Prof. Sha offering workshop on Navigating Indeterminacy and Experiential Experiment @ CrossLabs, 19:00-22:00 EST April 26

Professor Sha Xin Wei will offer a workshop at CrossLabs on 

Navigating Indeterminacy and Experiential Experiment
26 April 2023, 19:00-22:00 EST (Youtube stream)

After rapidly rehearsing some fundamental mathematical, conceptual, and methodological challenges to present day complexity science, we’ll explore alternatives for next-gen science of complex adaptive systems, drawing from mathematics, theoretical biology, process philosophy, and the art and technologies of responsive environments.



ILLUSION OF CONTROL, May 15-17 hybrid conference, Royal Swedish Academy, Para Limes Foundation Netherlands, ASU, Princeton, Stockholm Resilience Center, Beijer Institute for Environmental Economics



Dear Colleagues,
 
It is my great pleasure to invite you both to a unique conference on a topic that is currently emerging in debates in a wide range of disciplines confronted with the question why, while there is an acknowledged urgency to deal with climate change, environmental change and socio-political change, so little is actually happening. It brings together a very interesting group of high-level speakers, both academics and practitioners on environmental change. It is to be held May 15-17, in the auditorium of the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm. It is organized by the Para Limes Foundation in the Netherlands and sponsored by ASU, Princeton, the Stockholm Resilience Center and the Beijer Institute for Environmental Economics. The meeting will be webcast and is thus accessible to ASU faculty and students!


…
HERE you find a poster for the conference and the conference page for the website. You can REGISTER from both.

 

Many, many thanks for any help you can give me in publicizing this.

 
Yours truly,

 
Sander van der Leeuw
School of Complex Adaptive Systems
Global Futures Lab, ASU

reframing the concept of spectatorship: on witnessing, the impossibility of non-places

Dear Friends!
Sam Aros Mitchell
27 Nov 2021, Mn Artists
"Reframing the concept of spectatorship: on witnessing, the impossibility of non-places, and how observation means being affected by every living being…"

This may be familiar to friends in dance and performance who have been working with resonant intentions, but it’s worth further transduction, yes?

With fond greetings :)
Xin Wei

introducing Rika Preiser (South Africa) re. UNDP AH ARS, complexity thinking, transformative futures, anticipatory governance, critique as stricture


•  Rika Preiser, Associate Professor
Centre for Sustainability Transitions, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
UNESCO Chair in Complexity and Transformative Futures

A remarkable resource for complexity thinking, transformative futures, anticipatory governance, critique as stricture.  I met Rita as one of the happy discoveries at the Anticipations Conference.  (might also want connect to the World Bank folks who Muindi and I bumped into at Anticipations.)

From her research statement:

FOCUS:
From a philosophical perspective, the acknowledgement of complexity requires that we engage critically and ethically with the assumptions of what we perceive to be real, intelligible, and relevant in the world. I am interested in exploring theories, concepts and methods that can help us understand the characteristics and behaviors of interconnected complex human-environment interactions and the ethical implications these pose to the challenges we currently face on our planet. I work in inter- and transdisciplinary intersections across academia and societal domains to synthesize and integrate complexity-based scholarship, inquiry and engaged research practice to foster multiple ways of knowing, learning and teaching.

My publications focus on how complexity thinking (as a form of relational knowing) can inform areas of sustainability, social-ecological resilience, inequalities and global change, ethics, the arts, and transformative futures research. All these areas are shaped by complex dynamics and a diversity of conflicting values and worldviews that unfold and respond in the face of fundamental uncertainty and change.

1 ) Complexity and Transformative Futures
In March 2022, I was awarded the UNESCO Chair in Complexity and Transformative Futures for the period 2022-2027. The aims of the UNESCO Chair are to establish capacity building in complexity literacy and social futures research, practice and outreach.

The aim of this UNESCO Chair will be to apply the implications of a complex systems-based approach to understanding change processes, by drawing on current insights from the field of Anticipation and Futures literacy to inform transformative processes.
…
My research in this field of interest aims to develop conceptual and practical tools for addressing the misalignment between societal values (ethical, aesthetic, cultural, environmental) and economic value by convening transformative spaces where students, practitioners and decision makers can interrogate the assumptions that inform traditional ways of thinking and doing and to allow safe- enough spaces for reflecting on the limitations that outdated value systems and approaches have on re-imagining transformative processes. This includes developing and building on Futures Literacy as pioneered by UNESCO, and tapping into recent advances in understanding the notion of anticipation and other evolutionary theories of change.


2) Interacting across difference
Notions of ‘diversity’ or ‘difference’ have come to be a central feature in recent theorising in de- coloniality, social-environmental justice and equity.
…



foresight literacy is not the same as futures literacy 

 

Thinking semantically (HI / human intelligence:),

 

planning, 

scenario rehearsals, 

futures thinking,

strategic foresight,

anticipation, standing in  readiness

all have very different implicit assumptions on who does this, on whose behalf, — in other words who has power to enact what, mixed with how know-that and know-how are distributed. 



Systems thinking, complexity adaptive systems science, abductive heuristics  are skill-sets orthogonal to the actor-structures above,

I think.



Helga Wild et al have a professional (i.e. making a living outside academy) consultancy practice  using mixtures of participatory design,  deep ethnography for organizational learning that can be a resource for this offering…

videos of PSF workshops and panel, Anticipation; suspending PSF (bi)weekly meetings

Synthesis Alter-Eco / Prototyping Social Forms friends and fellow travelers!

Here are the recordings from the two techniques workshops and the curated panel that we convened at the Anticipations Conference ASU 

18 November 2022




Special thanks to Muindi Muindi for the lucid and inspiring presentations, and for leading these sessions, with key contributions  from Mark Balzart (Austria), Vangelis Lympouridis (California), Desiree Foerster (the Netherlands), and Dulmini Perera (Germany), and with Teoma, John, Satinder as well.

I have to say that our sessions created a buzz at the conference, which had 300 participants from 50+ countries in Asia, Africa, as well as EU, UK and the States.  There are several conversations with old and new friends that we may well carry on.

Anticipations 2022 marks the end of this cycle of meetings of Synthesis' Alter-Eco / Prototyping Social Forms. We decided over the past few months that there will be no more regular weekly meetings after this November conference, at least for now.  Thanks everyone who participated in this precious stream over the past three years.  It’s been an inspiring and comforting incubator for us.

Some of us —  Muindi, Desiree, Teoma, John, Satinder, … — expressed interest in working on publications or some sort of seed-balls to share our work from the past few years in more durable and widely accessible forms.  (This could be some converntional opportunity like a special issue of Leonardo or something more experimental like a diagrammatic polylogue…)

Everyone is invited to join this — do get in touch if you’re interested.  Keep an eye out for this project and other events to come!

Un altro mondo è possibile, workshops and panel, Anticipation 2022 Nov 18

Thanks to Muindi F. Muindi who created this flyer for the workshops + panel that the Synthesis PSF group is presenting at the Anticipation Conference at ASU, tomorrow Friday Nov 18.  The workshops are in-person hands-on experiences, but do get in touch in case you’d like to peek…

Anticipatory governance: building futures scenarios for policy strategy design

Important background for anticipatory (vs follow-our-nose) governance.
Ruhl, T.J., and Robin Kundis Craig. "4º." Minnesota Law Review 106 (2021).

To get to the punchline first, read the last section in Ruhl and Craig’s “4º”:
C. Anticipatory governance: building futures scenarios for policy strategy design

Anticipation 22 Program Nov 18

Dear Alter-Eco PSF folks,

Our three events in the Anticipation Conference at ASU are programmed for Friday Nov 18!

10:00-11:30 Session 26C: Techniques Workshop: Prototyping Social Forms Techniques Workshop 1: ENACTING AND SENSING PROCESS
Muindi F. Muindi, Xin Wei Sha, Desiree Foerster, Nadia Chaney, Teoma Naccarato, John MacCallum, Garrett Laroy Johnson and Dulmini Perera
PRESENTER: Muindi F Muindi

12:30-14:00 Session 27D: Techniques Workshop: Prototyping Social Forms Techniques Workshop 2: ENACTING AND SENSING BODY
Dulmini Perera, Muindi F Muindi, Xin Wei Sha, Desiree Foerster, Teoma Naccarato and John MacCallum

14:30-16:00 Session 28D: Curated Session: Prototyping Social Forms Curated Panel: UN ALTRO MONDO È POSSIBILE
Muindi F Muindi, Xin Wei Sha, Desiree Foerster, Teoma Naccarato, John MacCallum, Garrett Laroy Johnson, Dulmini Perera, Zeynep Aksöz-Balzar, Mark Balzar, Galo Patricio Moncayo Asan, Satinder Gill and Vangelis Lympouridis

Not all the names may appear where they should.  Please either use the link below to correct how you should appear in the program, or tell me so I can relay it.   

It’s shaping up to be a very interesting and more wide-ranging event than anticipated.   Maybe we can think more carefully about how to stage remote and in-person participants in our workshops and panel. (Maybe learning from our telematic experiments a couple years ago!). 

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Anticipation 22" <anticipation22@easychair.org>
Subject: Anticipation 22 | Programs
Date: September 15, 2022 at 8:21:16 PM MST
To: Xin Wei Sha <xinwei.sha@asu.edu>

The virtual edition of the Anticipation Conference is just six weeks away and we are thrilled by the line-up of sessions!

Please find attached the virtual program which you can also access and peruse through your EasyChair account. Please note, because EasyChair is decidedly not easy, the schedule presented in EasyChair uses Arizona (MST) dates/times. However, for the virtual conference, you will see Beijing and London start times in your session title. 

The conference will kick-off virtually on November 4th at 10am [Beijing time] and will run for nearly 24 hours. We hope that you all will attend as much as possible to encourage and learn from your fellow explorers of anticipation.

The Whova conference platform will open around October 1st and you will be able to log in to create a profile, double-check the timing of your session, begin networking to organize side conversations, and plan your conference experience. We will also publish the Book of Abstracts around October 15th so that you can investigate the diverse array of offerings.  If you are leading a Curated Session or Techniques workshop, we will be reaching out with further information about how to best set-up and moderate your virtual session.

We hope that all in-person attendees attend the virtual edition, initiating collective learning and conversation that can be sustained across modalities and times.

The in-person program is also attached and on EasyChair. The November 16-18th event will be held on the Arizona State University campus in Tempe, Arizona. Information about travel, hotels and sight-seeing opportunities can be found on the conference website. For those of you who’ve expressed interest in the tour of Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona on the 15th of November, we will reach out shortly to provide more details and confirm your participation. The Emerge Festival of Futures will take place on November 19th- please attend if you can!  If you have any food allergies or restrictions that we need to accommodate, please let us know on this form 
[https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://forms.gle/qbkKC6c6w7YpHAK39__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!YKpgcipvQ1rc9gejINeeWfQ5nG88yEQRXG-jvF0cnpiMGlgpQgtl0PKtWYo6XoRxX1r8DJ6faevFH0QaQohkOzF4I4Li6g$  ] by October 16th.  

If there are any inaccuracies in the program agendas, you can make changes to the title or participants names in EasyChair by logging into your account and editing your submission. EasyChair will be closed for further edits to the submissions and abstracts on September 22, 2022. 

Due to the incredible complexities and interconnections built into the schedule, we won't be able to accommodate changes based on personal preferences. However, if you find that you are booked in the wrong virtual program [e.g. in the America’s conference when you should be in the Asia Pacific edition] or if you find yourself double-booked, please let us know on this form
[https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://forms.gle/eatj2q3zwyfLFPmJ8__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!YKpgcipvQ1rc9gejINeeWfQ5nG88yEQRXG-jvF0cnpiMGlgpQgtl0PKtWYo6XoRxX1r8DJ6faevFH0QaQohkOzHSpBuSuw$  ] by September 22nd. 

We very much look forward to seeing you all! 

All the best,

Cynthia Selin


With and on behalf of the Anticipation Conference Organizing Committee
Dr. Lauren Withycombe Keeler, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University
Dr. Ruth Wylie, Center for Science and the Imagination and the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University
Dr. Alexandina Agloro, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University
Dr. Malka Older, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University

OSC vs Web-RTC reflector in AWS cloud

A couple of things about OSC and Web-RTC.   This may seem like a technical consideration, but the lived experiences of  — communities of  —  creator or researcher or performer weighs in here…

(1)  For realtime responsive media in live event, we work under the assumption that our processes process live gesture & activity with adequately dense streams of data,    We like lowest possible latency, want our stream rates as high as emitted, don’t care about dropped frames, don’t care about irregular timing.  And we let downstream processes, including the human performer deal.  This works well when there’s adequately high density — frames of data / unit time, and live human-in-the-loop action. (… thanks to Joel Ryan using wireless sensor platforms for live performance between Vienna and Brussels.)    (Yes re. Vangelis we can lean on John Maccallum’s experience :)   

Benefit of UDP is the fact that some packets can be dropped/skipped/undelivered, as it is not "mandatory" data, like picture frames or piece of sound, that only results on reduced quality, which is "expected" behaviour in streaming world. WebSockets will ensure that data is delivered, and "price" for it is mechanics that at the end slows down the queue of packets, to ensure ordered and guaranteed delivery of data.

General principle, for live responsive media:  let human deal with variation of streaming media flow as part of the materiality of the medium (in this case network transport dynamics) rather than hide that materiality  under homogeneous behavior at the cost of slowing processing, introducing global latencies, or syntactic complexity.

(2) Syntactic complexity
For backward compatibility with a lot of code and coding practice, it’d be very important not to require application programmers to insert OSC - web socket glue code in legacy frameworks.  Technicalities or extra idioms whose adoption may seem trivial to an expert programmer can be an insurmountable barrier to creative coding in communities of researchers and artists who just want to get on with shaping the event.

(3)
As much as possible, I’d like to  talk to my cloud services independent from the web (httpd).
Our apps should talk via internet without going through any browser.   
OSC was invented for streaming sensor data between apps, and to be transport agnostic.  
And all the work we’ve been doing with responsive media for live event is aimed at 
avoiding the chunky clunky document paradigms introduced by HTML / httpd
(from the era of file-based OS familiar to CERN engineers :).   

One rejoinder may be that contemporary network transport quality renders (1) and (3) moot, but this assumption is false when we work in parts of the world that are farther from tightly managed network infrastructures.

And (2) is vital.