Tag: Gordon Pask

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Colloquy of Mobiles at ZKM — Progress Update #15

Colloquy of Mobiles at ZKM

Above and below: Replica of Gordon Pask’s 1968 “Colloquy of Mobiles” by TJ McLeish and Paul Pangaro now installed at ZKM. All photos courtesy of Morgane Stricot, ZKM.

Today we celebrate the  anniversary of the unveiling of our replica of Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles on February 26, 2020, at Centre Pompidou in Paris where it was part of the extraordinary exhibition MUTATIONS / CRÉATIONS 4: NEURONES / LES INTELLIGENCES SIMULÉES.

Colloquy of Mobiles at ZKM

That opening was rich in energy and interactions as demonstrated in these short videos.

In March the exhibition had to close prematurely due to COVID.

Thereafter the great staff of Centre Pompidou and ZKM disassembled, transported, and reassembled Colloquy at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, where it has become part of the permanent collection.

We look forward to the museum’s reopening to the public and the opportunity for TJ Mcleish, Colloquy’s master fabricator, to travel to ZKM and animate the replica to make it fully operational once again.

Read more about Colloquy here.

 

 

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Cybernetics, AI, and Ethical Conversations

“As a designer, I shall act always so as to increase 
 the total number of choices for a user.”

Quote above: An approach to interface design based on Heinz von Foerster’s Ethical Imperative where “choices” are distinguished from “options” — options are anything that is possible, while choices are only those options that are viable and well-suited to this user in this moment.

More and more, today’s AI makes the world we see and the world we live in — and we need to respond. In a presentation hosted by the AiTech Agora at TU Delft, Paul Pangaro responds with a proposal for collaboration that bridges AI and cybernetics with conversation.

Click for video of presentation.          Click for full abstract and slides.

“Pandemic” comes from “all” and “people”, meaning something negative that effects us all. While not biological, today’s AI foments polarization, pushes irrelevant products, spreads social bias, and surveils our lives. AI touches billions and sways more of us,  in more invasive and uncontrolled ways, every day.

AI came out of cybernetics, a practice that evolved from a series of trans-disciplinary conversations called the Macy Meetings. This history offers a way forward. Continue reading “Cybernetics, AI, and Ethical Conversations”

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Colloquy Featured in INTERACTIONS MAG — Progress Update #12

Inside page showing Colloquy images

While the 2018 replica of Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles is being crated in preparation for its time at Centre Pompidou, the magazine INTERACTIONS has printed a brief description of the project in their DEMO HOUR feature section. Here’s the text of the story: Continue reading “Colloquy Featured in INTERACTIONS MAG — Progress Update #12”

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Colloquy Begins Journey to Paris and Centre Pompidou — Progress Update #11

TJ McLeish working with Colloquy

(Banner Image: TJ McLeish upgrading Colloquy in preparation for its heading to Europe. Perrier in tribute to Gordon Pask.)

After many weeks of toiling, master fabricator TJ McLeish has completed the mechatronic, digital hardware, and software upgrades to Colloquy 2018 in preparation for its crating and shipping to Centre Pompidou in Paris. There it will be shown in their major exhibition, MUTATIONS / CRÉATIONS 4: NEURONES / LES INTELLIGENCES SIMULÉES from 26 February through 20 April 2020.

When first created by Gordon Pask and shown in London in 1968, Colloquy of Mobiles was unlike any immersive gallery experience. Five interacting, human-scale mobiles (see photos below) held a “conversation” with each other through light and sound, exhibiting cooperation and competition. In significant ways, Pask’s “colloquy” (a “speaking together”) of mobiles from 1968 exceeds the interactivity of today’s conversational interfaces.

On the 50th anniversary of Pask’s original creation, the Colloquy 2018 Project implemented a replica faithful in appearance and behavior, while utilizing modern mechatronics and digital technology. With the success of the replica, the world-renowned Centre Pompidou requested that it become part of a major upcoming museum exhibition. Similarly, the ZKM Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany, has asked to acquire the work for their permanent collection.

1968: Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles, London
2018: Colloquy of Mobiles Replica, Detroit

Final preparations for this future of Colloquy 2018 were completed at Omnicorp Collective Detroit this past weekend, with the help of current and former students of the MFA IxD program of the College for Creative Studies, where the project was initiated 2 years ago by McLeish and Paul Pangaro. (You can read here about replicating Pask’s original Colloquy.) A wide range of upgrades were made to improve the reliability and behaviors of the mobiles before transferring the work to Artpack Services for crating and shipping.

Continue reading “Colloquy Begins Journey to Paris and Centre Pompidou — Progress Update #11”

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Computing Conversation — A Lecture

Is it possible to ‘compute conversation’? I mean — is it possible to write heuristics that respond in surprising and stimulating ways, enabling a back-and-forth exchange among intelligent participants?

Gordon Pask not only thought so, he designed and built a series of machines that did so, as far back as 1953. Sure, some of those conversations were simple and his machines could not understand language or listen to speech — but all the mechanisms he built had memory (and so could learn) and displayed novel, unexpected behaviors (and so kept their co-participants engaged in the interaction). As a result, all of Pask’s machines could hold a form of conversation with humans (or sometimes, with other machines!).

The photo above is a control panel from 1958: Pask’s ‘Eucrates‘ environment, where a ‘teacher’ machine attempts to train a ‘pupil’ machine comprising neural nets (yup, neural nets in 1958). There are knobs labelled ‘awareness’ and ‘obstinacy’ — and don’t miss the wackiest one, ‘oblivesence.’ (Pask was British, so I hold to the definition in British dictionaries: ‘willful forgetfulness.’)

Wait… what? Continue reading “Computing Conversation — A Lecture”

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New Presentations and New Venues – COLLOQUY 2018 Project – Progress Update #9

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”

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Get your flashlights ready – Remaking COLLOQUY – Progress Update #7

Pangaro at The Exploratorium

COLLOQUY 2018 Project – Fab Board + flashlights
Flashlights ready for participants to interact with Colloquy

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.

Pangaro at Exploratorium 2
Chair of MFA Interaction Design Paul Pangaro presents the COLLOQUY 2018 Project at The Exploratorium in San Francisco, June 13, 2018

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Opening Night – Remaking COLLOQUY – Progress Update #6

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”

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Installation at CCS – Remaking COLLOQUY – Progress Update #5

Full-scale replica at CCS MFA IxD

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”

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Yolanda Sonnabend – Remaking COLLOQUY – Progress Update #4

Yolanda Sonnabend. Portrait © Johnny Dewe-Mathews 1973
Yolanda Sonnabend. Portrait © Johnny Dewe-Mathews 1973
3D digital model
3D digital model
TJ McLeish and female mobile
TJ McLeish and female mobile

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”