February 26, 2022 (first notes)
Keynote address delivered on October 15, 2014 at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design at RSD3 – Symposium Relating Systems Thinking & Design.[1]
While reading / listening
Reading Ranulph’s text (MH always refers to him as Ranulph) treibt mir die Tränen in die Augen. Ich kann den Text nur Stückweise lesen. Bird by bird (Anne Lamott). Not, because this text is so complicated. I struggle a lot with complicated texts all the time, in this case it is quite the opposite. Because this text is so simple. So clear. So fitting. While writing this I am half way through page 6. There is a recording of this talk available on YouTube, that I watch in parallel. Thomas Fischer was involved in recording this talk, an other hyperlink right there. I once was involved in recording a talk of Thomas Fischer, and I feel bad, since I have never edited and published that talk as I had promised. This was in a time in which I was too busy dealing with the noise in the foreground to be able to see the pearls. A time when I looked at the sea and only saw the surface and thought that is what the sea is.
Warum treibt mir Ranulphs Text die Tränen in die Augen? I kind of like him as he stands there at the lectern with a suit on and I imagine him just putting it on for that occasion and that he usually does not wear a suit. And simultaneously I am not so sure if I like him, he says simple tings and seems to be quite a bit arrogant (in the lack of an other word). It is that what I sense quite often when it comes to this cybernetics people. (Maybe it is because of..)
Ranulph talks Korsakow, in such a simple and precise way that it points out details that I can immediately see, but that I have not recognized in its significance before. I don’t know if this is true. Elissavet gives me feedback regularly, that when I am excited and tell her things that I have just learned from the books or papers or talks on YouTube, that what I am exited about, that this is something that I have already said before. Sometimes years ago. I forgot that I said this, maybe because I considered it to be just noise in the background, not understanding that I was describing a pearl. (This is what it feels to me now.)
I imagine MH asking: What is he talking about! Not that MH does not know what he is talking about, he knows it very well, might have been in the audience himself, he is the one who pointed me to this text. What is he talking about! FK would like to know: “What is the content!”, TC would be curious to understand: “What does the text say!”.
But this is only in the foreground. But in this case the foreground seems to be as deep as the background, in all its simple words. Ranulphs Text flimmert.
Quotes
Ranulf says: People looking at design think of design as the thing, people designing look at it as the act – die Handlung, das Tun.
The word design is a noun and a verb and we get confused by this.
(p.7)
How does that translate to Korsakow?
Entschuldigung, hier muss eine Verwechslung vorliegen. – Es scheint die selbe Verwechslung zu sein, die bei Korsakow vorliegt, das selbe Durcheinander. Endlich verstehe ich woher dieses Durcheinander kommt. This explains the confusion that I find myself in when I try to express the magic of Korsakow when I talk about what Korsakow does to the one who use it. And people ask me if I mean the viewer or the author, which always confuses me.
Who is the viewer, who is the author? Where does one end and the other start? When I make a Korsakow film and then I look at it (I have to look at it while making), who am I? Viewer or author? Obviously I am both! By coincidence I made Korsakow, I know this as a fact, I made it 20 years ago (building on the work and with the help of many people). And I know, I know: Korsakow made me. So who should be considered to be the author?
Wenn ich mir mit meinem Finger auf die Stirn drücke: wer drückt, wer wird gedrückt? Wer ist aktiv, wer passiv? Ich werde von aussen gedrückt, doch wer wer drückt da? Auch ich. Also bin ich innen (werde gedrückt) und aussen (drücke ein) gleichzeitig. Wo zum Teufel bin bin ich? Innen oder aussen? Dazwischen? Überall? Nirgendwo?
Ich schaue aus mir, wie durch ein Fenster, hinaus auf die Welt. Wenn ich mit Hilfe eines Spiegels oder noch cooler mittels einer Kamera auf mich selbst schaue, kann ich zweifelsfrei feststellen: ich bin in der Welt. Ich sehe mich in der Welt auf die ich gleichzeitig schaue. Wo bin ich?
Was sehe ich, wenn ich den Blick auf mich richte?
Eine Hülle (wie die Oberfläche des Meeres). Alles, was ich sehe, ist nur eine eine hauchdünne Folie, die wie eine eine Zeluphanfolie um irgendetwas gewickelt ist. Bin ich irgendwo dahinter? Wie ein Fisch im Meer? Oder bin ich ganz wo anders?
“In a circular system we are not talking about one thing about observing the other, but observing each other”
p.5
How does that translate to Korsakow?
A Korsakow-film is that. A Korsakow film observes the (author/viewer). The (author/viewer) is obviously an observes of the Korsakow-film. Both influence each other. This is different to a (finished) linear film. While it might be similar while in the making, but once the film is finished it is fixed/static/frozen/dead.
In that sense 1st order Cybernetics.
But a Korsakow-film is in itself a circular system, with its actors SNUs and Keywords, observing and influencing each other’s behavior (is that correct, MH?).
In that sense 2nd order Cybernetics.
And then you could think of of an observer observing people using Korsakow, in the way FW did in a participatory way. What is that then?
Heinz von Foerster said: “Objectivity is a subject’s delusion that observing can be done without him or herfself.”
(Poerksen, 2004, p.3)
Pattern finding is designing in Latin.
(Glanville 2010a, p.104)
What I want to know is how do I make it (design) better? And that is what most (design) research does not tell me. It disappoints me.
(p. 7)
That I understand and I think it can be generalized even more: What is good or bad is not a helpful question. A helpful question is, which is better, way to go (to improve) and which way not to go because it does the opposite. Better or worse vs good or bad.
The art school approach is interested in novelty and accepts the notion of good enough and is concerned with practice, and the university approach [..] and is concerned with efficiency and bestness.
(p. 7)
[..]
We have to learn each has a strength and each has something to give us.
Glanville, Ranulph. “How Design and Cybernetics Reflect Each Other.” Oslo, Norway, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTN_9mJIWNw.