[Commlist] Patterns Online Symposium

*Terramorphosis II: Patterns Symposium - 26 January *

**

Register: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/remote_event_view?id=40961 
<https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/remote_event_view?id=40961>

**

This day-long streaming event will explore the intersection of the 
biological, the geological, and the digital. Through concepts of 
morphogenesis (the biological development of form) and pattern 
formation, the symposium will invite a cross-disciplinary group of 
scholars to discuss overlapping histories and theories of computation, 
materiality, and information in both Western and non-Western contexts. 
The symposium will consider forms of life, intelligence and 
communication that extend beyond fixed boundaries of the human, the 
organic, and the machinic. It will explore questions of biological and 
computation neural networks; human and plant communication; geological 
and architectural structures; ecological and social systems.

The event brings together leading scholars in the Digital Humanities 
(*N. Katherine Hayles*, *Wolfgang Ernst*, *Mark Hansen*); the Sciences 
(*Peter Fratzl*, *Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent*, *Giuseppe Longo*, *Paco 
Calvo*) and Art and Design Theory (*Olga Goriunova*, *Patricia Ribault*).

In Terramorphosis I Oct 2022, Lisbon Architecture Triennale, ‘Terra’, 
saw morphe, or form as the ‘intentionality of matter’. Terramorphosis 
II, London 26 Jan 2024, shifts our gaze to patterns, (see also Turing 
patterns) as what is not beyond, but instead arguably between classical 
form and modern matter.

The event will be streamed online at the following address: 
https://zoom.us/j/99950978831 <https://zoom.us/j/99950978831>

*Patterns of the Organism (9:30-12:00 GMT)*

Patterns would seem to be less about models and more about imitation 
(late Turing).  This is true in the West, but even more so in China. To 
what extent do we live in a society in which governance by number 
displaces government? Does this include perhaps governance through the 
combinatory alphabet of the genome?  Is this the era of the genome and 
the algorithm?

*Giuseppe Longo *(Research Director Emeritus at Centre national de la 
recherche scientifique at the Cavaillès interdisciplinary center of 
École Normale Supérieure in Paris.)

*Paco Calvo* (Professor of the philosophy of science and principal 
investigator at the Universidad de Murcia's Minimal Intelligence Lab 
(MINT Lab) in Spain)

*Olga Goriunova *(Professor Humanities and Arts Research Institute, 
Royal Hollaway, University of London)

*Engineering Patterns (13:00-15:30 GMT)*

Michel Serres wrote of the bio-geological.  Here biological patterns are 
also a question of physics, of engineering, of less genotypical than 
phenotypical engineering on the interface of system and Umwelt. What 
about geological patterns?  What is their system, their ecology, their 
temporality? How is this design, this techne, mediated by homo sapiens?

*Peter Fratzl *(Director at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and 
Interfaces in Potsdam)

*Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent *(Professor Emeritus in Philosophy and 
History of Science at University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne)

*Patricia Ribault *(Professor for Performative Design Research at the 
Weißensee Kunsthochschule, Berlin)

*Neural Patterns (16:00-18:30 GMT)*

Do neural networks recognize patterns or do they project patterns into 
the world? To what extent can artificial neural networks be biomimetic? 
What differences exist between machine learning and organic learning, 
between human and AI language processing and generation? Do artificial 
neural networks exhibit properties of emergence and creativity? Do they 
demonstrate an understanding of a human lifeworld?

*N. Katherine Hayles *(James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of 
Literature, Duke University)

*Mark B. N. Hansen* (James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of 
Literature, Duke University)

*Wolfgang Ernst *(Professor of Media Theories at Humboldt University, 
Berlin)

The symposium is organized by Joel McKim (Birkbeck), Scott Lash 
(Goldsmiths) and Shiqiao Li (University of Virginia). It is generously 
funded by OSUN's Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network; the 
Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology; Theory, Culture & 
Society; the University of Virginia School of Architecture; and the 
Birkbeck Strategic Research Fund.

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