School for Designing a Society… and the traces left by it

by elizaBeth Simpson

Larry Richards refers to Cybernetics as “a way of thinking about ways of thinking, of which it is one”. During May 11-14, the 2008 American Society for Cybernetics Conference was hosted in Urbana, Illinois. The theme was ‘Our Cybernetics’:

The conference was designed to nest the presentations of individuals in a social context as an offer for participants to make themselves a relevant factor in each others experience. A group reflection period was offered after each session, participants were invited to to create an Exquisite Corpse of questions (called Socrates Cybernetics), to diagram the conference as it was happening, and to note questions and observations towards each presentation and post them in a Metaroom; a space formally dedicated to the ‘about-ness’ of the conference. To encompass a greater range of media, a gorgeous performance was crafted to host compositions inspired by or constructed through cybernetics. On May 12, in conjunction with the Understanding Complex Systems conference, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Biological Computer Laboratory which lived in Urbana.

In this way, roughly 40 people of gently varying backgrounds wove language around each other, often in recursive loops that led observation to self-observation to social observation and back again. For more information on cybernetics, including the 2008 conference program: www.asc-cybernetics.org

By Anna Hochhalter

The As If Ensemble of Urbana (AIEoU) was started by School for Designing a Society students and teachers in Fall 2007.

In the AIEOU we play Klezmer/Balkan/a Capella/circular/undescribed works. You might find us playing several of the following instruments: xaphoon, bassoon, banjo,
baritone, bass, oud, udderbot, clarinet, tenor uke, tenor sax, tenor voice, accordion, ascalatos, alto, soprano, guitar, kazoo, violin, washboard, whistle, and flippers.

Performing at City Council meeting doorsteps, House Concerts, Fundraisers, and even singing in a bike parade during the Boneyard Arts Festival, our ensemble supports its members’ desire to challenge and engage their attention to sound, audiences, public spaces, and society. We encourage each other to compose, to revive old compositions in new forms, to refine our techniques with others’ compositions, and to experiment. Why is our ensemble “As If”? We look for new possibilities and systems.

By Kyra Shaughnessy

Sprouting from a shared desire to increase our freedom from the behemoth of industrial agriculture, a group of recent SDaS students and other members of the Urbana-Champaign community have been meeting weekly to share seeds and knowledge about the many aspects and looks of gardening. While our motivations are varied, the problem of resource exploitation, misery and waste maintained by the current system of mass food production is a uniting factor.

Winter sessions consisted mainly of theory-shares: people would offer theoretical materials to the group which they had found of use or interest to them, either through presentations or sharing of literature. We also held seed swaps and “plotted” designs. Now that spring has sprung, workdays are being held at multiple sites around town. One of our applied criteria in transforming these sites has been that of working with the constraints (rendered benefits) of each location, as opposed to against them, using permaculture and biointensive methods.

For example, at La Casa Colectiva, a co-op and food producing garden site in Urbana, there has been particular emphasis on: the transplanting and nurturing of already present perennials such as fruit and nut trees and root plants ranging from horseradish to asparagus and chives; the use and rerouting of water from the prolific basement sump-pump; creating paths according to the habits of frequent users; the creation of gathering areas, including a fire pit nestled near the center of the garden; the integration of three precocious chickens into the system as a whole. Both chickens and fire pit are an uncommon sight in the otherwise suburban surrounding neighborhood, not to mention the presence of a dozen or so young people dedicating time and energy to producing their own food! The chickens also provide valuable help in turning the compost pile and supply a daily batch of eggs for household use.

by Jacob Barton

On Leap Day 2008, recent SDaS students presented a House Concert in the living room of La Casa Grande Colectiva, a co-op house in historic East Urbana. The offerings were variegated: a science fiction therapy scene, an anecdote about drummage, an Italian folk story hastily illustrated by audience volunteers. A Fox News clip blew itself out of proportion and into the frame of a folding chair. A lecture anticipated and dismissed its own dismissals by way of an audience conspiracy. Wizards made way for metaclowns.

Songs were sung: a two-centuries-old round all about death, a four-month-old false-statement round calling for multilingualism, anthems of apathy and quantitative research, and a microtonal protest song accompanied by fretless guitar and udderbot (see photo). Etudes on electric kalimba and udderbot further illustrated microtonality (the use of alternatives to “12 tone equal temperament,” the tuning system inhabited by 99.999% of Western music)

“Fox News on Display” by K. Qilo Matzen

Video by Kord Russell.

Video -WMV | Video -QT

“Fox News on Display” responds to a Feb. 25 Fox News video interview discrediting Ralph Nader and his decision to join the 2008 U.S. Presidential Campaign.

After today’s meeting, we are moving forward to break ground on our new building at the Gesundheit Institute in September 2008. Final drawings are now being drafted by the architect Dave Sellers, AIA, for the Teaching Center at the Gesundheit Institute in where the School for Designing a Society offers its summer program. Plans will include bed space for 30 students and staff, classrooms, performance/rehearsal space, conversation nooks, kitchen and dining room, library and office space. The teaching center will then be linked via bridge to an adjacent residence building with more private lodging, Patch Adams’ famous library, and a museum. A full day was spent with organizers from the School for Designing a Society and the Gesundheit Institute generating input in advance of final plans being drafted.

Time was spent inventing connections and ideas for the relationships between the parts, for the buildings and the community that will live there. For instance, when conceptualizing the bedroom space: rather than a straight “dorm” situation, discussion focused on different bedroom zones — a late-night “owl den”, a good wheelchair room, a lover’s parlor, a suite with alcoves, the loner’s room, etc. The task wasn’t to determine the use of space so much as to generate potential for multiplicity of uses. Dave will now produce architectural drawings to conserve that potential, while adding curvy walls and towers and whatnot. There’s even plans for a little beach outside a giant portrait window.

Patch Adams and Dave Sellers have been working on architectural drawings and building projects for a full-scale hospital at the Gesundheit Institute since 1980. Danielle Chynoweth and Susan Parenti deserve credit for recent steps taken to build the teaching center and residency — see their Prospectus (9MB .pdf) for detailed description of the current phase Gesundheit building projects.

Last year, our friend/student Seung Yong said he was going to travel the world after his semester at the School for Designing a Society, and that he would wear a t-shirt in every setting, with the words “it can be you” written on it in English and Korean. He wanted his picture taken in every country that he visited, to encourage his friends back home to explore the world outside of Korea. A report is now available in this 300-page book, written entirely in Korean. When asked about the book, Seung Yong said the title translates roughly to “I gotta hug the world instead of going abroad just for English!!”

The book contains what is probably the longest text about the School for Designing a Society that has ever been published in a book. Seung Yong has also written about his adventures on his blog (also in Korean) including tips on how to make friends abroad by volunteering at work camps and using networking websites.

At the School, we invite people to formulate their desires. Seung Yong, in addition to his desire to travel, said that he had hoped to challenge the assumptions of those who like to see pictures of far away places, but assume they are not connected to it or would never be able to go there…

A video version of the “it can be you” project is available:

With bundled up wintry regards,
The School for Designing a Society invites you to:

“Oh! I forgot:”

A house theater in Urbana, Illinois, consisting of numerous sharp objects, objectives, objections, and warm cider.

by Rob Scott and Mark Enslin

Rob:
Today we are returning from our first Italian/English session of the School for Designing a Society in Pruno, Italy. We have learned a lot about the elements of Italian society, what issues are construed as social problems, and thus, where the function of a School for Designing a Society is needed. For those of us who are in Italy for the first time, it was difficult to clarify the issues calling for permutation, given that our Italian friends are themselves permutations.

One participant in the school was Mario, an unusual Catholic priest who was assigned to the quiet town of Pruno 35 years ago, and who took it upon himself to make a project of revitalizing the town. He was very interested in our discoursing about undermining the stability of hierarchies, and we noticed that in church he orients the pews in three directions so that the congregation sits in a circle — or as close to a circle as is possible with pews. He once told a story that as a priest he had invited tango dancers to perform in church because he thought it was beautiful. He defied stereotypes and cliches. At the service on Sunday, he asked Mark and Susan if they had any comments they’d like to add to the service, which they did. There was a running line of jokes between him and co-organizer Annachetto during our meetings, in the idiom of “the priest and the communist”. Note in the picture that there is a hat made out of balloons resting on the right hand corner of his table during service.

We made two trips to nearby towns where we performed works of theater and music, which also gave us a chance to interact with the public and connect with local organizations interested in the arts and social change. In Stazzemi, Tuscany, near Pruno, we performed at a venue organized by “Asino Che Vola” (literally, “the donkey that flies”) a left-wing organization that works with the mentally handicapped. Our set consisted of 5 pieces, interspersed with invitations to the audience to make short pieces using constraints based on social structures. The adults who organize the Asino Che Vola were good sports in trying to make choir of common language and instant pivot pieces — they were more willing to try our little experiments than their young anarchist volunteers! After the show, we drank fresh local Chianti, and danced to ad hoc waltzes and Italian songs playend on accordion and guitar. We then retreated back to school-mode for a few days before heading to another nearby town for a formal night of performance.

Mark:
Kansar is a Ghandi-inspired cultural association in the Tuscan city of Pietrasanta run by a friend of the organizers of the workshop. After a dinner for the workshop participants, Jeff, Danielle, Rob, Susan and I performed a program for them and members of the association, beginning with Jeff’s performance of Lisa Fay’s solo with small mic and lights called ‘napse. Then Rob, Danielle and I did Susan’s “I’m an individual” from Women’s Jazz Band Theater. Susan performed her Steppin’ Out with Italian lipsynching provided by Michaela Loli. We offered two movements from John Cage’s Living Room Music for speaking voices and the room as percussion instrument—in this case bright red walls, book shelf, cups, paper. Jeff reprised Lisa’s short movement-object piece Eulogy. I did a version of the song “World War III” from Rick Burkhardt’s play The Missiles, with verses translated by Federica Merlini. Jeff ended the program with his collaboration with Lisa Fay and Michael Holloway, The Alarmist, which acquired some local topical references (particularly the smoke alarm) and showed how far the ideas of counter-intuitive behavior that Jeff had been presenting can be taken.

On Monday afternoon while some of the workshop participants had gone to present to a peace school in a nearby town on educating to desire, the rest of us in Pruno tried an experiment with puppets and problems. If one decides to describe a situation as a problem–one doesn’t have to–one can ask several questions of the probem (taking off from Brün): For whom is it a problem? In whose interest is it that the problem be solved? In whose interest is it that the problem remain unsolved? Is the problem part of a pattern, part of another, larger problem? Would a reformulation of the problem make it easier to solve?

The assignment was to animate any of the objects in the room as puppets and make a play in three scenes. Scene one: exposition of the problem; scene two: a chaotic development treating questions of For whom? and In whose interest?; interlude: a song showing the problem to be part of a larger pattern; scene three: arrival at a new formulation of the problem.

Andrea and Federica used an apple core, a leaf, and a cardboard circular cake support to represent the populace, polluting factories and the Ozone Hole, respectively. Paola and Valeria staged a live traffic jam of decorated cups to take several looks at the problem of high gas prices. In Rob’s solo play, a turning point in mother pitcher’s lessons to child medlar (a local fruit) about “bad people” followed a silent pouring into a cup of a single sip of juice. Martina and Sandro, who happened to have showed up with their hair in top knots that day, made those their puppets, as well as the hair of some audience members, for a complaint about the assignment that expanded to a commentary on the Italian education system.

The spirit of play and performance spread into everyday life in the hostel. One morning a clothing sculpture appeared in the stairwell. There was a spoken jam on English words of the week in the dining hall, and after one dinner Andrea suddenly appeared at the window to remind everyone that Rubén was about to show a documentary on the peace village in Colombia he was involved in.

by Beth Simpson

During the week normally reserved for Thanksgiving, Maggie Scott the new “Land Mama” at the Gesundheit land invited students from the School for Designing a Society to visit West Virginia for a retreat. Here’s a brief report from Beth…

Beth:
Five people picked up another and stayed with one more where three had been before. Each morning we coordinated our desires, leaving our checklists to cheer each other on from the kitchen table. Having coordinated our meals, we met for them, dessert experiments increasing as the week went on. We wound our way around timing and the ridge trail- how can we collaborate, not on a project, but on the completing of each person’s project?

Each night we read Pattern Language aloud, trying out phonetic punctuation, alighting on such favorites as Sleeping in Public (later to be made into a puppet show for the House Theater in Urbana), Children’s Realm, Pools of Light, Bed Alcove, and Light from Two Sides. Daily we had cybernetic reading assignments and brass practice (from the Brassieria). Found items were: leaf prints, the distinction between dying and being killed, listening for 10 mintues to a person talking for the same, then switching, descriptions of liberation, wood stacking, sleeping in the treehouse, asking ‘how’s it going’ and expecting a relevant answer, walking to the waterfall in the moonlight, alternative responses to oppression, and performance instructions ( e.g. be a pushover, compose as though everyone in the world is cheering you on)…

This is a new experiment for us and we are delighted to do it. We (Susan, Mark, Rob, Danielle, Jeff, Bob) have traveled from Urbana to Pruno, Italy to offer a one week version of the School for Designing a Society to a group of 20 Italians. We are trying to bring up language, in English, through a translator, especially the idea that language has power over us, that shapes our relationships. Our communication/translation channel is an example of the phenomenon we are trying to describe. So our language action is doing what it is talking about. That could help, but it is difficult to tell.

Pruno is a small town of 100 people, high in the mountains of Tuscany. The houses are built directly into the mountain, made of the stones from the mountain, wood, and cement. The slope of the mountain around Pruno seems to be greater than 45 degrees. Between the houses there are handmade stone walkways and terraced gardens. The stone walls which are exposed to sunlight are growing plants and mosses, with thyme, marjoram, and sage varieties growing in the cracks. There are enormous rosemaries which suggests that it never freezes here. A pomegranate tree provides us with fruit during tea time. There is a hostel (where we sleep), an “office” (where we have our classes), and a restaurant/cafe, and that’s all the commercial activity in the town — oh yeah, there’s a church too.

The atmosphere of this school is very lively. Yesterday Ginevra invented a game in which team a competes against team b to remember everyone’s names. We’re 30 people, and the game erupted like a volcano of enthusiasm, with singing “Ohhh sole mio!!!” and other songs the Italians all seem to know. An atmosphere of celebration often arises when we are not in the classroom, with gestures and behaviors that one might only find at a birthday party or a wedding in the U.S.

An experiment: we grafted an assignment to compose a choral theater scene directly onto Bob Naiman’s presentation on political economy. The theme was “a moment of activism from our past…” The students’ interests range widely, from art to science to parenting, and many in-between spaces too. The reinacted activisms were scenes set in buses, courtrooms, kitchens…

Another experiment: polyfunctionality entailment diagrams. The multiplicity of needs and offers of various elements of a given system are described, diagrammed, and then the diagrams are diagrammed together, as a generative mechanism for new connections (new systems made of familiar elements)… so then the needs and offers of singers, orchards, and schools suddenly combine in the form of a choir school in the trees, that provides CO₂ to the trees while providing fresh air to the singers. Though such connections are unlikely to be implimented, they suggest that the experiment succeeds in provoking thinking beyond the constraints of the current society…

Patricia (Ginevra’s co-organizer d’ella session) says our idea of social change is “don’t spend your energy fighting the system so much as building your thing on the side”. She and Ginevra have made a herculean organizational effort to make this school possible — we will learn a few tricks of theirs as well.