Useful terms for use with the course subject matter on systems theory and contemporary art:

Autopoiesis

the process whereby an organization produces itself. An autopoietic organization is an autonomous and self-maintaining unity which contains component-producing processes. The components, through their interaction, generate recursively the same network of processes which produced them. An autopoietic system is operationally closed and structurally state determined with no apparent inputs and outputs. A cell, an organism, and perhaps a corporation are examples of autopoietic systems. (F. Varela)
Literally, self-production. The property of systems whose components (1) participate recursively in the same network of productions that produced them, and (2) realize the network of productions as a unity in the space in which the components exist (after Varela) (see recursion). Autopoiesis is a process whereby a system produces its own organization and maintains and constitutes itself in a space. E.g., a biological cell, a living organism and to some extend a corporation and a society as a whole. (krippendorff)

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Autopoiesis (2)

Maturana and Varela's central concept is that of autopoiesis. According to Maturana (Maturana and Varela, 1980, p. xvii) the term was coined around 1972 by combining the Greek auto (self-) and poiesis (creation; production). The concept is defined formally as follows:
'An autopoietic system is organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components that:
1.through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and
2.constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they [the components] exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.'
(Varela, 1979, p. 13)
Any unity meeting these specifications is an autopoietic system, and any such autopoietic system realized in physical space is a living system. The particular configuration of a given unity -- its structure -- is not sufficient to define it as a unity. The key feature of a living system is maintenance of its organization, i.e, preservation of the relational network which defines it as a systemic unity. Phrased another way, '...autopoietic systems operate as homeostatic systems that have their own organization as the critical fundamental variable that they actively maintain constant.' (Maturana, 1975, p. 318)
Autopoietic theory is the primary (perhaps the only...) example of a definition for life which is framed purely with respect to a candidate system in and of itself. If you go back and check most definitions (e.g., in a biology text), you are likely to find nothing more coherent than a list of features and functional attributes (e.g., 'reproduction', 'metabolism') which describe what living systems do, but not what they are. For this reason, autopoiesis has become a topic of interest in the recent field of artificial life (Alife)

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Autopoietic space

an autopoietic organization constitutes a closed domain of relations specified only with respect to the autopoietic organization that these relations constitute, and thus it defines a space in which it can be realized as a concrete system, a space whose dimensions are the relations of production of the components that realize it. (Maturana and Varela, 1980)

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Cybernetics

(1) The science of communication and control in animal and machine. (2) Perhaps because the field is still young, there are many definitions of cybernetics. Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, engineer and social philosopher, coined the word "cybernetics" from the Greek word meaning steersman. He defined it as the science of communication and control in the animal and the machine. Ampere, before, him, wanted cybernetics to be the science of government. For philosopher Warren McCulloch, cybernetics was an experimental epistemology concerned with the communication within an observer and between the observer and his environment. Stafford Beer, a management consultant, defined cybernetics as the science of effective organization. Anthropologist Gregory Bateson noted that whereas previous sciences dealt with matter and energy, the new science of cybernetics focuses on form and pattern. (3) A way of looking at things and a language for expressing what one sees (Margaret Mead)
The term derives from the Greek word for steersman. Initially, the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine (Wiener). Before this modern definition, the science of government (Ampere). Now an interdisciplinary approach to organization, irrespective of a system's material realization. Whereas general systems theory is committed to holism on the one side and to an effort to generalize STRUCTURal, BEHAVIORal and developmental features of living organisms on the other side, cybernetics is committed to an epistemological perspective that views material wholes as analysable without loss, in terms of a set of components plus their organization (see epistemology, analysis, system). Organization accounts for how the components of such a system interact with one another, and how this interaction determines and changes its structure. It explains the difference between parts and wholes and is described without reference to their material forms. The disinterest of cybernetics in material implications separates it from all sciences that designate their empirical domain by subject matters such as physics, biology, sociology, engineering and general systems theory. Its epistemological focus on organization, pattern and communication has generated methodologies, (see methodology) a logic, laws, theories and insights that are unique to cybernetics and have wide-ranging implications in other fields of inquiry.
In cybernetics, theories tend to rest on four basic pillars: variety, circularity, process and observation. Variety is fundamental to its information, communication and control theories and emphasises multiplicity, alternatives, differences, choices, networks, and intelligence rather than force and singular necessity. Circularity occurs in its earliest theories of circular causation or feedback, later in theories of recursion and of iteration in computing and now involving self-reference in cognitive organization and in autonomous systems of production (see autopoiesis). Traditional sciences have shied away from if not exorcised the use of circular explanations. It is this circular form which enables cybernetics to explain systems from within, making no recurse to higher principles or a priori purposes, expressing no preferences for hierarchy. Nearly all cybernetic theories involve process and change, from its notion of information, as the difference between two states of uncertainty, to theories of adaptation, evolution and growth processes. A special feature of cybernetics is that it explains such processes in terms of the organization of the system manifesting it, e.g., the circular causality of feedback loops is taken to account for processes of regulation and a system's effort to maintain an equilibrium or to reach a goal. Finally, observation including decision making is the process underlying cybernetic theories of information processing and computing. By extending theories of self-reference to processes of observation including cognition and other manifestations of intelligence, cybernetics has been applied to itself and is developing an epistemology of systems involving their observers (see second-order cybernetics) qualitatively unlike the earlier interest in the ontology of systems which are observed from the outside (see first-order cybernetics).
The early contributions of cybernetics were mainly technological (see technology), and gave rise to feedback control devices, communication technology, automation of production processes and computers. Interest moved soon to numerous sciences involving man, applying cybernetics to processes of cognition, to such practical pursuits such as psychiatry, family therapy, the development of information and decision systems, management, government, and to efforts to understand complex forms of social organization including communication and computer networks. The full potential of cybernetics has not yet been realized in these applications. Finally, cybernetics is making inroads into philosophy. This started by providing a non-metaphysical teleology and continues by challenging epistemology and ethics with new ideas about limiting processes of the mind, responsibility and aesthetics. (Krippendorff)

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Discrimination (distinctions)

The act of drawing perceptual, notational or spacial distinctions. In social life, discrimination often implies a differential (favorable/unfavorable) treatment of categories of persons on arbitrary ground, an overt manifestation of prejudices. (Krippendorff)

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The form

Form is an observed system whose behavior includes maintenance of that selfsame form. Focus is shifted from discernment of replicable actions e.g. objects of art through which a given process (cognition) is conducted - to the discernment of those features and structures of a form, which determines its engagement with its milieu.

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The observer

'Everything said is said by an observer'.(Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. xix) Maturana's initial work on cognition emphasized individual living systems. As a result, autopoietic theory has as its foundation the manner in which living systems address and engage the domain(s) in which they operate. This orientation subsumes the manner in which autopoietic theory addresses itself (as a scientific theory) and all other phenomena. A cognizing system engages the 'world' only in terms of the perturbations in its nervous system, which is 'operationally closed' (i.e., its transformations occur within its bounds). To the extent that the nervous system recursively interconnects its components (as in our brains), the organism is capable of generating, maintaining and re-engaging its own states as if they were literal re-presentations of external phenomena. Such states are 'second-order' in the sense that they are derivative from, rather than literal recordings of, experience. These states are called descriptions in autopoietic theory, and an organism operating within the realm of its descriptions is an observer. When a cognitive system makes distinctions which cleave its environment into 'object' and 'other', it is operating as an observer. In Maturana's own words: 'An observer is a ... living system who can make distinctions and specify that which he or she distinguishes as a unity, as an entity different from himself or herself that can be used for manipulations or descriptions in interactions with other observers.' (Maturana, 1978a, p. 31) The observer is one of the key concepts in autopoietic theory, because: 'Observing is both the ultimate starting point and the most fundamental question in any attempt to understand reality and reason as phenomena of the human domain. Indeed, everything said is said by an observer to another observer that could be him- or herself.' (Maturana, 1988, p. 27) The fundamental operation in observing is that of distinction -- '...the pointing to a unity by performing an operation which defines its boundaries and separates it from a background.' (Maturana, 1975, p. 325) Through the recursive distinguishing of entities through action, the observer is '...able to operate as if external to (distinct from) the circumstances in which he finds himself.' (Op.cit., p. 315) However, the observer is not actually standing apart from those circumstances. This is due to the fact that the entire and the only domain in which he/she operates is that of his/her closed (self-interconnected) nervous system. The nervous system's connectivity and closure permit interactions among its own states at time t1 to determine its states at time t2. This circular interaction allows for '... infinite recursion with continuous behavioural change.' (Op.cit., p. 324) The notion of the observer circumscribes all enquiry and all discussion. The qualification of any observation with respect to the vantage point of a given observer makes autopoietic theory inherently relativistic with respect to the person of the observer. Second, the resulting qualification of any set of observations over time with respect to the vantage events of a given observer makes autopoietic theory inherently relativistic with respect to the history of the observer. Third, since shared or collectively negotiated descriptions of experience (e.g., recollections [past], consensus [present], plans [future]) are qualified with respect to the interactions among given observers, autopoietic theory is inherently relativistic with respect to the persons of interacting observers and the history of interactions among them.

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Structural coupling

[…] is the term for structure-determined (and structure-determining) engagement of a given unity with either its environment or another unity. It is '...a historical process leading to the spatio-temporal coincidence between the changes of state..' (Maturana,1975, p. 321) in the participants. As such, structural coupling has connotations of both coordination and co-evolution.
Case 1: A System Coupling with its Environment
'If one of the plastic systems is an organism and the other its medium, the result is ontogenic adaptation of the organism to its medium: the changes of state of the organism correspond to the change of state of the medium.' (Maturana, 1975, p. 326)
'(T)he continued interactions of a structurally plastic system in an environment with recurrent perturbations will produce a continual selection of the system's structure. This structure will determine, on the one hand, the state of the system and its domain of allowable perturbations, and on the other hand will allow the system to operate in an environment without disintegration. ' (Varela, 1979, p. 33)
Case 2: A System Coupling with Another System
'If the two plastic systems are organisms, the result of the ontogenic structural coupling is a consensual domain.' (Maturana, 1975, p. 326)
A consensual domain is defined as '.. a domain of interlocked (intercalated and mutually triggering) sequences of states, established and determined through ontogenic interactions between structurally plastic state-determined systems.' (Maturana, 1975, p. 316). Because consensual domains are defined both by the structures of their participants and the history by which they came to exist, they are not reducible to descriptions framed only in terms of either:
'In each interaction the conduct of each organism is constitutively independent in its generation of the conduct of the other, because it is internally determined by the structure of the behaving organism only; but it is for the other organism, while the chain [of interactions] lasts, a source of compensable deformations that can be described as meaningful in the context of the coupled behavior.' (Varela, 1979, pp. 48 - 49)
Phrased in a slightly different way, the participating systems reciprocally serve as sources of compensable perturbations for each other. Such interactions are 'perturbations' in the sense of indirect effect or effectuation of change without having penetrated the boundary of the affected system. They are 'compensable' in the senses that (a) there is a range of 'compensation' bounded by the limit beyond which each system ceases to be a functional whole and (b) each iteration of the reciprocal interaction is affected by the one(s) before. The structurally-coupled systems ' will have an interlocked history of structural transformations, selecting each other's trajectories.' (Ibid.)

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