The Inner Experience of Emergence.
Collective Play: A novel transdisciplinary approach to theatre,
science and embodied systemic modelling.
By Orion Maxted
About the seminar
Western traditional theatre and science approach the world in a similar way: they both create ‘models’ of human behaviour, society and the natural world; and both approach the world, and the models they create, with an objective separation, as if looking at something from the ‘outside’. As can be felt in the common etymology between ‘theatre’ and ‘theory’ in the ‘theoria’, meaning ‘sight, spectacle or viewing’.
In this seminar, Orion Maxted wants to contrast this objective separation with play. In particular, with a mode of embodied, intersubjective play and playing, i.e. collectively playing, inventing and evolving, games, systems and ‘models’, informed by children’s games, cybernetics, and immersive post-dramatic theatre.
Orion Maxted proposes developing such kinds of play, as a novel and non-trivial way to make, share and understand artistic and scientific research (also known as artscience).
Some of the points he will attempt to cover in the talk:
- Collective play as an underexplored transdisciplinary space between art and science, and approach to transdisciplinarity research and education.
- Collective play as embodied, enactive, extended, embedded cognition, collective cognition, which is hands-on, and readily accessible.
- Theatre = science = play, as a generative transdisciplinary metaphor connecting art and science as mutually beneficial technologies of perception.
- A practical space to combine and contrast knowledge, and generate deeper transdisciplinary discourse between art and science
- How through collective systems play, participants can become agents who are inside (constituent to) the system itself,
- Dissolving/straddling, the objective and subjective distinction.
- Collectively, generate, experience and reflect through a shared ‘inner experience of emergence’.
- Developing an intuitive understanding of how systems, emergence (et al) feel from the inside, e.g. what makes a system work.
- Creating simple ‘models’ but with human-level agents, who are able to reprogramme and iteratively develop the systems in which they are part.
- Collective systems play as distributed collective human computation and collective intelligence.
- Collective play is a high indicator of cultivating social bonds, friendship, health, and mutual understanding.
- Collective systems play as transcendence of the individual, and being part of ‘something bigger than oneself', and so constituent to a sense of meaning.
- Play for its own sake.
Invitation to Collective Systems Play Session
From 6-8 pm, the same day, there will be a session of Collective Systems Play at the Center Leo Apostel (Krijgskundestraat 33, 1160 Brussels), initiated by Orion Maxted. All are welcome.
About the speaker
Orion Maxted is a post-dramatic theatre-maker working closely with cybernetics, complex adaptive systems and emergence in theatre, ritual, and collective computation. He was previously the first artist fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies, UvA, Amsterdam, and is currently a researcher at Center Leo Apostel for Transdisciplinary Research (CLEA), VUB. He studied at the experimental theatre research center DAS (formally DasArts, Amsterdam).
He has presented theatre and performance internationally, including: Frascati Theatre, Amsterdam; MU Gallery Eindhoven; Beursschouwburg, Brussels; Bâtard Festival, Brussels; Theatre Aan Zee, Ostend; BioArt & Design Award Exhibition, MU Gallery, Eindhoven; Burning Ice Festival, KAAI theatre, Brussels; Korean Experimental Arts Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Gwangju Biennial, South Korea; Houston Biennial of Performance, USA; Grace Exhibition Space, New York, USA; A Foundation, Liverpool Biennial, UK; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
Practical
The CLEA seminars are taking place simultaneously at the VUB campus in Etterbeek, Brussels, and online (via Zoom) and are open to everyone interested!
When. Friday December 2, 2022 from 14:00 until 16:00h + Play session from 18:00h until 20:00h at CLEA (Krijgskundestraat 33, 1160 Brussels)
Where. VUB campus Etterbeek, room D.2.09.
Online. You can follow the seminar online via Zoom. You may need a Meeting ID and passcode to enter.
Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82757798426?pwd=em9sQlJDVjJYTEFRNk01dEJLWGxGUT09
Meeting ID: 827 5779 8426
Passcode: 122127
Video
Acknowledgement
This seminar was supported by the John Templeton Foundation through the grant ID61733 The Origins of Goal-Directedness.
