"Ah, but
a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
My name is Andreas
Agiorgitis. I constructed this map, website, and understanding because I
believe that CEADS offers a potentially fruitful ecology for me to inhabit as I pursue a PhD in
organic knowledge cartography and semi- intentional neural architecture, design, and
decorating. This is both product and process of my understanding of the various issues that are
raised by reaching for such a thing. As a continual work in progress I apologize for that which is
unfinished but its visibility is an essential concept within the work I hope to continue at the
CEADS.
More information answering the essential questions can be found in the current cartography
of my
emergent doctorate:
I offer the
following as a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Wind Merchant (in
Reykjavik) and His Dream:
The History of
Documents:
iMap Envisaging the Art of Navigating
Conceptual Complexity
in search of software and processes combining artistic and conceptual insights
An exploration
I hope in part
to demonstrate the feasibility of enhancing comprehension, and navigating
complexity, using features uniquely dependent upon the riches and subtleties of artistic insight.
The concern here is with the design of a flexible architecture to demonstrate how the power of
both "scientific" and "artistic" approaches may be integrated to enhance comprehension
and
navigation of complexity -- as well as offering new forms of creativity in response to complex
conditions.
It is no longer widely believed that society has the collective ability to organize
collaborative
projects of a scope capable of making the breakthroughs called for by current challenges.
There is a suspicion that the challenge calls for quite another approach that makes greater, and
more imaginative, use of the information tools that our society has created in order to
counteract the tendency for collaboration to become tokenistic. Failing that, projects now run
the significant risk of being undermined by dynamics with which many are already all too
familiar.
The general concern
here is that of obtaining an integrative perspective on any complex of
social issues and potential responses, bearing in mind the need to zoom between levels of
complexity and to effectively pan between different ordering systems. Issues of learning are
then integral to any software specifications. Flexibility in reordering is fundamental -- in contrast
to many systems based on somebody's "good idea at the time" (which later proves very costly
to change in the light of new insights). There is a marked tendency for the replication of this
kind of inadequate thinking in electronic conferences. There is every indication that there should
instead be a heavy investment in moving towards what might be termed "conceptual
scaffolding" that can facilitate higher orders of consensus -- using differences rather than
becoming vulnerable to emergent differences.
A key question is whether valuable insights into complexity, vital to governance
and self-
governance of social processes, may only be representable and comprehensible through
presentations of an essentially artistic nature. It is then their aesthetic properties that have
valuable ordering and integrative functions. Given the well- demonstrated weaknesses of
current international policy- making, it would be unwise to assume that this is not the case.
Conceptual scaffolding:
The key feature
sought from this package might be described by phrases such as "conceptual
scaffolding" and "insight capture". The progressively refined artistic representation
would serve
as a form of scaffolding for an evolving pattern of insight. The artistic dimensions provide a form
of order through many patterns of associations which may be of a most tentative and even
playful quality -- compensating for the mechanistic connotations of scaffolding. Understanding
and creativity are supported and challenged by the relation between the representation and the
data held by it.
As with the construction
of any building, there is a basic need for "scaffolding" to hold the
conceptual and organizational elements in place, especially during the early phases of
"imaginative, interdisciplinary" interconnection. It may be argued that it is the lack
of this
scaffolding feature which prevents many potentially useful initiatives from "getting off the
ground" -- and "staying up". And the more complex the psycho-social structure, and the
more
communication space it spans, the greater the need for more complex scaffolding.
A typical function
of scaffolding in a conference is to provide a framework within which
complementary perspectives can be articulated, especially when there is a major tension
between them. For example, when Concept A is formulated, the scaffolding holds a space for
Concept B to counter- balance it. Such scaffolding is even more essential when more than two
concepts have to be held in balance. As with buildings, the scaffolding provides a protection
against disruptive forces in the conference process. A typical disruptive force in a
contemporary conference might focus narrowly on "industry is exploitative", when the larger
issue is to provide a sustainable framework in which to balance the exploitative characteristics
of industry against the socio- economic benefits that it provides in the light of environmental
constraints. The more complex the balance, the more vulnerable is the conference to disruptive
forces.
The challenge
is how to allow different category structures, and the groups advocating
them, to mesh or meld before their incompatibilities tear each other apart. This is a
major issue when dealing with the strong, creative, and often idiosyncratic, personalities (and
groups) whose collaboration is ideally required. It is seen in its most dramatic form in the
Middle East peace process and in negotiations among the warring parties in Bosnia. The
apparently disproportionate importance attached to "table layout" in any negotiation procedure
is a physical indication of the nature of the conceptual challenge. This argument implies that the
challenge is both mathematical and aesthetic.
Failure to respond
to this issue leads to project outputs whose only real integrative feature is the
physical binding of a document containing unrelateable "integrative" contributions -- however
skilfully worded the introduction may be (In German: Buchbindersynthese!).
The scaffolding
required not only has implications for elaboration of new structures. It also
supports the learning processes through which others subsequently come to grasp the scope
of such structures as viable alternatives to the simpler conventional patterns that have proven so
inadequate to the challenges of the times.
Providing means
for higher and subtler degrees of order to be carried by aesthetically organized
displays, allows otherwise incommensurable positions in conferences to be related in ways
renered impossible by the present hierarchical and legalistical approaches to order. This is also
true for any emergent agreements and communication protocols. Ironically this recalls some of
the underlying functions of heraldic devices and seals that still carry significance in secret
societies.
Whether for a coalition
of forces or for an individual, the computer-held aesthetic display could
become as fundamental an asset as intellectual property. It is potentially of greater value than
patents or copyright because it is effectively the generative aesthetic (or template) that holds the
pattern of insights through which products of lower order are created.
Where different
coalitions represent their respective ordering through contrasting aesthetic
displays, many opportunities then attach to the significance of the transformational pathways
between them (eg through morphing). This is of special relevance to any negotiation process.
Evolution of the
web environment has created a situation in which websites are effectively in
savage competition for limited user attention. This has been a major force towards multi-media
web facilities even amongst the most text- oriented institutions. This new situation can be
usefully understood through a botanical metaphor. In effect each website can be compared to a
species of flower. Flowers have had to acquire comparative aesthetic advantages over each
other to attract their potential "users" in order to survive. Webmasters anxiously monitor
the
"hits" their site receives, like spiders attentive to flies hitting their web. As with flowers,
some
websites are designed to "capture" users -- rather than assist them onwards to other locations.
The larger question
is then how complementary species of attention attractors are to be
understood as globally organized (in the integrative, non-geographical sense). What is the
knowledge ecosystem and how is its integrative (namely global) organization to be
comprehened? There may be a case for using the aesthetics of topography, and of the various
ecosystems and habitats, to hold knowledge for meaningful navigation. This would be a
somewhat ironic return to the classical approach reviewed by Frances Yates -- but in a
computer-enhanced aesthetic context. There wouild then be an elegant cognitive isomorphism
to the policy challenges of responding appropriately to the natural environment.
1. Andreas
