Manifesto
CCCC (CYBERNETICS, CATASTROPHE, COMPLEXITY, CHAOS)
Exercises in performative neo-cybernetics
We believe that the global revival of issues dear to cybernetics mainly concerns the way of thinking and knowing. The development of AI generates hybrid thinking but forgets its operative modes. On the contrary, in its history, cybernetics expressed them clearly. Our purpose is to redefine under these modes the notions of feedback loop, circular causality, automatic teleology, systemic relations, the emergence of the living, the auto-poiesis of biological, technological and social-legal systems. Analysis of these operative modes will make us reconfigure the questions of determinism, information, and code. Our work takes place in an experimental form, that is, it is developed in a series of meetings that attempt to show something by doing it. By cybernetic thinking in fact we mean a way of exhibiting the system of conversation that builds its object as it unfolds. It is about making this paradigm as operational as possible. Each meeting takes the form of a conversation, with precise rules of communication and exchange of ideas. Each meeting will involve the use of concept visualization, because, as Lovelock said, the cybernetic dynamic is difficult to describe in words.
Our conversations – which may result in videos, interviews, short essays or graphs – occur between very different disciplines, and their outcome will be used each time as auto-poietic operations that can provoke ever-expanding combinations and associations.
The biologist, the philosopher, the jurist, the computer scientist, the sociologist, and the designer imagine, write, invent, reconfigure, and occupy spaces, conversing about their theories by generating theoretical feedback.
Indeed, cybernetics was born multidisciplinary, and a neo-cybernetic vision seeks to preserve its original operational vocation, applying it to fast-developing digital tools and playing with the uncertainty of experimentation. For while uncertainty measures the hiatus between exact knowledge and available knowledge, it is precisely in this hiatus that lurks what is relevant to test the functionality of knowledge itself, that is, the cognitive act of the observer being observed.
Our project means to be accomplished in two years and to be concluded with a document.
ROMA, September 2023
Themes
1. The function of the living as a cybernetic paradigm.
Example: Cybernetics between DNA and proteins
At the genetic level, specific proteins, under certain conditions, block the transcription of DNA into RNA. No RNA, no RNA translation process into the relevant polypeptide chain, and therefore no protein production. The levels of enzyme proteins necessary for cellular functioning are maintained through negative (blocking DNA transcription) or positive (activating DNA transcription) feedback loops.
Some beings/systems start being their own cause and effect, closing the linear cause/effect relationship into a causal circularity, or feedback loop. In the proliferation of mutations, by chance only some possess survival value (Forestiero, 2015, 142) and thus give rise to genuine functionalities, or feedback loops. In other words, the development (formation) of DNA causes a chain of functions that is epistemologically defined as double logical implication ("if and only if..."). The function implies a survival value, therefore the emergence of the living, but it occurs automatically, i.e., unintentionally ((Ruyer, Cybernetique, p. 10).
2. Can the feedback loop be extended to any system?
Example: The riverbed.
Water flows over stones in a chaotic way. Sometimes it starts to smooth out the stones where it flows. The smoothed stones make the water flow faster so that instead of dissipating it accumulates. The more it accumulates the more it smooths stones, and so on, until a river bed is formed. The effect retroacts on the cause. A new formation proceeds from a deformation. A new homeostasis that does not need intention but is functional, or productive.
Can we say that biology introduces a paradigm of analysis of the living that can be incorporated by cybernetics? This conceptual extension is necessary to avoid the theoretical vacuum of the emergence of the living. Indeed, maintaining the distinction causes a circular argument: the environment devoid of survival value, survives until it creates a survival value for itself. On what basis does an environment survive (to its possible destruction) if it has not yet grafted a teleonomic dynamic? There is like an epistemological vacuum: something must be a condition of natural selection, without being subject to its specific law. Is distinguishing water feedback from living feedback, calling it teleomatic or teleonomic just a matter of semantics? (Wiener, 34).
3. The Function as a self-overcoming structure
Example: The tube as arch-function from formation
A surface curves by gravity and then becomes a tube and then becomes a vein: there is vertical formation but a horizontal use (Ruyer, 1958. 13-21).
The deformation of a structure causes its proliferation. And the proliferation of structures causes the unpredictability of their appearance. If it is true that a function then defines a system, even when it decays at a certain level and is capable of recalculating itself in the process at another level, and transforms itself from a given (fossil) function to a new function, then it is also true that no given function exhausts its living or technological development; it does not represent a sufficient criterion for establishing its properties, past, present and future, once and for all. Any structure that persists in a homeostatic condition is evidently capable of overcoming itself [a little: un peu (Ruyer)], so it is not merely the effect of a cause, but the effector of further new functions.
4. The organic/inorganic hybrid
Example: The algoid.
Algoid is a cybernetic machine resulting form a combination of algae and machine. It is a cyborg that achieves a symbiosis between a living organism, the single-celled alga Dunaliella salina, and a photosensitive electromechanism. The object consists of a central plexiglass vessel in which the alga progressively reproduces in the saline liquid. As Dunaliella multiplies, the density of the green pigmentation of the liquid increases: transparency decreases and the photoelectric cell outside the jar can no longer read the light from the optical fiber immersed in the liquid. At that point, a filter turns on and some of the algae flows into a side leg of the machine while the filtered liquid is fed back into the central vessel.
The model represents characters of recursiveness and reflexivity. It is a boundary object to be confronted with, as it shows the possibility of such a design to extend function beyond the living. The hybrid is evidence of an unattainable goal, a design that is about to become realizable, but never quite is realized. It is a challenge not to an object, but to ourselves, to our supposedly demiurgic positioning toward the real. So why not assume a functional concrescence (Function +) that pre-exists every design and in which, if anything, every design only inscribes itself?
5. Observers at the edge of chaos
Example: metronomes
A number of identical metronomes are arranged on a wooden plank which in turn rests on a table. If the metronomes are set to the same oscillation frequency but are set in motion in succession, one after the other, it will be seen that each will continue to move on its own, maintaining its own "phase" (i.e., its position at a certain instant of time) different from that of the others. But if, while the metronomes are still in motion, one lifts the plank on which they rest and balances it on top of two cans lying horizontally on the table, here we witness something totally unexpected: the metronomes begin to slowly unify their oscillations until, within a few tens of seconds, they all end up synchronizing completely and oscillating in unison. (Strogatz 2013, Pluchino 2015).
Of certain phenomena, natural or artificial, material or abstract, we recognize their nature as entities at the edge of chaos and their capacity to be the origin of self-organizing global dynamics. All nature then appears to us as a complex topological structure (in the sense of complex networks), hierarchical and scale-free, endowed with multiple feedback loops (thus also cybernetic) and consisting of multiple levels of description, within which living systems (as dissipative out-of-equilibrium, thermodynamically open and operationally closed structures) organize themselves (autopoietically) at the edge of chaos by safeguarding the dynamic balance between their opposite tendencies, the self-assertive and the integrative.
6. The social function: the observer being observed.
Example: Smart cities.
Street traffic in Los Angeles is regulated by a computer system, which runs through the entire city via sensors. It is a system that adapts by modifying itself based on traffic changes and "is a perfect example of how nonconscious technical cognition cooperates with human capabilities" (Hayles, 2017, 214).
An autopoietic system is not a "simple" self-organizing system: in the face of perturbations that undermine its integrity, not only does it redefine its own internal state, but continually regenerates those same constituent elements that in turn generated it. We will therefore have to ask: in what sense will human societies be considered autopoietic? Cities will be to be understood in their properly physical sense as assemblages of individuals, artifacts and otherliving things, of humans with other humans and of humans with non-humans, whose intersections, individuals, incessantly reproduce and undo through their corporeality patterns by which they mutually inform each other and induce mutual transformations in their structure. In the same way that in an autopoietic system the elementary components are placed in a relationship of circular causality aimed at the perpetual regeneration of that same functional organization that generated them, urban space exists through its transformations
and thus through the (increasingly) endogenous regeneration of its components.
Multimedia
Filippo Scafi
He holds an MA in Contintental Philosophy from the University of Warwick, and is currently PhD candidate in Humanities and Social Sciences at the GCAS College Dublin. His thesis concerns the problem of ethnographic alterity in the Ontological Turn in Anthropology through the lenses of François Laruelle’s Non-philosophy. He is editor-in-chief of Chaosmotics, journal of contemporary philosophy, and writer for Quaderni d’Altri Tempi.
Francesca Sunseri
She is a research fellow in History of Philosophy at the University of Palermo, a member of the Global Philosophy research group and editor for “Epekeina. International Journal of Ontology, History and Critics”. Her research is focused on contemporary French thought and, in particular, on the relationship between the study of technology and that of psychology, starting from the thesis of Gilbert Simondon. She is the author of several articles including: Algoritmi viventi tra Shannon e Simondon («Lo Sguardo», 34 (1), 2022, 205-218), Per una filosofia della natura tecnica in Gilbert Simondon, («Bollettino Filosofico», 38, 2023, 296-306) e “Ciberneretica” simondoniana, («Philosophy Kitchen», 18 (1), 2023, 73-87).
Alessandro Pluchino
L’Enigma Riccioli d’Oro. Perché viviamo in un universo favorevole alla vita?
Alex Pluchino
Alex Pluchino is an associate professor of Theoretical Physics, Methods, and Mathematical Models at the Department of Physics and Astronomy "Ettore Majorana" of the University of Catania. He is also a research associate at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Catania section. His research activity focuses on the models of complex systems, ranging from fundamental physics to statistical mechanics, complex networks, chaos theory. He has authored over 150 scientific publications and has been a speaker at numerous national and international conferences. He is actively involved in science communication for a non-specialized audience. For his work, he has received two Ig Nobel Prizes in 2010 and 2022 at Harvard University.
Marko Ćeranić
PhD in Philosophical-Social Sciences at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” with a thesis entitled Organisms, Machines and Society. Autopoiesis and ecology of social systems between classical sociological theory and cybernetic tradition. He is mainly concerned with the epistemology of cognitive and social sciences and cybernetics. Recent works include the article The Cognitive Landscape between Psychic Pervasiveness and Aesthetic Mediation for the journal “Studi di Estetica” (2023) and the article Why Design for a Brain is Still so Outdated (and therefore worth rereading) for the journal “Syzetesis”.
Brunella Antomarini
PhD in Aesthetics at Gregoriana University in Rome, teaches aesthetics and contemporary philosophy at John Cabot University, Rome. She is the author of seven books, among which: Le macchine nubili (Castelvecchi, 2022); Thinking through error (Lexington Books, 2012). She is the editor of many monographs and has published many articles in international journals. A selection of her recent publications includes: Leibniz’s Teleology, or a Pre-History of Cybernetics, (in “Humanisms and Beyond”, F. Conti and S. Sorgner, edd.; Trivent 2023). The Xenobots as Thought-Experiment: Teleology Within the Paradigm of Natural Selection, (“Studi di Estetica” n. 23, 2/2022, Fascicolo Sensibilia 15 Emergence/Emergency). “Ripartire da una teleologia cibernetica”, (Introduction and translation of the book by Yuk Hui, Pensare la contingenza. La filosofia dopo la cibernetica, B. Antomarini, ed.; Castelvecchi, Roma 2022). Contact in Absentia: Toward a Cybertouch, (in “The Covid Spectrum. Theoretical and Experiential Reflections from India and Beyond”, K. Mahadevan et al. edd., intro by S. Zizek, New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2021). Peirce and Cybernetics: Retroduction, Error and Autopoiesis in Future Thinking, ("Cognitio. Revista de Filosofia", Vol. 18, n. 2, 2017). Toward a Philosophy of the Automaton, (in “Aesthetics in Present Future. The Arts in the Horizon of the New Technologies”, co-editor with Adam Berg, Lexington Books, Maryland, 2013). La natura come caso speciale della tecnica, (in “Il corpo e la tecnica”, B. Antomarini and S. Tagliagambe, edd., Franco Angeli, Roma, 2007). She has recently participated in the lecture series: “Cybernetics for the XXI century. Geographical Constructions” for Media Lab of Guangdong Times Museum, Research Network for Philosophy and Technology, Guandong, China, curated by Yuk Hui and Jianru Wu, 2022-23).
Nicola Lettieri
Nicola Lettieri is a researcher at the National Institute for Public Policy Analysis (Rome), associate researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council and professor of Legal Informatics and Artificial Intelligence and Law at the University of Sannio and at the LUISS "Guido Carli" (Rome). He also teaches Computational intelligence and technoregulation at the University of Salerno where is a co- founder of EDGE, an interdisciplinary lab exploring, i.a., current and potential intersections between computational social science and legal studies. Nicola is currently Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journals Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence Law and Technology and Advances in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence for Legal Research and Applications, He is also co-editor of the international series Law, Science and Technology (ESI) and member of the scientific committee of the international series CompLEX (Kluwer). Over the years, Nicola has worked on a heterogeneous set of issues at the boundaries between law, cognitive science, complexity theory and philosophy of science, exploring topics ranging from agent-based social simulations to network analysis, from visual analytics to AI-enhanced knowledge mining, from computational law to Critical data studies. His research is devoted to a foundational effort aimed at putting forth a non-disciplinary vision where the law is intended to be conceptualized and studied in empirical terms as a complex natural phenomenon in all its relations with the levels of reality playing a role in its emergence and evolution. On such topics, he authored two monographs, more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed publications and edited books and international conference proceedings.
Daniele Poccia
(L’Aquila, 1983) holds a Ph.D. in philosophy (the University of Salento/La Sorbonne Paris IV) and has held two research grants at the Department of Human Sciences in L'Aquila. His research, which ranges from aesthetics, philosophy of science and political philosophy, focuses on problems typical of the contemporary world – from the impact of digitization to the transformations of the city, as well as on some general questions of the epistemology of biology and technology, in their mutual relations. He translated Henri Bergson (Sul segno, Textus 2011), translated and edited two collections of Raymond Ruyer’s texts (La superficie assoluta, Textus, 2017) and a book by Louis Weber (Il ritmo dell’immanenza, Mimesis 2022). He is co-editor of the volume Immanenza: una mappa (R. Ronchi e R. Panattoni edd., Mimesis 2019) and contributed to the project Storia di un albero - History of a tree (Silvana Editoriale, 2020), by Flatform. For years he has been active in the post-sisma committee ‘3e32’, at L’Aquila. He is the author of articles for several philosophical journals like Doppiozero, Le parole e le cose e Dinamopress.
Alessandro De Francesco
(Pisa, 1981) He is a poet, artist, and essayist. He has exhibited and performed internationally and published several books, among which And agglomerations, of trees or (Mousse Publishing, 2022); ((( (Uitgeverij / punctum books, 2021), Pour une théorie non-dualiste de la poésie (MIX / Les Presses du réel, 2021), Remote Vision (punctum books, 2016). Graduated in Philosophy from the University of Pisa and with a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris, he taught in the past at the European Graduate School and the École Normale Supérieure, and he currently teaches at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, at the ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels, and at the Bern Academy of the Arts. More information on www.alessandrodefrancesco.net
Alessandro de Lachenal
La cibernetica italiana vissuta
in prima persona (1985-1995)
Alessandro de Lachenal
(Rome, 1958) After graduating in Philosophy of Language at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1987, he worked in the book industry, especially as editor and Translations Coordinator for Laterza (1991-2012). In 1983-84 he was also research assistant in the “Dipartimento di semiotica e arti della performance” of the American College of Rome (Italian chapter of the University of Charlestone, West Virginia); member of the scientific secretariat of the international conference Evolution and Cognition. The heritage of Jean Piaget’s genetic epistemology (Bergamo, Oct. 6-8, 1990) and in the editorial board of Pluriverso. Biblioteca di idee per la civiltà planetaria (EtasLibri/Rcs, 1995-2001). From 2002 to 2008 he was technical editor of Psyche. Rivista di cultura psicoanalitica (organ of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society).
He lectured on editorial and translation issues in courses, masters and internships at various Italian universities, 2008 through 2010 was contract professor of English language and translation at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. He also translated/edited/published essays/books from English/French/German in Italian journals and for several Italian publishing houses: Adelphi, Aracne, Bollati Boringhieri, Carocci, Cierre Grafica, Raffaello Cortina, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Einaudi Scuola, Homolegens/Editron, «L’Erma» di Bretschneider, Etas, Fazi, Franco Angeli, Gangemi, L’asino d’oro, Laterza, Lithos, il Mulino, Mondadori, Rosenberg & Sellier, Luca Sossella, Treccani, Unicopli.
Elisa Davoglio
She is a poet and writer; she is also a cultural event organizer and curator at contemporary art galleries. She currently works as an AI trainer and project manager in Rome. She has published the novel Onore ai diffidati (Mondadori, 2008) and several poetry collections, among which L'orlo di Galois, (2010, La Camera Verde); Detour, (2012, La Camera Verde); La lunga impazienza, (2013, ChapBook - Arcipelago Edizioni), Taco Bell (2018 Aragno), Nella città più fredda (2023, Tic edizioni). He was part of the editorial staff of Nuovi Argomenti.Her texts have appeared in various magazines (including Atelier, Gradiva, Nuovi Argomenti, Inverse, AlfaBeta, La Stampa, il Manifesto, Des Italiens, OEI Magazines, Italian Poetry Review, Italies). She is featured in the EX.IT volume and in the folios series, for Benway Series Editions.
Adam Berg
He is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles, attended Accademia de Belle Arti, Rome, Italy; and studied architecture, landscape architecture, and philosophy at University of Toronto, Canada. He went on to complete Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and Doctoral degrees in Philosophy from University of Haifa, Israel. Berg has had solo and group exhibitions internationally. Teaches at Otis College of Art and Design and CalArts philosophy and critical theory.Various book publications, Hepheastus Reloaded: Composed for Ten Hands (Punctum 2019). Aesthetics in Present Future: The Arts and the Technological Horizon, Co-edited with Brunella Antomarini Lexington Books (June 1, 2013). Phenomenalism, Phenomenology and the question of Time: A Comparative Study Of Mach, Husserl and Boltzmann (2016). The Uses and Abuses of Probability: Perception and Induction in Construction Site for Possible Worlds Paperback.
Amanda Beech, Robin Mackay (Editors), Urbanomic 2020. Presentation at “Foreign Objekt, Complexity – Probability – Posthumanism: Symposium and Time Laboratory Presents Adam Berg: Beyond the Chronometric and the Temporal Divide”. Nov 4, 2022. https://www.foreignobjekt.com/post/adam-berg-beyond-the-chronometric-and-the-temporal-divide; Computing the Enigma of Love, Glass Bead, Site 2. Dark Room: Somatic Reason and Synthetic Eros | 2019. https://www.glass-bead.org/contributor/adam-berg/?lang=enview. On Toy Aesthetics: Wittgenstein’s Pinball Machine (part 1) https:// toyphilosophy.com/2018/04/02/on-toy-aesthetics-wittgensteins-pinball-machine-part-1/ Recent show: Adam Berg | Apr 4 - Jun 3, 2022. http://www.adamberg.org.
All lectures are available on Youtube. Follow us on
lexicon
Ambiente e Tecnica:
Gilbert Simondon a cent’anni
dalla nascita
18 - 20 giugno 2024
Orto Botanico di Palermo
Aula De Martino
Scarica il programma
Call for Participants: 17-21 giugno, Orto Botanico Palermo
Sicily Summer School in Environmental Humanities 2024
Direttori: Andrea Le Moli, Francesca Sunseri, Marcello Di Paola
A cento anni dalla nascita di Gilbert Simondon e in un momento in cui le questioni ambientali si fanno sempre più pressanti, è necessario un dibattito sul rapporto tra ambiente e tecnologia. È stato il filosofo francese a insegnarci che l'ambiente non può essere dissociato dall'individuo con cui si genera, e che questo "ambiente associato" è il risultato delle operazioni e degli strumenti che presiedono all'identificazione dell'insieme, ed è quindi strutturalmente "tecnico". La tecnologia riguarda quindi l'individuo più di quanto si voglia ammettere, e la sua comprensione o declinazione come modalità dell'esistenza umana rappresenta la distinzione tra una visione della tecnologia come fonte di problemi ambientali o come orizzonte ineludibile della loro risoluzione.
One hundred years after the birth of Gilbert Simondon, and at a time when environmental issues are becoming increasingly pressing, there is a need for a debate on the relationship between environment and technology. It was the French philosopher who taught us that the environment cannot be dissociated from the individual with whom it is generated, and that this 'associated environment' is the result of the operations and tools that preside over the identification of the whole and is therefore structurally 'technical'. Technology therefore concerns the individual more than one would like to admit, and its understanding or declination as a mode of human existence represents the distinction between a vision of technology as a source of environmental problems or as an inescapable horizon for their resolution.
News
Suggestion:
Metaphorum 2024
Conference
Creativity and Viability
16 – 17 September 2024
Berlin, Germany
The Metaphorum 2024 Conference is set to take place in Berlin, Germany. This will be a two-day event from Monday September 16th to Tuesday September 17th.
This year’s conference theme centres around the role of creativity in sustaining viability. The primary conference activities are scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, to be held at The Change Hub, an innovative space dedicated to creating sustainable transformation and social impact.
In keeping with the theme of the conference, this will be an innovative experience, unlike any other Metaphorum conference you have attended.
Suggestion:
WOSC 19th Congress 2024 - Shaping collaborative ecosystems for tomorrow
The complexity of interactions and relationships in our world have consistently surpassed our ability to fully comprehend and govern. The presence of intelligent tools, both in the digital and physical realms, is progressively enhancing our capacities to act on personal, organizational, national, and international levels, leading to both intended and unintended consequences.
Aspecial interest group in the WOSC Congress in Oxford, on VSM and governance
Section 2.3 A Shift in paradigm: how the Viable System Model shapes collaborative, self-governing organisations and networks
Coordinated by Angela Espinosa, and Jon Walker
Suggestion:
Il Posto dell’Uomo nell’Universo: l’Effetto “Riccioli d’Oro” e la “Parabola del Cane”
News
Suggestion:
Chaosmotics, Thinking Unbound
Chaosmotics is an online journal. Its aim is the reactivation of philosophical reflection in public debate – to accompany philosophy out of the cathedrals of knowledge, so that it regains the power to trigger discourse, dissent, construction.
The purpose of all human activity: here is the problem. […] Subjectivity is not a natural fact, like air and water. How can we produce it, capture it, enrich it, continually reinvent it so as to make it compatible with mutant Universes of value?
– Guattari, Chaosmosis, 1995, 128
To read: Alfred Gell
The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology part-1
Da vedere:
Alessandro Pluchino a "Un tè al museo di zoologia"
Che differenza c'è tra una cosa complicata e una complessa? Qual’è il segreto delle reti complesse presenti in natura? Esiste una firma matematica della complessità? È più complesso il nostro cervello o il sistema socio-economico-ecologico globale? Nella sua lecture divulgativa il Prof. Alessandro Pluchino - fisico teorico del DFA, ha tentato di rispondere con semplicità a queste e molte altre domande, accompagnando per mano l'auditorio in una passeggiata interdisciplinare tra ordine e disordine, cooperazione e competizione, alla scoperta delle leggi che regolano l'emergere della complessità nel mondo fisico, biologico e sociale. In sintesi, il Prof.Pluchino ha cercato di mostrare come gli sviluppi della nuova e ancora giovane scienza delle reti complesse stiano consentendo di svelare gli schemi nascosti dietro le quinte di molteplici fenomeni naturali solo in apparenza diversi tra loro ma che, se interpretati in termini di relazioni topologiche tra elementi di un grafo (molecole, cellule, individui, nazioni, specie animali, ecosistemi, titoli azionari, etc.), lasciano chiaramente trasparire una matrice comune, mostrando i loro punti di forza e di debolezza.
the Crew
Brunella Antomarini
PhD in Aesthetics at Gregoriana University in Rome, teaches aesthetics and contemporary philosophy at John Cabot University, Rome. She is the author of seven books, among which: Le macchine nubili (Castelvecchi, 2022); Thinking through error (Lexington Books, 2012). She is the editor of many monographs and has published many articles in international journals. A selection of her recent publications includes: Leibniz’s Teleology, or a Pre-History of Cybernetics, (in “Humanisms and Beyond”, F. Conti and S. Sorgner, edd.; Trivent 2023). The Xenobots as Thought-Experiment: Teleology Within the Paradigm of Natural Selection, (“Studi di Estetica” n. 23, 2/2022, Fascicolo Sensibilia 15 Emergence/Emergency). “Ripartire da una teleologia cibernetica”, (Introduction and translation of the book by Yuk Hui, Pensare la contingenza. La filosofia dopo la cibernetica, B. Antomarini, ed.; Castelvecchi, Roma 2022). Contact in Absentia: Toward a Cybertouch, (in “The Covid Spectrum. Theoretical and Experiential Reflections from India and Beyond”, K. Mahadevan et al. edd., intro by S. Zizek, New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2021). Peirce and Cybernetics: Retroduction, Error and Autopoiesis in Future Thinking, ("Cognitio. Revista de Filosofia", Vol. 18, n. 2, 2017). Toward a Philosophy of the Automaton, (in “Aesthetics in Present Future. The Arts in the Horizon of the New Technologies”, co-editor with Adam Berg, Lexington Books, Maryland, 2013). La natura come caso speciale della tecnica, (in “Il corpo e la tecnica”, B. Antomarini and S. Tagliagambe, edd., Franco Angeli, Roma, 2007). She has recently participated in the lecture series: “Cybernetics for the XXI century. Geographical Constructions” for Media Lab of Guangdong Times Museum, Research Network for Philosophy and Technology, Guandong, China, curated by Yuk Hui and Jianru Wu, 2022-23).
Marko Ćeranić
is a PhD in Philosophical-Social Sciences at the University of Rome 'Tor Vergata', with a curriculum in sociology. His research project and interests focus on the application of systems theory, and autopoiesis to sociology. His research explores ecological models of society, i.e. models that satisfy those needs for 'concreteness', 'immediacy' and 'relationality' that derive from a naturalistic, but not necessarily reductionist, view of society. Recent works include the article Why Design for a brain is still so profoundly outdated for the journal “Syzetesis” (2022), the review of the book What Do Algorithms Dream of? by Dominique Cardon for the journal “Lo Sguardo” (2023) and The cognitive landscape between psychic pervasiveness and aesthetic mediation for the journal Sensibilia (in print 2023).
Kicca D'Ercole
works in graphic design and visual communication, specialised in cinema, theatre and entertainment industries. Her expertise lies in the conception, design and development of brands, logos and publications as well as the creation of packaging and artwork for multi-format promotional tools. Her clients include: Cinecittà Istituto Luce, Cineuropa, Italia Cinema, Rome Film Fest, Venice Film Festival, Teatro di Roma / Teatro Argentina, Elleu Multimedia, Accademia Filarmonica Romana, Medici senza Frontiere and Wind Telecomunicazioni. Working as a freelance designer and graphic artist between Milan, Paris and Rome she creates and produces various objects, presented at exhibitions and reviewed in international art and design catalogues and magazines in Italy and abroad. Several of these objects were then turned into prototypes or small series produced by companies such as Alessi, Acquachiara, B&BItalia, Steel Molteni, Soffieria Parise and Ubaldo Grazia Ceramiche.
Nicola Lettieri
Nicola Lettieri is a researcher at the National Institute for Public Policy Analysis (Rome), associate researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council and professor of Legal Informatics and Artificial Intelligence and Law at the University of Sannio and at the LUISS "Guido Carli" (Rome). He also teaches Computational intelligence and technoregulation at the University of Salerno where is a co-
founder of EDGE, an interdisciplinary lab exploring, i.a., current and potential intersections between computational social science and legal studies. Nicola is currently Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journals Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence Law and Technology and Advances in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence for Legal Research and Applications, He is also co-editor of the international series Law, Science and Technology (ESI) and member of the scientific committee of the international series CompLEX (Kluwer). Over the years, Nicola has worked on a heterogeneous set of issues at the boundaries between law, cognitive science, complexity theory and philosophy of science, exploring topics ranging from agent-based social simulations to network analysis, from visual analytics to AI-enhanced knowledge mining, from computational law to Critical data studies. His research is devoted to a foundational effort aimed at putting forth a non-disciplinary vision where the law is intended to be conceptualized and studied in empirical terms as a complex natural phenomenon in all its relations with the levels of reality playing a role in its emergence and evolution. On such topics, he authored two monographs, more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed publications and edited books and international conference proceedings.
Alessandro Pluchino
is an associate professor of Theoretical Physics, Methods, and Mathematical Models at the Department of Physics and Astronomy "Ettore Majorana" of the University of Catania. He is also a research associate at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Catania section. His research activity mainly focuses on the development of mathematical and computational models of complex systems, and ranges from fundamental physics to statistical mechanics, complex networks, chaos theory, with applications in biological, geological, ecological, and particularly economic and social systems. He has authored over 150 scientific publications and has been a speaker at numerous national and international conferences. He is actively involved in science communication for a non-specialized audience. In recent years, he has delved into the study of the beneficial role of randomness and random strategies in complex systems, which has gained significant attention both in academia and in the media. For his work, he has received two Ig Nobel Prizes in 2010 and 2022 at Harvard University.
For further information: www.pluchino.it
Daniele Poccia
(L’Aquila, 1983) holds a Ph.D. in philosophy (the University of Salento/La Sorbonne Paris IV) and has held two research grants at the Department of Human Sciences in L'Aquila. His research, which ranges from aesthetics, philosophy of science and political philosophy, focuses on problems typical of the contemporary world – from the impact of digitization to the transformations of the city, as well as on some general questions of the epistemology of biology and technology, in their mutual relations. He translated Henri Bergson (Sul segno, Textus 2011), translated and edited two collections of Raymond Ruyer’s texts (La superficie assoluta, Textus, 2017) and a book by Louis Weber (Il ritmo dell’immanenza, Mimesis 2022). He is co-editor of the volume Immanenza: una mappa (R. Ronchi e R. Panattoni edd., Mimesis 2019) and contributed to the project Storia di un albero - History of a tree (Silvana Editoriale, 2020), by Flatform. For years he has been active in the post-sisma committee ‘3e32’, at L’Aquila. He is the author of articles for several philosophical journals like Doppiozero, Le parole e le cose e Dinamopress.
Francesca Sunseri
She is a research fellow in History of Philosophy at the University of Palermo, a member of the Global Philosophy research group and editor for “Epekeina. International Journal of Ontology, History and Critics”. Her research is focused on contemporary French thought and, in particular, on the relationship between the study of technology and that of psychology, starting from the thesis of Gilbert Simondon. She is the author of several articles including: Algoritmi viventi tra Shannon e Simondon («Lo Sguardo», 34 (1), 2022, 205-218), Per una filosofia della natura tecnica in Gilbert Simondon, («Bollettino Filosofico», 38, 2023, 296-306) e “Ciberneretica” simondoniana, («Philosophy Kitchen», 18 (1), 2023, 73-87).
Marco “Marc” Antomarini
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