(Re)Thinking - the body, generative tools and computational articulation

Abstract

The body We will consider the body as a complex adaptive system, far from equilib- rium − an environment actively nested within a larger environment. The body can be understood as an open system − changing subtly in an ongo- ing relation to new knowledge, new technologies, new linguistic defini- tions, biological change over time, and new forms of relationality to other beings, organisms and environmental factors. We seek to understand what is at operation in the body that leads to thinking, and in a larger sense, leads to our human sentience. In this sense we seek to understand the body as a complex intra-active system of systems that can be articulated from the vantage points of many different disciplinary perspectives, given the complexity of our being. We will view the body as an ultra-complex adap- tive unity from the perspective of an ‘Open Order Cybernetics’. Here we are interested both in thinking as an embodied process and (re)thinking the body as a multivalent entity. Also, we are understanding the importance of many different qualities of human/machine processes and how these extend our senses and human abilities in new ways, enabling us to further articulate the body’s entailments as an ongoing endeavour. We will define the notion of ‘entailment’ to be all causal processes that are at operation in the body. In particular, we are interested in how these processes intra-act with each other in a dynamic manner over time, contributing both directly and indirectly to ongoing thought processes and human change.