Patterns. Acting in complex environments
Prof. Ursula Damm, Mindaugas Gapševičius
A pattern describes a regularity in the world that repeats over time or across space, enabling recognition, prediction, and the emergence of order. Patterns in data corpora gained with sensors can only be observed through processes of analysis. However, patterns are not just something that we can recognise or derive from data. Addressing patterns of behavior can be a way of bringing things together, enabling understanding between human, non-human and non-machinic actors.
The use of patterns can bridge the gap between different actors by referring to a known framework through which interaction may happen. By addressing mutually recognisable behaviors, patterns enable forms of understanding, even in matters that are yet unknown.
Gregory Bateson uses the term “pattern which connects” to refer to the interconnectedness and underlying structures that exist within complex systems, whether in nature, society, or mind. He describes these patterns as blueprints that enable exchange, comprehension, and continuity.
One way to understand how patterns can be incorporated into our artistic practice is through the example of dance. When two people dance together, their interaction is shaped by the dances they know, have learned, and how they danced before. Dancing always exceeds what has already been learned before. One might try to understand the other's movements in the context of 'dancing' as an inherited habit. While "reading" the other, one draws on knowledge that has established itself as a mode of social custom. For interacting, it is important to respond directly to the behavior of the other, even when it means departing from the known patterns of dancing. By recognizing the pattern one can even modify it.
The project module welcomes participants to work on self-defined projects. The projects can correspond to their own areas of focus and can move freely within the context of the subject “Patterns.” The module offers literature and a thematic framework to sharpen and intensify the respective artistic practice. Students are expected to be able and willing to work in a self-organized manner and to actively engage in the discourses of the module.
Prerequisites include prior enrollment in a specialized module with the co-workers of GMU or the Interface Design Professorship. An accompanying course of the modules of the professorship is recommended.
Please send a short letter of motivation to Ursula.damm “at” uni-weimar.de before inscribing in the module.
Literature
- Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, p. 470
- Andrew Pickering, “The Cybernetic Brain – Sketches of another future”, The University of Chicago Press. 2011, p. 19 f
- Sacha Kagan, Art and Sustainability. Connecting Patterns for a Culture of Complexity. Transcript 2011.