Indeterminacy, Ontogenesis & Play

As opposed to games that have a finite set of roles, rules, objectives, and scoring that are explicitly defined and fixed in advance of the event, playful activity is open-ended in a profound sense that we will explore. In this workshop we visit many examples of play, in symbol, action, movement, media, material, relation. We will also use simple movement and performance exercises that anyone can do in personal or public space, alone, or in telematically linked ensembles. The purpose of this workshop is to bring people together and prepare the ground for a discussion of ontogenesis, the creative articulation of media, matter, and field in open-ended interrelated processes.

This workshop is limited to 30 participants.

Sha Xin Wei, PhD, is Professor at the School of Arts, Media & Engineering at Arizona State University, and directs the Synthesis Center for transversal art, philosophy and technology. He is also professor at the European Graduate School, Fellow of the ASU-Santa Fe Institute Center for Biosocial Complex Systems, and Senior Fellow of Building21 at McGill University. Sha’s core research concerns a topological approach to poiesis, play and process. His art and scholarly work range from gestural media, movement arts, and realtime media installation through interaction design to critical studies and philosophy of technology. He has published in the areas of computer science, human computer interaction, philosophy, media arts, experimental music and performance, science and technology studies, including the book Poiesis and Enchantment in Topological Media (MIT). He is an associate editor for AI & Society, and serves on the Governing Board of Leonardo International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology.

Emiddio Vasquez is a Cypriot-Dominican artist and musician with a formal training in philosophy and mathematics. He is a PhD candidate at ASU’s Arts, Media and Engineering program. His PhD research endeavours to express how digitality informs matter and challenges the “new materialism” revival, both philosophically and in practice.

This workshop will be preceded by RRR^R with Kuai Shen, and followed by artist talks with Kuai Shen and Sha Xin Wei & Emiddio Vasquez.

https://indeterminacy.ac.uk/