Vanilla Beer & Tony Mann
University of Greenwich
ABSTRACT
For the creative artist, the process of realisation can be more than just the automatic working out of an outcome predetermined by the original idea. Digital technology can serve as an intermediary between the creative imagination and the final product, providing a psychic presence which interacts with the artistic process.
The authors, respectively a (female) practising artist and a (male) teacher of computing, have been using digital technology in this way in an attempt to introduce technical students to an artist's approach to creative work.
We discuss the nature of this kind of intermediation in the context of recent popular and academic analysis of the nature of cyberspace and its impact on creativity and identity.
Since this paper touches on gender issues and the question of the consistency or otherwise of the authorial voice, it is perhaps appropriate that we have made no attempt to present it univocally. Consequently "I" refers to whichever author is currently writing and may, or may not, apply only to that author.
INTRODUCTION
Digital technology is an increasingly familiar tool for the creative artist in every field. Holtzman , discussing the computer as an engine for the manipulation of structures, foresees its use as an essential part of the creative process, but suggests that as a result "we may lose some of our innocence, some of the mystery of creativity".
Artists work in many different ways: for some, the aim is to realise as accurately as possible a preconceived vision, with the process of realisation being secondary (and perhaps even boring). Others, such as the first author of this paper, see the process as intrinsic to the art work. For them, the process has to interact with the original idea: if the outcome is exactly as originally envisaged, why bother realising it? A case can be made for art forms being the residue of a time-based activity: Spencer-Brown has said that "The object of music is not to get rid of itself but to create an inbalance and prolong the pleasure of fixing it." This applies to many art forms, not only music.
From this viewpoint side effects and accidents of the process of realisation (brush marks, a slip of the hand) go along with the artist's intentions in determining the final outcome, which is both expected (corresponding to the original idea) and unexpected (divergent from that idea in ways that could not have been foreseen). The process of realisation involves working with, and encouraging, these accidents, and this tension between the intention and the mediation maintains the interest of the creator during the process.
Intermediation of this sort takes many forms. The writers of the Oulipo and especially Georges Perec worked within almost unbelievably restrictive constraints. In the visual arts one finds the deliberate use of techniques over which the artist has only limited control, and the explicit use of randomness. The snow and ice paintings of Andy Goldsworthy exemplify the former ("My response is not to standardise and control these elements, but to treat them as an extension of the many unpredicatabilities in the process... [the works] are alive with the variety of the places that they come from, and it is in their nature to accept further variation" ). The canonical example of the latter is Leonardo's suggestion that inspiration be derived from chance marks on walls . Often (as in the case of Perec) a creative block can be overcome in this way. Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies is an example of a widely known form of intermediation.
The authors of this paper have collaborated on a number of occasions in the delivery of a course called Art in the Multimedia Age, which is part of Greenwich University's BSc (Hons) Multimedia Technology degree programme . The aim of this part of the course is to introduce students to digital technology (in this case principally software such as CorelDraw and Adobe Photoshop) as a tool for the artist. These students come from the School of Computing and in many cases have little experience of art, so we have attempted to give them insights into an artist's creative process.
One rather successful exercise required the production a digital drawing in response to a poem selected by the student. However, three separate filters came between the text and the artwork. One was obviously the student's limited experience of the software which meant that outcomes were not always those intended; another was the requirement to work with Eno and Schmidt's Oblique Strategies drawn randomly by the computer. The third filter was that students were required to pass their text through the Systran automatic translation engine available through AltaVista on the Web , translating it repeatedly into other languages and back to English. This led to variations on the original text which often had additional resonance: for example "not waving but drowning" became, on translation into French and back into English, "not to undulate but to become embedded". Students had to choose a mediated version of their poem as the basis for their work.
This use of digital technology as intermediator, as a means of interference with the expected outcome, has parallels with current analysis of the nature of cyberspace and its impact on perceptions of creativity and identity. These parallels will be investigated in this paper, which is written from the perspective of the presenting author.
THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN
What is going on in current commentaries and why do they rely on antique theologies?
There are many books around at the moment that deal with the parallels between cyberspace and real space (we use these terms as a distinction between emerging spaces and established spaces respectively). They are good sellers; it is safe to assume they are addressing an area that is of popular interest, probably because they enrich our use of technology and our knowledge of ourselves. They may even give us a dispassionate view of ourselves that clarifies some aspects of our psyches. Paul Virilio in CTHEORY has written that "The research on cyberspace is a quest for God... and deals with the idea of a God who is, sees and hears everything." Certainly there is lots of God-talk around (one recalls the remark of Fook the programmer at the Great On-Turning of Deep Thought, "I think this is getting needlessly messianic." ) - Techgnosis by Erik Davis links the dualist savants from before Christ's time with the trickster, technology - with which he claims we have made a creative alliance, the outcome of which is as yet unknowable.
John Cage's diaries How to improve the world (You will only make matters worse) (the title comes from Chuang-Tse) were begun optimistically in the mid-1960s as a celebration of Buckminster Fuller. In the first volume Cage, following David Sarnow, foresees "instant television, instant magazines and instant visual telephone service. The development of such global communication would link people everywhere for reorientation toward a one world concept of mass communications in an era marked by the emergence of a universal language, a universal culture and a universal common market." He refers to "alteration of global society through electronics so that world will go round by means of united intelligence" .
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) is much-hailed as the patron saint of the web, its prophet and spiritual father, for his recognition and naming of the Noosphere, a postulated area in the ether where minds come together, the 'thinking envelope around the earth' - since identified with cyberspace. Writing on the growth of technology and mechanisation he says "It fulfils the dream of all living creatures by satisfying our instinctive craving for the maximum of consciousness with a minimum of effort" . He wrote that forty-odd years ago! Not so much comment is made these days of the fact that he saw this coming together as the occasion of the eschaton, a theological term for the last days (which represents death, judgement, heaven and hell):
"...the men of the future will in some sort form a single consciousness; and because, their initiation being completed, they will have measured the power of their associated minds, the immensity of the universe and the narrowness of their prison, this consciousness will be truly adult, truly major."
Because of this men will elect to end - not just their lives, not just the world, but the very cosmos - in order to be absorbed into God: "...in a creation bought to the paroxysm of its aptitude for union, the Parousia will occur" . (Parousia is a Greek term for the second coming of Christ.)
The use of the virtual in cyberspace is a contemporary exemplar of the old notions of dualism. This was the term given to it by the Christians when they identified it as heresy - before that all it meant was that man was made of two parts, physical and the unidentifiable other bit - soul, mind, consciousness, spirit, nous. The visible, the invisible. The relationship between the two was the big discussion for the religious philosophers who held that we are imprisoned in the body - so 'we' consisted of the soul/mind stuff. Nowadays, in contrast, 'we' are what we eat.
In cyberspace, the mind is free from the body. The body is left at the console whilst the spirit soars. That's the theory anyway - the day when virtual reality gets that good seems a while away yet and we may have lost interest in pretending by then.
Margaret Wertheim has a crack at shaping cyberspace within the ethos of the Christian model. For instance she uses the work of the English divine, Henry More (1614-1687, an older colleague of Isaac Newton) who in attempting to handle the (then) new Descartian universe saw space as a mediating substance between divine spirit and physical matter. Newton himself subscribed to this view; God "endures for ever, and is everywhere present; and by existing always and everywhere, He constitutes duration and space."
MODELLING WITH PLAY
New technologies provide new models which can give a new direction to old debates. Large-scale distributed networks and the Internet offer a new metaphor for consciousness, while the non-linear nature of hypertext forces a departure from the linear habits we have learnt from print and the other older media. Those who play on the Web can, and do, present (or reveal?) identities at will, casting off the physical constraints of bodies and geography .
The gendering of linearity
The use of a linear mode and a consistent voice for the delivery of information or narrative has become standard. Crook and Rhodes discuss how, since the mid-seventeenth century, "The texts which were the product of the new method are now viewed as 'traditional' in format. They are described as centred, hierarchical, linear, and privileged, all male-gendered characteristics. Texts which did not exhibit these criteria fell out of use." The view they describe sees male reasoning as logical, and linear while the female tends to digression and inconsistency. The former qualities are particularly associated with a linear medium such as print.
But hypertext and cyberspace in general are highly non-linear and present new opportunities (interestingly, Murray, in discussing these opportunities, suggests that cyberauthoring requires the same techniques as Homer's oral story-telling ). Sadie Plant is one of those who argue that it is precisely fitted to the female mind, which is better able to handle contradiction and digression. She views the distributed, parallel computer network as a tool highly suited for the heuristic female thought process, in contrast to the linear, supposedly male mind-set which traditionally dominated computing before the connectivity of the internet.
As I remember, Crook concluded her conference presentation with the wry remark that, just as non-linearity and multivocality are becoming respectable again, (male) commentators are beginning to argue that the dichotomy between male and female reasoning is spurious, and that, surprisingly enough, the male mind in fact turns out to be particularly well suited to these aspects of the new medium. Be that as it may, precisely these differences between the mindsets of the two authors have been apparent during the writing of this paper!
The Play of Nature and the Nature of Play
Newton and Descartes were informed by Kepler, the Protestant mystic, famously rigorous and insistent upon observation, who wrote;
"Now as God the maker play'd He taught the game to Nature whom He created in His image; taught her the self-game which He played to her."
This creative image of male and female interaction, and the emphasis on play to generate the world, seems analogous to our realisations through digital technology.
Galileo shared Kepler's passion for observation; his model departed from Aristotelian science and earned the judgement "foolish and absurd, philosophically and formally heretical..." from the Qualifiers of the Holy Office of Pope Paul V . Models which offer new views are notoriously unwelcome. Obviously revolutionary, they offer a starting-point for subsequent evolution.
René Thom writes:
"By allowing the construction of mental structures simulating more and more closely the structures and forces of the outside world as well as the structure of the mind itself, mathematical activity has its place in the map of evolution. This is significant play par excellence by which man can deliver himself from the biological bondage that weighs down his thought and language and can assure the best chance of survival for mankind."
Thom lays claim here for modelling not only allowing us more insight into the real world and presenting us with an opportunity to find out more about ourselves, but also in the "play"- (note the echo from Kepler) we are freed from the body that ties down the brain - (note the dualist reference) and can save the world. These elements seem to occur often in commentaries on technological developments and in the nature of websites. You will certainly have your own examples. World salvation is tops. Well, perhaps self-gratification is tops - how would we know - but big things, life, consciousness, death, eternity, the Universe and everything, are close.
Maybe we just don't like to think 'little' thoughts when presented with Big Tools. Or maybe we see ourselves as empowered to become heroes through Big Tools. Maybe our imaginations are limited between two polarities - ourselves, as evinced in the 'self-gratification' end of the web, and others - there to be saved, a simple Messianic relationship. Perhaps we are being manipulated by the Big Tool process... certainly, the creators of pornography are manipulative. Perhaps we assume that all Big Tool information is as effective... but we know it isn't. Most of skim rather than surf the web, like flicking through a magazine in the dentists waiting room - our mind's elsewhere. Something to do between other things. I have never seen any pornography on the web. I have heard mythic reports - saying things like 'pornography is the commonest use of...' 'pornographic sites were revealed as the most visited during random checks...' - but no real information exists on its importance. And I suppose, though I don't know, that it is only important to male users of the web. I suspect our thinking is polarised because we have learnt no subtlety - Big Tools tend to hit hard. That these polarities have a subtlety of a strip-cartoon must be relevant. "The prevalence of clichés is no accident, but inherent in the nature of information" writes Norbert Wiener on the nature of models. Clichés are the carriers of reference points, which are one way of allowing the model to hold a meaningful purpose.
What matters is "what people find themselves interested or convinced by" (as Kuhn has it) and that tends to happen when there are familiar hooks from which to dangle over exciting new vistas.
To sum up so far: computers users use the web as a 'big tool' for play, world domination and as an entrance to eternity - a powerful tool will do powerful things and will necessarily echo some of the traditional routes in the quest for god.
REAL, VIRTUAL AND PSYCHIC: SMALL MATTER AND BIG TOOLS
Are all digital descriptions 'models'? A model exists to help you to understand something. They are not 'real'. How does 'model' differ from ' virtual'? That which is virtual replaces the thing it models. Do the psychic and the virtual meet in modelling? At what point do they become simulations? Perhaps this occurs when the model is effective, but what, then, is 'real'? Intentionality in part constructs the answers to these questions. If so, then reality and the rest are personal constructs. Many philosophers have lighted on the notion that reality is a consensus of these constructs.
The consensus is being tested, again. We have the Big Tool for that.
"'Matter' is a convenient formula for describing what happens where it isn't", says Russell . Let us assume that we start with a model. Even at the level of the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, there is a construct - real, virtual or psychic - which informs us.
"In general, it is legitimate to study a model of a mysterious process if three conditions are fulfilled: 1. Several features of the mystery must be known. 2. The model must contain the absolute minimum of working parts to reproduce the known features. 3. The model must reproduce other features, either as predictions, or as unexpected combinations." Thus postulates W. Grey Walter, usefully .
What is the observable reality in digital technology? At the very basic level, what seems to happen is that people look at small screens. Thereafter, three things appear to happen - possibly all at once.
1. They look through the screen, and see what they may see. Probably in an interactive fashion - that is, that there are physical tasks employed on the keyboard or with the cursor to make this viewing possible; they might see something put there by themselves in some fashion or experience a controlled viewing of something put there by another.
Simple data gathering. A 'Real' experience.
2. They look at the screen, in some way projecting their expectations; hopes, fears, fantasies and what-not onto a transparent plane, a plate of glass. A projection of who they, the viewer, is - an amplification (or specification of an attribute) of themselves.
This occurs without observable physical activity. We know it happens because of its effect - it carries the 'attitude' the individual carries to the screen.
A sub-textual, perhaps unconscious, maybe Jungian, moment or period of time: something outside the realm of the physical: a 'Psychic' experience.
3. They look beyond the screen - gazing off into an illusory space, that we call cyberspace. Here is where they collect their aspersions. Here is where they are felt to be observed. Here is interactivity. Where they engage in communities. Where they reach out and are touched, intellectually. A 'Virtual' experience.
The purpose of breaking down the process to these three clear phases from our point of view, even if they can not be described sequentially, is that it helps to identify at which stage creativity can be implemented. There is little point in original practices in stage 1., for instance, where failure to operate except by the established routes will result in nothing but the failure of the desired tasks. You can only use what's there and you can only do that in a form that the machine recognises.
In stage 2., though, things can get really interesting. But is it governable? It is only a moment - or if longer, so unconscious as to be unusable for this model. We are talking about the whole human, of which some aspect is let loose, fleetingly, invisibly, focused onto one place. The more of this aspect that is released, the greater the creative potential. The more singular this aspect, the more tightly chiselled into a small area, the greater the creative potential. In teaching creativity in digital technology, this is the way in -
"Lets pretend there's a way of getting though it somehow, Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, its turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It'll be easy enough to get through -"
says Alice .
In stage 3., things get done. It is the techie arena, that which makes virtual the psychic. Because it is interactive it informs and reinforces whilst inviting new input.
In introducing creative ideas to people who are used to mechanical and engineering processes, this is the time where they can be introduced to - for instance - formulaic randomisers. These are tricks to cut a bewildering variety down to a manageable few options, like Eno and Schmidt's Oblique Strategies.
Using these three stages as a metaphorical model, we see back at the screen that all three stages move together, feeding back, moving on, engaging with entropy; instead of the 'this / that / the other' of the Hegelian-type dialectic, a dance of man, machine and desire. The dualism of mind / body has become triadic; the body at the 'real' experience of stage 1., the projection that we call 'psychic' of stage 2., the 'virtual' experience of stage 3.
ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES: CONFUSING THE MAP WITH THE TERRITORY
Where the tools are understood and their utilisation predictable, the described route achieves the desired outcome; but where a novel outcome is needed - something never seen before that cannot be described in advance because it is not known, an unanticipated outcome - then a new approach is required. Traditional creative methods consist of, for instance, playing - or messing around, or bending the known in some way. Creative methods to re-view the known are effective here. Play, as we know, is a hugely successful learning technique on computers. It does not necessarily lead on to creative solutions. Getting through the mechanistic barrier to the possibilities of an unanticipated outcome is the problem - where manipulation is a by-product, not a direction nor an intention.
Related to it is the problem of measuring what can be called either the degree of manipulation or the aesthetic success of a work, depending on your stance.
The things that matter most to us are the things that are seriously subjective and cannot therefore be measured in a consistent way. The photograph of your child will move you in a way that a Botticelli painting will not - yet that same photo will have little impact on anyone else. We can all agree that Goya's painting of Kronos devouring his son is powerful - frightening, unforgettable, disturbing, provocative, whatever - but the painting that hung on your nursery wall will always claim your attention and again, mean nothing much to anyone else. So: taste is a personal thing. I don't know much about art but I know what I like. But how can we teach (or recognise) good art and how to make it, if we all believe different images are important? What is the consensus?
In Sanskrit aesthetics, the states of mind or emotions generated by art are listed. They are called Rasas, which means 'juice' or 'essence'. The list has nine states: wonder, joy, sexual pleasure, pity, anguish, anger, terror, disgust and laughter. A successful work will contain them all in flowing progression.
All we know is that the gap between what can be measured, by consensus, and what is subjective and therefore unmeasurable, is inversely related to the importance of the content. We operate from a space predicated by uncertainty. Or person-specific certainty.
Mark Rothko, the American abstract painter, said that the more personal a painting is, the more general it becomes. Strange: that which is familiar and that which is merely observed would seem to be so distant from one another as to be irreconcilable.
TRAVELLING HOPEFULLY: UNRAVELLING HEURISTICALLY
There is a research method based on lack of distance, called Heuristic Research, developed by Clark Moustakas. He explains it by comparing Heuristic Research with phenomenology:
"1. Whereas phenomenology encourages a kind of detachment from the phenomena being investigated, heuristics emphasises connectedness and relationship.
2. Whereas phenomenology permits the researcher to conclude with definite descriptions to the structures of experience, heuristics leads to depictions of essential meanings and portrayal of the intrigue and personal significance that imbue the search to know.
3. Whereas phenomenological research generally concludes with a presentation of the distilled structures of experience, heuristics may involve reintegration of derived knowledge that itself is an act of creative discovery, a synthesis that includes intuition and tacit understanding.
4. Whereas phenomenology loses the person in the process of descriptive analysis, in heuristics the research participants remain visible in the examination of the data and continue to be portrayed as whole persons."
He concludes that phenomenology ends with the essence of experience; heuristic methods retrain the essence of the person in experience .
Perfect: so how is it done? Stafford Beer recommends heuristic techniques for coping with proliferating variety: "instead of trying to organise it in full detail, you organise it only somewhat; you then ride on the dynamics of the system in the direction you want to go." Moustakas suggests that we break the bonds of detachment and become at one with the subject. He uses things that have been found to work, like identification with the focus of the enquiry, self-dialogue, intuition.
When the 'subject' is no longer 'subjected' the fatal flaw of dualism is apparent; we are not made of two bits, we are whole; "the knowing and the known are one"; there is no other possible relationship. Recognising heuristic methodology leads us to acknowledge the presence of the researcher as the filter (or focus) of the received data. Hermeneutics teaches us more about the researcher than the researched... Palmer says that heuristic research is actually the only research there is, and that we cover it up retrospectively by claiming a logical and deductive route. He quotes Feyerabend: in science the only method that works is "anything goes" .
Stafford Beer has written that there is no rigorous means of knowing which system operations 'matter'. "Indeed, the importance of a particular variable in such a system is a question of degree, a question of judgement, a question of convention. Moreover, the importance it has by any of these criteria, change from moment to moment."
If we have a specific that does not spread beyond the individual, the second stage described above is useful. It is the moment of preparation as well as the moment of projection. If that can be used effectively, the person-specific passions can be imagined or recalled or identified with. The third stage is where the techniques to communicate these so identified, are uncovered.
Sir Arthur Eddington, he who first realised that spiral nebulas are galaxies and he who substantiated Einstein's Relativity theory by observing a solar eclipse; who, in his day, was dealing with a world of hypothesises and phantoms such as we are now, writes that
"The stuff of this world is mind-stuff. The mind-stuff is not spread in space or time; these are part of the cyclical scheme ultimately derived out of it. But we must presume that in some way or aspect it can be differentiated into parts. Only here or there does it rise to the level of consciousness, but from such islands proceeds all knowledge. Besides the direct knowledge contained in each self knowing unit, there is inferential knowledge. The latter includes our knowledge of the physical world."
Organisation Within Diversity
Unpicking the inferential knowledge and describing the direct knowledge of a self-knowing 'unit' is what an artist does, generally speaking - in the most non-objective ways that are possible. There is not enough time to teach people (who may not even have an aptitude) the tricks of the artists' trade whilst teaching creative applications within digital technology.
Instead, we can consider a generalised approach - which means that we need to know all that there is about what a human is, followed by what this human-sitting-in-front-of-screen is. There is even less time to do that... besides, eminent juries are still out on that one.
"Modern Man was always a replicant forged amidst the frenzy of disciplinary practices that made him the measure of everything" observes Sadie Plant . This is qualifyable: "You came into this world as and with nothing and were assigned a value by being given a name, dependant on which all other names had meaning" writes George Spencer-Brown, giving man a context. On the one hand, this Man can measure everything, is the arbiter of matter; on the other he only has the power invested in him by his context. The process which he observes allows him to participate.
By participating he alters it. The alteration is noted and observed; the process he subsequently observes allows him to participate...here feedback fluidly alters the system. As Wiener historically stated, "It is my thesis that the physical functioning of the living individual and the operation of some of the newer communication machines are precisely parallel in their analogous attempts to control entropy through feedback...In both of them, their performed action on the outer world, and not merely their intended action, is reported back to the central regulatory apparatus."
What of the outcome of their unintended actions? If you can't measure it you can't inform yourself. We don't even know what we are looking for.
Whereas Wiener was comparing the subtle principals of entropic behaviour in man and machine we have a triadic opportunity with the real, the psychic and the virtual with which to examine the projected, the enacted and the un-acted; as he wrote in 1950, "To be alive is to participate in a continuous stream of influences from the outer world and acts on the outer world, in which we are merely the transitional stage."
Heuristic research is structured for discovery. As Confucius says, "Life leads the thoughtful man on a path of many windings". It can reveal the constraints that prevent the observation of new activities. It points at the meaning of the new activities. The changes that are made apparent by the process of the new activities becoming apparent can be understood; the relationships that alter as the process emerges can be seen; and as Palmer says; I can find out what all this means to me - because assuredly such concerns are universal.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to Stafford Beer for his comments on a draft of this paper; to Richard Spencer-Brown and Alison Samuel for helpful conversations; and to Nonna Crook and Neil Rhodes for providing an advance copy of their paper.
Since this is an architecture conference, I am tempted to recall that Hilda Tablet, the fictional composer in Henry Reed's 1950s radio play The Private Life of Hilda Tablet, reversing Schelling's aphorism, characterised music as "thawed architecture".
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REFERENCES
Steven Holtzman, Digital Mantras: the languages of abstract and virtual worlds, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1994
George Spencer-Brown, Gesetze Der Form, Bohmeier Verlag, Lübeck, 1997, p.179
Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie, The Oulipo Compendium, Exact Change, Boston, 1998
See for example Georges Perec, Alphabets, Galilée, Paris 1985 and La Disparition, Denoël, Paris 1969, translated by Gilbert Adair as A Void, Harvill, London, 1994
Andy Goldsworthy, Ice and Snow Drawings, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh 1992, p.10
Edward McCurdy (editor), The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, London 1938: this passage is discussed in, for example, Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci, South Bank Centre, London 1989, p.150
http://dream.com/Oblique.html
Tony Ackroyd and A. J. S. Mann, Multimedia Technology: Fostering digital creativity, Greenwich 2000 - Digital Creativity, Greenwich, London, UK, January 2000, Interscience Communications Limited, UK.
http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate? (note that the translation engine is frequently revised so that the example quoted may no longer have the same result)
http://www.ctheory.com/a-cyberwar_god.html
Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, fourth episode, BBC Radio 4, 29th March 1978, and in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Pan, London 1979, p. 128
Erik Davis, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information, Serpent's Tail, London 1999
John Cage, Diary: How to improve the World (You will only make Matters worse), read by the author, Wergo, Mainz, Germany, 1992 (WER 6232-2)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, Collins, London, 1964, p.229
Teilhard de Chardin, ibid, p.307
Margaret Wertheim, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet, Virago, London 1999
quoted in Wertheim, op. cit., p.148
Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1995
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quoted in Denis Postle, Catastrophe Theory, Fontana, Great Britain 1980, p.11
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Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 1962
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W. Grey Walter, The Living Brain, Pelican, Harmondsworth, 1961, p.236
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Puffin, London, 1997
Marina Warner, No Go The Bogeyman, Chatto & Windus, London 1998, p.7
Douglas and Moustakas, 1985, quoted by Kent D. Palmer, On the Social Construction of Emergent Worlds, The Foundations of Reflexive Autopoietic Systems Theory, Part 1: The Foundations, 1993: see http://exo.com/~palmer/homepage/consulting.htm
Stafford Beer, Brain of the Firm, second edition, Wiley, England 1994, p. 53
Palmer, op. cit.
Beer, quoted in C.H. Waddington, Tools for Thought, Paladin, St Albans, 1977, p. 208
Sir Arthur Eddington , quoted by Koestler, op. cit., p. 542
Plant, op. cit., p. 98
Spencer-Brown, op. cit., p.195
Wiener, op. cit. p.26
Wiener, op. cit. p.107
Confucius, Commentary on the I Ching, in Richard Wilhelm (translator), I Ching, Routledge Kegan Paul, London 1971, p. 59
Palmer, op. cit. p. 19
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