Why Design is Conversation and Why Conversation for Every Design
Our project in replicating Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles at the College for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit has moved into a new phase: Even as we discuss new venues for showing and ultimately housing the replica permanently, we have wonderful opportunities to present the work to international audiences.
Continue reading “New Presentations and New Venues – COLLOQUY 2018 Project – Progress Update #9”
Our full-scale replica of Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles is getting ready for interaction! Come to the the CCS Taubman Center from August 2nd through August 5th. The hours at the CCS Masters Program in Interaction Design will be 4pm to 8pm on Thursday & Friday, August 2nd and 3rd; and from 12pm to 4pm on Saturday and Sunday, August 4th and 5th. We have flashlights! (And free parking, of course.)
There have been many updates to the installation, including improvements that make everything more robust and ready for transport to other venues in the future.
During the summer we presented the COLLOQUY 2018 Project to The Exploratorium, which once housed a substantial percentage of the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition from the ICA in London in 1968, where Colloquy was originally created. (Details are available here.)
We welcome your questions and interactions via colloquy2018@gmail.com and donations at our project site.
Review blogposts about the project here.
Our official opening for the COLLOQUY 2018 Project was May 24th with 75 colleagues, students, and donors in attendance. Rick Rogers, President of CCS, and Bill Shields, Interim Provost of CCS, attended along with many faculty and staff from other departments. There is a Facebook video clip of the exhibit (4 minutes) and a “thank you” video on Facebook with reflections on Gordon Pask’s intentions and the importance of Colloquy (7 minutes)—which misses the beginning of the opening line, worth including: “Good evening everyone, friends of colloquy, colleagues, students, collaborators, generous donors, all interactive entities human and nonhuman.” (Here is the full text of delivered remarks.)
The most important “thank you” goes to TJ McLeish, who designed the full-scale replica from the historical record and created the installation in all of its dimensions (with the exception of the making of the female forms, beautifully executed by Building Brown Workshop, from TJ’s digital models).
Public promotion included a piece written by Lillien Waller with an eloquent description of the project, concluding with a beautiful quote from Amanda, one of Pask’s daughters and advisor to the project. There is a video review of the installation process, student work, and the exhibit (4 minutes). In the exhibit we also ran a video slideshow based on a paper written with TJ McLeish, containing segments on cybernetics, Pask’s prior machines, Colloquy itself and Pask’s influence on design (18 minutes).
A future post will go deep into the educational value of our project.
If you wish to come to see the installation before mid-August, please write to colloquy2018@gmail.com. But we are not quite done… Continue reading “Opening Night – Remaking COLLOQUY – Progress Update #6”
When first unveiled in 1968, Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles, part of an exhibition in London called Cybernetic Serendipity, was a total surprise and a sensation. Nothing like it had ever been made, an immersive experience with independent mobiles in motion, competing and cooperating with each other. It’s been written about and lauded ever since.
When we unveiled our full-scale replica at MFA Interaction Design at CCS in Detroit on May 11, 2018, just standing around these figures generated surprising insights about human-machine interactions. Continue reading “Installation at CCS – Remaking COLLOQUY – Progress Update #5”
The biggest challenge to remaking Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles is the fabrication of the so-called “female mobiles.” Three large translucent forms, nearly 5 feet high, are extraordinary and other-worldly. They rotate and glow and react to other mobiles and to the humans moving among them with light and sound.
Equally remarkable is the rich career of their designer, Yolanda Sonnabend, who worked at the Royal Ballet in London for over 30 years. Her stage designs for the director and choreographer of the Royal Ballet involved “his more abstract” works. How fitting that she would work with Gordon Pask on the visual design of the Colloquy—for choreography it surely is. Sonnabend once said, “Design is visualization of emotions.” Her female mobiles exude emotion, for they are voluptuous, outragious, fantastical. The male mobiles designed by Pask are complementary and equally fantastical. I wish we could overhear the conversations between Pask (world-class scientist, artist) and Sonnabend (world-class stage designer, painter). Continue reading “Yolanda Sonnabend – Remaking COLLOQUY – Progress Update #4”
(This post relates closely to our COLLOQUY 2018 Project.) In a spectacular, definitive revisiting, Jasia Reichardt, curator of the original and groundbreaking Cybernetic Serendipity from 1968, provides a walk-through of the entire exhibition in a new video from the D.C. Art Science Evening Rendezvous (images are from her talk). Continue reading “Revisiting Cybernetic Serendipity”
To raise visibility and reach our funding goals, a COLLOQUY 2018 DONATE page is now available. In just a few days we’ve raised over $1,400 in individual donations from $25 to $500. We appreciate these generous gifts as well as those of our major donors, who have contributed $27K to date. We’re aiming for $34K by May 11th, our intended opening at the annual CCS Student Exhibition.
The gnarliest challenge to replicating a full-scale version of Gordon Pask‘s work for our COLLOQUY 2018 Project is the so-called “female” mobile shape for Colloquy. We consulted the extraordinary craft facilities here at College for Creative Studies and a few great local fabrication shops in Detroit. (Whoa, now I know what “rotocasting” is.) Continue reading “Donate to Fabricate – Remaking COLLOQUY – Update #3”
I wonder if you’ve heard of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour—I love all that, all the way down to the extra ‘u’ for the UK spelling. As part of their annual conference, AISB held a Symposium in Liverpool today called Cybernetic Serendipity Reimagined, where I gave a 12-minute presentation on the status of the COLLOQUY 2018 Project (download the audio here and slides to follow along here). The presentation was a recap of progress on the project based on a paper published by AISB written by TJ McLeish, master fabricator of the COLLOQUY project, and myself.
Continue reading “Paper Presented – Remaking COLLOQUY – Progress Update #2”
Click here to see the video from the talk. Click here to download the PDF of the slides.
Cybernetics is often confused with robotics and AI, chip implants and biomechatronics, and more. Don’t want to disappoint you but cybernetics is none of those things (though it has a lot to say about all of them). Cybernetics is not freezing dead people, neither. (I’m hoping that’s less of a surprise. Maybe not.)
Hoping to clear up all that confusion in 20 minutes, I gave a talk on Saturday, March 10th, 2018, at 2pm at Worlds Fair Nano in San Francisco.
To speak about the future of cybernetics (as in this short video) is to speak about its past and present (requiring another short video). In an era that vacillates between rampant AI utopianism and rampant AI dystopianism, what does cybernetics have to offer our future? Continue reading “Talking about The Future of Cybernetics”
No, our replica of The Colloquy of Mobiles is not yet real—this is only a photoshopped image of how it will look in our staging space in May at College for Creative Studies in Detroit (CCS). But the photo speaks our intention and hints at our progress.
The CCS MFA Interaction Design (IxD)‘s Colloquy 2018 Project— to remake Gordon Pask‘s original installation at London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts in 1968—is well under way.
CCS students have been mining the historical materials on The Colloquy and building a repository of understanding to share with the world. Continue reading “Remaking COLLOQUY – Progress Update #1”