to the conventional 'Research-Paper' for the design research community; the 'designs-survey' for the 'designing' design researcher along with the conventional 'literature-survey for scientific and humanities design researchers; and 'design practice' in its full richness as a primary 'research method' amongst others. He is a co-investigator of the Embracing Complexity in Design Project.

Mick Wallis is Professor of Performance and Culture at the University of Leeds. His early research career (from 1990) had its principal foci in theatre pedagogy, sexuality and non-canonical performances of the twentieth century. The latter now forms one element in a range of projects he gathers under the rubric of cultural histories of performance. He emphatically include the present within this frame; and it includes both practice-based and paper-based productions. A second focus of his research is performance theory. A third – winding in pedagogic and public-sector research - concerns participatory arts experience for people with severe access needs, and is conducted under the aegis of the Arts Work With People Project (AWP), founded from my National Teaching Fellowship (2001). His work is interdisciplinary, especially in the cultural histories of performance, the Performance Robotics Research Group and the Emergent Objects cluster.

Many thanks from Karen Cham and Jeffrey Johnson to all our contributors and back stage assitance especially from Miriam Randall. Special thanks from Karen to her husband Sam for his patience in the face of adversity !