Day 20: Emergence

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Day 20 Emergence

• HUM 201
• Fall 2005

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Lessons of A Humement

• Movement travel can take place in and
  through a cultural artifact, not only through
  3-D space.
• Travel through and in despite of boundaries can
  both disrupt those boundaries and bring
  unforeseen things to light.
• Such travel produces effects by creating new
  spaces in De Certeaus sense.
• If not by the agent, where from?

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Itinerary for next two days

• Where does novelty come from after the loss of
  the subject?
• The subject created the new through action
• Novelty not from us but our relationship to the
  world
• The subject re-emerges
• not as just an agent
• as a mobile processor (affective agent)
  experimenting with space and time in a complex
  world

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From Body to Bodies

• Bodies
• Defined by what connects it
• Perception as a property ones relationship to
  the world
• Space as the practicing of place

• The Body
• Defined by its limits (the sack of meat)
• Perception as a property of your senses
• Space as the distance between bodies

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From active agent to affective agent

• Active agent
• Used the world as resource for creation
• Time a function of consciousness and/or movement
• Novelty as production

• Affective agent
• Feels and works with the world
• Time allows for the world to represent itself
• Novelty as emergence

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Definition emergence

• The process of coming into being to bring to
  light
• a small number of rules or laws can generate
  systems of surprising complexity (Holland, pg 3)
• Not just random complexity but well ordered
  complexity
• An emergent property cant be reduced to the
  elements or rules that generated it
• The order is a real property (William James)
• Emergent features should be recognizable and
  re-occurring.
• New spaces as practiced places

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Come out (1966)

• Steve Reich (1936-)
• Process music
• Tape loops and repetition
• Iteration of simple laws (repetition)
• Voices slowly drawn out of phase (difference)
• Pulse (emergence)

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scales

• Recognizing scalar organization important for
  emergent properties.
• Emergent properties manifest themselves on new
  scales (often thought of as non-scalar)
• Emergent properties constrained but not
  determined by constitutive scales

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ChuckClose

• Chuck Close
• James,
• 2004

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• Emma
• 2004

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Constraints

• Constitutive
• Happens through interactions, artist in her
  studio
• Bottom-up
• Happens during the moment
• Selective
• Happen afterward based on properties
• Top-down
• Happens by reflecting on the past

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Example Humanities-Thinking beyond the measure

• Measuring or counting designates types
• How do you understand the non-typical
• The new is that which has not been counted
• That which is not yet counted (or is in the
  process of being counted)
• Concentrate on describing experience

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The Conundrum of Innovation

• How do you recognize the new?
• If emergent properties are unexpected or
  novel how do you prepare yourself to witness
  them and gauge their importance?
• The problem of innovation
• How do you design something new (that has never
  been conceived of before)?