wallpaper animals

Aren't they just beautiful, I especially love the lamp...

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Gorgeous entry and even more gorgeous cupboard...

Happy Monday everyone, I hope you all had a lovely weekend and have an even lovelier week. Here's a little inspiration to start your week off... I must say I'm loving that pink and silver chair, just devine, see you tomorrow xx



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Ok - I've set myself a challenge in this post title! I've not got anything specific to say that Open Atrium (which I've been playing with recently) exhibits hysteresis (but can it?), except that I have two very different things on my mind at the moment.

Hysteresis came up at the cybernetics society conference during the paper given by Faisal Kadri, who talked about 'multiplier feedback' (as opposed to negative feedback) and its relationship to hysteresis (and its relationship to homeostasis). Hysteresis is a property whereby "There is no way to predict the system's output without looking at the history of the
input (to determine the path that the input followed before it reached its current value) or inspecting the internal state of the system" (Wikipedia). In effect, the system has 'memory'.


So what about OpenAtrium?

Well, I've been looking at how I might use it to manage the workflow for a little project where a number of people will have to process a range of files through a number of stages in a set pattern. Open Atrium is cool - I looked at BaseCamp first, but OpenAtrium seemed more usable (once I'd managed to install it) and more suitable for what I wanted to do.

Does it have Hysteresis?

Well, to some extent, all online social systems have hysteresis, because human beings have hysteresis (that was one of the most interesting things about Faisal's paper). One the one hand, we regulate and maintain homeostasis. On the other, our outputs are path-dependant. What OpenAtrium does is allow you to manage the path in some way.

Is that interesting? How different is it from Winograd and Flores's assertion that computers allow us to manage the commitments we make to one another?

Obviouly OpenAtrium does that too. But there may be something here which is to do with the 'shared concern' that humans engaged on a project exhibit. The experience of working together on projects is one where individual human states (the states of the participants) continually change in response to communications and tasks in the project, as well as other things happening in their lives. Patterns of individual contributions to team working are revealed through tracking the emergence of the 'paths' people take.

Sometimes outputs are not forthcoming in the way they were a few weeks back. Being able to see the history of actions allows for the overall hysteretic system of the project to be managed, and individual hysteresis to be identified and addressed in subtle ways. Underlying it all is the need to maintain harmony as well as homeostasis - which suggests the link to multiplier feedback too.

So maybe it wasn't such a crazy title! My little project has some implications I think for other applications of workflow. Within the University's CO-EDUCATE project, for example, the challenge has existed to find ways of managing the innovation and validation of new courses. That too is a challenge to manage not just a homeostatic system, but a hysteretic system. Indeed, it may be because of the ultra-stability of Universities (even in this crisis!) that the homeostasis can be taken forgranted. It's hysteresis we should be worrying about!

This is a bit of rambling post, but I'm struggling with a number of ideas that are fascinating me. First, I've been thinking about a distinction between what might be called 'Positive' and 'Negative' music:

Positive music is music of the ego: that product of self-expression which (for better or worse) consumes the environment of others. In the hands of genius, everyone takes note and listens because the environmental changes it produces are very striking and recognised as such: others adapt to the music. I think positive music may be more 'attentive' than it is 'aware' (to use Oliveros's categories) - or maybe its range of attention and awareness is constricted in some way...

Negative music is music that expresses the collective ambient environment, not the self. Individuals not only tune in, but act to harmonise with the environment. As a result, sounds emerge through acts of self-organisation. Negative music may be more aware than it is attentive, although it would depend on how 'awareness' and 'attention' are defined.

I'm waking up to the tradition of what I would call 'negative music-making', which I had not really given much thought to until now (tending to dismiss it as a bit of a gimmick). I think I'm beginning to understand it a bit better. What's really made the connection for me is the fact that I've always felt that music is necessary in a society; but much as I might love the products of the Western art music tradition, I cannot assert its necessity on those who do not care for it (apart from defending its right to exist).

Right now we have an enormous social problem which can basically be summed up as an 'excess of ego' (in fact, it's the same old problem that Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Marx, etc. identified, but perhaps a little more acute now because there are so many of us and we have such powerful technology). The hubris of ego-driven rational man is the greatest threat to our survival, and the technologies that rational man has equipped himself with have served the ego to an ever greater extent and to the detriment of convivial existence.

And I don't think social networking is the answer - that's another ego-tool.

We need 'Eco-tools' - the tools of the collective (but I'm not thinking about energy efficiency or bio-degradable tools). I think Cage, Oliveros and other musicians in that tradition might be able to show us how to do it. For the experience of 'coming together' (which was always at the centre of social music-making), the sharing in a ritual.. these play an important role in the regulation of viable societies.

These might be tools which help us to 'tune-in' to our environment and assist in our actions which harmonise with it. They might be seen as 'improvisation assistants', or maybe even 'tools for collective meditation'. If the world was seen through the lens of such tools, what would be the effect on rational decision-making? At the moment we see the world through the lens of rational decision-making ego-tools. The result is rational decisions which further the separation of ego from the world (positive feedback).

Eco-tools are negative tools, which may balance out our positive inclinations (from which I doubt we can escape).

The internet has given us a potential for realising the power of the collective. But we can do that I think in two radically different ways. We can use it to form mass movements for good and bad - but both of which serve the ego, presenting the 'easy alternative' to individuation. Or we can use it for the collective appreciation of the social environment as a way towards individuation, and gauge the impact of the actions we take as we live out our lives.

Stafford Beer made the remark that Washington DC was effectively a 'garrison town' because outside the walls of the government offices, much of the city was (although perhaps it's a bit better now) very dangerous to visit. This analysis has been echoing with me as I thought about the riots, and I reflect on my visit to the states.

On my last day, I visited Dayton, Ohio because I was flying out from there and had a few hours to kill. The idea was to do some shopping. The very friendly taxi driver who took me from Richmond to Dayton airport, on hearing of my plan to go to downtown Dayton I think tried to talk me out of it. But he didn't say "I wouldn't go there mate if I were you - it's really crap!". What he in fact said was "If you want to go shopping, there's a great mall you should go to". He even drove me past the mall in question to convince me. It didn't convince me, and I decided the last thing I wanted to do was to spend hours in a shopping centre. I wanted to see a real city.

It turned out that Dayton was rather crap - but in a weird way. My plan to go shopping was frustrated by the fact that there were no shops. This is very surprising because any British town, despite all other aspects of crap-ness, at least has shops (albeit the same shops). But Dayton, unlike British towns, looked impressive. It could pass for a little bit of New York - and very clean. And then I thought about those imposing skyscrapers and the associated emptiness around them, and I thought it was like wandering around some sort of military encampment: the feeling that somehow I was out-of-place; I oughtn't be there. Is this how the Welsh thought around the imposing castles of Edward I in the late 1200s?

The experience of alienation was one where I felt I could form no attachment to the place: or at least, only a 'negative attachment': "this is not for me". There's an aspect of double-bind here: "this is not for me... yet I am here... and I am unable (prohibited?) to express that aspect of my identity which causes me to feel uncomfortable"

I wonder if there may be something about this alienating experience which sheds some light on the riots the other week. I was also wondering about the propensity for Hollywood films to revel in the destruction of the urban environment. Destruction and vandalism may be acts of attachment. Fantasy destruction may be one way in which some form of attachment can be made to otherwise alienating environments.

But are European cities any different? We don't feel alienated by the Welsh castles any more - we instead see them as being deeply romantic. That shift, I think, is to do with history and permanence. The permanence of buildings allows people to weave their stories around them. Dayton's empty streets may one day become rich and romantic. But only if its structures have permanence... maybe imbued with a degree of sanctity. But to do that, the values of the corporations who put them there need to change.

If we all weren't mindless at times then we wouldn't have formed the irrational attachments to plasma TVs, sports cars and bijoux residences that keep our economy going (just about). There's clearly a difference between that sort of mindlessness and the mindlessness of children who slowly stream through a city centre breaking windows, starting fires and stealing goods. However, it's not easy to specify where the difference lies.

The concept of attachment is useful. In an increasingly consumerist society, the risk is that people become more attached to 'things' than they do to each other; that individual identity becomes more dependent on what you own than who you love and care for. What is shocking in the behaviour of the rioters is the degree of lack of attachment to those people who are directly injured by their actions. Many people may become attached to plasma TVs and mobiles phones, but still care deeply for their families and loved ones. But the balance between attachment to things, people and individual identity can tip when attachment to things becomes either a substitute for love or a means to attachment to a gang.

Fromm talks about what he sees as the existential terror facing young people as they face the challenge of individuation. The group (in this case, the gang) provides the alternative to individuation, and the rules of the group can lead to increased attachment to ideologies, symbols and commodities.

Our economy seems to teeter between mindlessness and risk: each of us walks the tightrope. Whilst we seek to establish our identities through mindless commodity attachments, which we covet partly to allay the existential anxieties of our condition, those anxieties themselves become part of the deeper mechanisms of self-regulation of the economy as we seek to remain within the regulatory system for fear of losing our status, our credit rating, our reputation, our freedom, our future ability to manage our anxieties.

But those regulators only work if people actually feel anxiety in the face of those risks to reputation, status, credit rating, freedom, etc. If they don't fear them, then the distribution of risks in society develops a 'hole' into which those who technically carry the greatest burden of risk (the most deprived) actually appear to bear none and move freely to do what they want.

I discovered today that the eminent music theorist Leonard B. Meyer was present with Warren McCulloch, Tom Sebeok and Martin Gardner at the first lectures in semiotics given by Charles Morris in the 1930s at the University of Chicago. I've always been quite attracted to Meyer's 'expectation=emotion=meaning' theory because it was to me profoundly audible. But Harre is right to point out that Meyer seems to attribute the 'expectation' to the notes themselves, rather than the social and cultural conditions within which they are heard.

But what about semiotics? Meyer was deeply influenced by Peirce and Dewey. The wikipedia article on Meyer states that:

"Peirce had suggested that any regular response to an event developed alongside the understanding of that event's consequences, its 'meaning'". 

In this way, we might suggest that Meyer's expectation theory depends on a continual process of 'sign-making' as the music unfolds: "here are the signs... and now we follow them!" So, in this analysis from Beethoven's 'Les Adieux' sonata (taken from Nicholas Cook's "A guide to music analysis"), the falling pattern is established in the first three chords, to be replicated at other registers, with 'gaps' (staves 1 and 2) in the melody implying the need for resolution through a falling scale later in the music. This triadic pattern similarly is 'resolved' through continuation in the third stave down.
Lurking behind Meyer's assertion is an ontology of 'fundamental properties' in the perception of music. But fundamental properties behind notes may be one thing (and the criticism is valid), but fundamental properties behind the biological aspects of our response is another. I am inclined to argue that the expectation-resolution idea reveals something that relates our biology to the physical properties of sound and that may well be ontological. Behind the recognition of a pattern lies some mechanism of attachment to aspects of sensual experience which underlie the processes of maintaining our identity and viability. In a deep way, I think (in line with Bowlby) that is primeval.

In this way, when we talk of 'signs' we really talk of 'attachments'. The processes of sign-making (semiosis) are processes of managing attachments which in turn is a process of maintaining viability. The things to which attachments are formed are highly dependent on individual and cultural circumstances. But the process of forming them is universal.

As a rich description of the ways in which 'individual and cultural circumstances' inform the process of making attachments and making signs, Positioning theory is very valuable. What Meyer is interested in is what is going on in the storyline. Indeed, his theory is all about the construction of an 'anticipatory system' (see my blog post here: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com/2011/08/attachment-and-anticipation.html). But attachment is only one dimension, relating the social and cultural 'position' to the individual's storyline. The individual also makes communications, making selections about utterances, which in turn also change the positioning.

When experiencing music through listening, I wonder if this aspect of agency, which clearly doesn't involve making direct communications, is nevertheless a matter of 'selection of attention'. Thus the 'game' that Kant and Gadamer talk about in aesthetic experience is played out.  From one moment to the next we choose those aspects of perception around which we make new signs (form new attachments).

Learning is so closely related to this process. On the one hand, learning might be characterised as 'semiosis' (Dewey clearly thought so), which in my language would be the 'making of attachments'. But that doesn't say anything about the social consequences of learning. Harre has the best definition as told to me by @sciencematters: "Learning is the change in positioning". That means that when I learn something, my communications change in response to a change in my storyline.

The really profound thing about this is that is debunks the attitude of teachers who complain about their "dumb students who'll never learn anything". Positioning is a two-way street, and it may often be the teachers who prevent it developing!