Image above: TJ McLeish calibrating light and sound in the gallery at Centre Pompidou for the public exhibition opening February 26, 2020.
Here at Centre Pompidou for the installation of Colloquy of Mobiles (its 2018 replica) to be displayed as part of a large-scale exhibition, with a conjoined history of brains, neural nets, AI, and cybernetic artifacts.
The exhibition entitled MUTATIONS / CRÉATIONS 4: NEURONES / LES INTELLIGENCES SIMULÉES is perhaps the largest retrospective connecting to cybernetics and art since Cybernetic Serendipity in London in 1968, where Gordon Pask’s original Colloquy was shown.
Connected to the exhibition is a 2-day symposium, including a panel named “Dead Ends and the Future of Cybernetics” where Andy Pickering (author of The Cybernetic Brain), Margit Rosen of ZKM (a great and long-time advocate for Colloquy), and I are joined by two French philosophers.
I have discerned that English title of our panel comes straight from Google Translated out of the original French, “Impasses et devenir de la cybernétique.” (The site apparently uses Google to translate all their English texts.) While “the future of cybernetics” in the panel’s title is unambiguous in either language, Google’s choice to translate “impasses” as “dead ends” is dubious. (I say this as a cybernetician.) Other translations of “impasses” include “stalemates”, “stand-offs”, “deadlocks”, and “blind alleys”, each of which is less discouraging than “dead end.”
We shall see if the panel’s conversation resolves which field may have “dead ends”—cybernetics or neural nets—and whether the relationship of cybernetics and AI will continue to be competitive and unresolved.
You can read more about our replica of Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles in the thread starting here.
I live in an impasse. I regard it was a whimsical lane, mostly. Any chance of getting into the symposium? Gordon Pask was a friend, still missed.
Vanilla, wonderful to have your note. The symposium was brief but Colloquy is shown until April 20. Thereafter it goes to ZKM in Karlsruhe. Yes, Gordon is much missed, as is Stafford and Heinz and more. I continue to work on new avenues, hence the Colloquy replica.
Time for me to organise myself to Paris then!! Really want to see Colloquy… catch you one day, Cheers! Vanilla