The Dialogical, The Ecological and Beyond

Authors

  • Jon Goodbun Royal College of Art
  • Ben Sweeting University of Brighton

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.15.1.5668

Abstract

In this article Jon Goodbun and Ben Sweeting engage in a conversation about design and its complex relation to communication. They look at the role of dialogue, the dialogical (signifying signs), and the limitations of the dialogical as one considers contemporary processes of cybernetisation and how “asignifying signs” are produced and exchanged within complex systems of all kinds. Prompted by the opening question referring to cybernetics as a general study of information processes, focusing on the production, exchange, and consumption of meaning, not limited to a focus on digital logic, Goodbun and Sweeting revisit a plethora of positions on dialogue including those of Gordon Pask, Gregory Bateson, Ranulph Glanville, David Bohm among others. In so doing, they make clear certain semantic confusions related to terms such as communication vs. conversation, dialogue vs. discussion, and analogue vs. digital, and provide a richer understanding of why these semantic revisions are necessary for the context of everyday design practice. Using examples from their own research and teaching work, they point towards models where an alternative approach to communication that critically acknowledges the complications related to “asignifying signs” can help designers grapple with the ecological crisis in the contexts of politics, research, and education.

Author Biographies

Jon Goodbun, Royal College of Art

Dr Jon Goodbun considers architecture in relation to a wider field of systems-theoretic discourses, working in particular with concepts of ecological aesthetics and environmental semiotics that he develops out of the anthropological cybernetics of Gregory Bateson, while also drawing upon three significant contributions from the Marxian tradition concerning cognitive mapping, the production of space and the production of nature. He is currently working on a book entitled ‘The Ecological Calculus’, and initiating a series of environmental architecture field projects in Greece, where he is now mostly based. He occasionally leads workshops on long-distance train journeys with Derailed Lab. He contributes to programmes at the Bartlett (UCL), University of Westminster, and the Royal College of Art. His co-authored 2014 book The Design of Scarcity has recently been translated into German (2018) and Greek (2020). He can be found on twitter @jongoodbun, and at www.rheomode.org

Ben Sweeting, University of Brighton

Ben Sweeting teaches architecture and design at the University of Brighton. Ben studied architecture at the University of Cambridge and the Bartlett (UCL). Ben first encountered cybernetics at the latter, going on to use and explore it through the completion of PhD research supervised by Neil Spiller and Ranulph Glanville. Ben is an active member of the American Society for Cybernetics, the British Cybernetics Society, the Systemic Design Association and the International Society for the Systems Sciences. Ben’s research interests include ways in which design can contribute to ethics as well as vice versa; rethinking ‘place’ in the context of systemic crises; historical intersections between architecture and cybernetics in the works of Gordon Pask and Cedric Price; and the development of counter-conventional methodological approaches inspired by cybernetics’ original transdisciplinary agenda.

References

Ashby, W.R. (1956), An Introduction to Cybernetics, London, Chapman & Hall.

Bateson, G. (2002), Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Cresskill, NJ, Hampton Press. Originally published 1979.

Bateson, G. (2000) Steps to An Ecology of Mind. Chicago, University of Chicago. Originally published 1972.

Bateson, G. (1991) A Sacred Unity: Further Steps to An Ecology of Mind, New York, Harper Collins.

Bateson, M.C. (2005), Our Own Metaphor, Cresskill, Hampton Press. Originally published 1972.

Bateson, M. C. (2014). Living in cybernetics: 50th Anniversary conference of the American Society for Cybernetics [Keynote]. Living in cybernetics, Washington, D.C. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpjnVVWXZMs

Bohm, D. (1996), On Dialogue, New York, Routledge.

Extinction Rebellion (2019), Extinction Rebellion People's Assemblies Facilitation Training Manual, https://extinctionrebellion.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/XR-PeoplesManual.pdf

Fantini van Ditmar, D. (2016). IdIOT: Second-order cybernetics in the 'smart' home [Doctoral dissertation, Royal College of Art]. British Library. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.690638

Fantini van Ditmar, D. (2019). A circular ‘smart’ world. In T. Fischer & C. M. Herr (Eds.), Design cybernetics: Navigating the new (pp. 101-117). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18557-2_5

Fischer, T., & Herr, C. M. (Eds.). (2019). Design Cybernetics: Navigating the new. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18557-2

Glanville, R. (1997). The value of being unmanageable: Variety and creativity in cyberspace. In H. Eichmann, J. Hochgerner, & F. Nahrada (Eds.), “Netzwerke”, proceedings of global village ’97 conference. Falter Verlag.

Glanville, R (1998) A (Cybernetic) Musing: Variety and Creativity, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 5(3).

Glanville, R. (1999). Researching design and designing research. Design Issues, 15(2), 80-91. https://doi.org/10.2307/1511844

Glanville, R. (2007). Try again. Fail again. Fail better: The cybernetics in design and the design in cybernetics. Kybernetes, 36(9/10), 1173-1206. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920710827238

Guattari, F. (2008). The Three Ecologies. London, Continuum. First published in France 1989.

Guddemi, P. (2020) Gregory Bateson on Relational Communication: From Octopuses to Nations. Springer Biosemiotics 20. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52101-1

Harding, S. (2015). Objectivity for Sciences from Below. In F. Padovani, A. Richardson, & J. Y. Tsou (Eds.), Objectivity in Science: New Perspectives from Science and Technology Studies (pp. 35-55). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14349-1_3

Lakoff G. and Johnson M. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh. NY Basic Books

Pask, G. (1975). Artificial intelligence: A preface and a theory. In N. Negroponte (Ed.), Soft architecture machines (pp. 7-31). MIT Press.

Pask, G. (1980). The limits of togetherness. In S. H. Lavington (Ed.), Information processing (pp. 999-1012). North Holland Publishing Company.

Wiener, N. (1961). Cybernetics: Or, control and communication in the animal and the machine (2nd ed.). MIT Press. (Original work published 1948)

Downloads

Published

2021-06-29

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 1 (2021): Issue # 28 | Spring/ Summer 2021 | All is in Formation: Architecture, Cybernetics, Ecology

Section

Interview

License

Copyright (c) 2021 Jon Goodbun, Ben Sweeting

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.