Authors:

 Glanville, Ranulph.

Title:

 As is and as if: to see or not to see

Keywords:

 cybernetics (second-order), distinction, experience, explanation, interaction, object, observer, shadow, thing itself.
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Abstract:

 Second order cybernetics teaches us that there can be no observation without an observer, no action without an actor, etc.

And that when we draw distinctions (eg, observe some thing), we have no recourse to that thing except through the process of drawing the distinction.

Which leaves us asking what and whether the thing may be.

This is a crucial question in the endeavour to create interactive objects. I have explored the notion of interaction at 2 recent conferences in Newport, Wales. Here I shall examine the relationship between the object that we believe we interact with and the interaction, coming from both me and that supposed object. And I shall explore the relating in terms of talking about (explaining) something as opposed to experiencing it. For, if there is no it except in the experiencing, we have a problem that means we are always looking through a glass darkly, we are always dealing with the shadow and not the thing itself.

Which means we are always critics and never audience.
Glanville, Ranulph. ranulph@glanville.co.uk Ranulph Glanville attended the Architectural Association School in London, where he gained his Diploma in Architecture (possibly the only one in the world ever awarded for making electronic music). He then took a PhD in Cybernetics with Gordon Pask which he followed with second PhD, this time in Human Learning with Laurie Thomas: both at Brunel University. He has spent his professional life teaching, mainly architecture, but also design, art, cybernetics and anything else requested, until taking early retirement on April Fool's Day in 1997. Since then he has been visiting fellow in the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Technical Dissertation Tutor at the Bartlett School of University College, London, and Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of the Constructed Environment, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology where he is adjunct Professor and a recurrent visitor. He also has a record as an artist and performer that includes founding what was probablyu the first live performance electronic music band in the world. He has exhibited and performed around the world, although manily in conferences. He is curreently workinng on a millennium sound installation for Melbourne, Australia. He has published nearly 200 papers, is on the editorial board of a number of Journals, is married to a Dutch physiotherapist, has a son living in Finland, and lives, when he has time, in the UK. His hobbies are whatever of his interests he is not actively involved in at any particular instant. His project, in retirement, is to find out what he really wants to do with his life. He recently gave up his in depth studies of the horizontal.