The A-Club 2016 publication

THE A-CLUB MASTERCLASSES SERIES 22 – 29. 05. 2016 Location: National University of Athens, Dep. Of Communication and Media Studies.

UnMonastery.org | Athens, A distributed clinic for social cohesion

MASTERCLASS 2016: ANDREA TRALDI BECOMEBECOME: CYBERNETIC –PERIPATETIC

In May 2016 a group of Planetary Collegium researchers gathered together, in Athens, to give a Masterclass under the framework of Becomebecome.org, a project that has been initiated by Andrea Traldi (Planetary Collegium).

Having as main objective to support Planetary Collegium members, the A-Club worked closely with this group for the implementation of the Masterclass.

The Masterclass focused on the issues of consciousness and human noesis, THE A-CLUB 8 EVRIDIKIS STR- KIFISIA -ATHENS– GREECE Tel: +30 21 1184 2389 https://theaclubside.wordpress.com/ Email: theaclubside@gmail.com

aiming to show their enhanced capacity in network communication when they engaged with the aspects of transdisciplinarity and syncretism.

The mentoring group of Becomebecome 2016 consisted of the following A-Club members: Andrea Traldi (PhD Planetary Collegium), Lila Moore (Advanced Research Associate, Planetary Collegium) Pam Payne (PhD Planetary Collegium) and Agnieszka Pokrywka (External Partner @ Pixelache) Andrea Traldi: The Temporal Dimension of Consciousness Collective and collaborative consciousness expand on the notion that the collective unconscious not only extends beyond the threshold of consciousness into perception and rational thought, but it also extends beyond the threshold of each individual point of access and grants insight to a quality of information that exists only because of the connection with others.

Pam Payne: A Consciousness Expedition – Noetic Arts at the World’s Axis.

The Class explored practices said to facilitate a transformative shift in consciousness; in particular, creative practices that lead to a noetic state resulting in extraordinary abilities or inspiration, also referred to as “peak performance”, “zone” and “flow’’.

Lila Moore: The Nous of Communitas This remote session was considered as a highly creative altered state of consciousness that generates the emergence of novel forms and ideas. It represents a radical departure from the conventions of fixed identity and social hierarchy and an encounter with a unifying nous of cosmic dimension.

Agnieszka Pokrywka: Alternative futures: science fiction as a design tool Si-fi Prototyping was released in 2010 by Intel’s Futurist Brian Johnson as a methodology to support product innovation by employing stories to serve as prototypes in order to explore a wide variety of futures.

Since then it has a growing potential to play a strategic role in promoting creative thinking and innovation by enabling people from different areas to co-create their visions of the future, inspire and affect innovations THE A-CLUB 8 EVRIDIKIS STR- KIFISIA -ATHENS– GREECE Tel: +30 21 1184 2389 https://theaclubside.wordpress.com/ Email: theaclubside@gmail.com

or predict technological, economic, and social changes.

In the framework of the A-Club, Katerina Karoussos contributed to the Masterclass by suggesting an alternative path for meandering around the city of Athens. Through the Cultural visit, she analysed the fusional schema of this path, revealing the conditions for the conception of Cybernetic-Peripatetic Masterclass theme.

VENUES I.

Faculty of Communication and Media Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

The main venue of the Masterclass was the lab of Communication and Media Studies of Athens University, kindly provided by Dimitris Charitos, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, The department is located in one of the most vivid parts

The entrance of Athens University at Sofocleous str, that hosts the departments of Communication & Media Studies and Economics

of Athens City, on The location of the Athens Stock Exchange and the National Bank Sofocleous str, where the Athens Stock Exchange is situated. The history of the Athens Stock Exchange was marked by the crash of '99, in which a large part of Greek citizens was involved. It has been estimated that about one hundred billion euros [pending referral] changed hands, much of which the brokers lost.

On the other hand, the department of Communication and Media is considerably involved in the fluidity and the transformation of the city.

The Hybrid City series (Symposiums, Workshops, Exhibitions) aims to highlight the potential transformative shift of the urban condition.

As written on Hybrid City webpage http://www.media.uoa.gr/hybridcity/ : “Urban life is in a state of flux. The widespread adoption of technologies that facilitate social activity among prospective users influences community dynamics and introduces the emergence of novel forms of social interaction.

THE A-CLUB 8 EVRIDIKIS STR- KIFISIA -ATHENS– GREECE Tel: +30 21 1184 2389 https://theaclubside.wordpress.com/ Email: theaclubside@gmail.com

The city is augmented through multidimensional processes. Digital information is embedded in persistent architectural forms (the built environment), while at the same time, representations of the urban setting are displayed on the screens of mobile communication devices”.

II.

unMonastery – A distributed clinic for social cohesion

Most of the hands-on part of the Masterclass was held at unMonastery Athens residence.

UnMonastery (http://athens.unmonastery.org/ ) is a non-profit project that aims to challenge existing dependency chains and economic fictions. It is a place-based social innovation, aiming to address the interlinked needs of empty space, unemployment and depleting s by embedding committed, skilled individuals within communities that could benefit from their presence.

The

The six-storey building in Exarchia square, was built in 1932-1933 under project of architect Kyriakos Panagiotakou (1902-1982), one of the pioneers of the modern movement in Greece. This building, for which Le Corbusier noted "c 'est tres beau" ( "very beautiful"), is one of the oldest in Athens, also known as "blue" (due to its original color).

The National Technical University (NTUA) is the oldest and most prestigious educational institution of Greece in the field of technology, and has contributed unceasingly to the country 's scientific, technical and economic development since its foundation in 1836. In March 2015 a group of artists by the name «Icos & Case» painted the entire area creating a gigantic graffiti. Most probably coming from the Berlin school of graffiti, they painted all: windows, posters, sidewalks, bus shelters, columns and any other natural barrier existed.

unMonastery is located in a place in Athens that can be characterized as the hallmark of political opposition. The first occupation held in February 1973 at the Athens University (Law School) and a few months later it was the place that the events of 17 November occurred (Junta’s abolition). During the post-Junta, Exarchia highlighted as the eminently "revolutionary" district gathering intellectuals, anarchists, students, leftists and many others. The intense politicization has caused several extensive police operations in the region. The "Operation Virtue", made in 1984 on the pretext of removing the punks from the square. The murder of 15 year old boy - November 1985 - by the police caused extensive episodes, resulting in the occupation of the Lab of Chemistry at the National Technical University that ended with the removal of University’s asylum, for the first time from the day of its establishment. In December 2008, with the murder of another 15 year old man, by police bullets, the so-called December 2008 riots, started in Exarchia and spread across the country.

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III.

The Aθenian Hills

Into this social complex, the two Master peripatoi (walks) in the landscape of ancient Athens (Acropolis) acted as catalysts, offering a totally different meaning to the cohesion of the city tissue. Rather than a passive monumental space, Acropolis landscape has been interpreted as an active framework, and along with the two other venues, yielded a network environment beyond temporality and locality, reflecting a planetarian thinking.

The Hill of Sophists-In ancient times this rock was the Supreme Court House whose responsibilities after 462 BC were hearing cases premeditated murder, arson and sacrilege, or performing important religious shrines.

Becomebecome Participants: Angelikh Mpia, University of Patrai, School of Architecture; Lei Han, Memphis College of Art; Neha Chaturvedi, Project Researcher at IDC IIT Bombay; Farhana Islam,BRAC University; Tia Vellani, scientist, artist.

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THE A-CLUB CULTURAL VISIT 2016 24.05.2016 Location: The fusional landscape of the Acropolis Hill Acropolis- Athens – Greece Moderator: Katerina Karoussos

THE MASTER PERIPATOS “Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences.’’― R. Ascott ‘’Rather than taking Acropolis Hill as an art object of highest importance, let’s consider it as an ultimate rock and unfold its potentialities, by meandering around its schema.’’ – K. Karoussos During the mid-20th century a group of Greek artists returned to Greece from France and Germany, creating the conditions for an exceptional integration of the ancient Greek and Modern Culture. In close contact with their colleagues such as Le Corbusier, Paul Klee, De Chirico etc., they achieved to dislocate the monumental art, science and architecture of ancient Greece in a new, robust framework in modern era.

Summer 1929. Angelos Sikelianos walks with Dimitris Pikionis somewhere in Kifissia. "I have decided it," he says. The Delphic Centre should be designed by a Greek architect." You shall be the one. It is a Centre which will promote worldwide the principles of the lost Dorian or Apollonian Science. Now the time is right to become such a cultural center here, in the center of the world. Tagor has done it at Visva Bharati in Bengal, Lubicz at Suhalia in Geneva, Steiner at Goetheanum in Dornach.

It's time to do something similar and Delphi.

Pikionis and Sikelianos spent hours discussing the theories of harmonic alignments of Hambidge and Mossel, the ancient temples and forgotten rhythmic geometry. Together they reviewed the work of Cantor, the Planck, of Einstein, of Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Broglie, found that all the physical and mathematical science, returning to the eternal spiritual Pythagorean content, Although the Delphic Center was not accomplished as envisioned by the artists, the current Delphi European Centre can be characterised as its echo, the Delphic idea was suspended in the air. Pikionis’ work on the landscape of the Acropolis Hill, is a notorious example of this idea.

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The landscaping includes a system of paths and architectural interventions, designed by Dimitris Pikionis, as a network of footpaths that provide access to several key positions of the Acropolis Hill.

The general idea of the plan was laid out in marking the paths and selecting a series of points related to orientation and views.

The fusion of Classical and Modern architecture as well as Japanese influences were merged, while the materials chosen were marble and clay shards left over from the demolished buildings of nineteenth-century Athens. Everything was adapted in situ during the construction which was carried out by small construction teams that Pikionis supervised and guided through suggestions, examples and dialogue. He quoted: “The common architectural supervision would be totally inadequate and the architect should build the work himself through the hands of his craftsmen”.

The spiral network of footpaths that create the landscape of Acropolis Hill.

Among this Greek intellectual group of the mid-20th century, there was another prominent figure, Iannis Xenakis, composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models in music such as applications of set theory, stochastic processes and game theory and was also an important influence on the development of electronic and computer music. He integrated music with architecture, designing music for pre-existing spaces, and designing spaces to be integrated with specific music compositions and performances. The experience Xenakis gained by working with Le Corbusier, as his colleague Pikionis, played a major role in his music. Important early compositions such as Metastaseis B (1953–54) were based directly on architectural concepts.

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The two sketches of Pikionis’ landscape and Xenakis’ Metastaseis were given to the participants of the Master Peripatos, aiming to alter the way of capturing an idea and implementing it to an art project, highlighting that rather than a closed configuration, an art work relies on the process; a process of a noetic network that can reveal all the potentialities of human creativity. To be engaged in such process, one should be a part of the network and its structure in order to contemplate it rather than simply observe it; to affect it and be affected by it. Therefore, one may speak beyond cybernetics, that is, of second-order cybernetics.

The Hill of Sophists

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The Hill of Sophists

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THE A-CLUB 8 EVRIDIKIS STR- KIFISIA -ATHENS– GREECE Tel: +30 21 1184 2389 https://theaclubside.wordpress.com/ Email: theaclubside@gmail.com

Agios Dimitrios Loumpardiaris

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THE A-CLUB 8 EVRIDIKIS STR- KIFISIA -ATHENS– GREECE Tel: +30 21 1184 2389 https://theaclubside.wordpress.com/ Email: theaclubside@gmail.com

Agios Dimitrios Loumpardiaris

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THE A-CLUB DINNER 2016 26.05.2016 Location: unMonastery A Distributed Clinic for Social Cohesion 17 Stournari str. Exarchia| Athens - Greece

THE A-CLUB DINNERS

In ancient Greece, the symposium was an important social occasion where the participants would not only drink and eat, but also talk, play musical instruments, sing, play games, and perform religious rituals.

The A-Club has established the A-Club Annual Dinners as an attempt to recall the idea of Ancient Greek Symposia and to relocate it in recent telematic communities and trans-cultural unities. Guests are intellectuals of our time, artists and theorists whose their research based on telematics, technoetics and cybernetics. They seek to reflect the social, technological and spiritual aspirations of an emerging planetary society, while sustaining a critical awareness of the retrograde forces and fields that inhibit social and cultural development.

(From left to right) Lei Han Memphis College of Art, Ivana Pinna Artist, Performer, Andrea Traldi, Becomebecome Project

#THE KYLIX A kylix (Ancient Greek: κύλιξ) is a type of wine-drinking cup used at Symposia. The almost flat interior circle on the interior base of the cup, called the tondo, was the primary surface for painted decoration in the Black-figure or Red-figure styles of the 6th and 5th century BC. Unique compositional skills were necessary for the artisans to attain due to the lack of verticals and horizontals on the surface.

For A-Club dinners the annual theme plays the role of the Kylix as a skeuomorphic entity which, by its informational attributes, provide us with cues and lighting the path to acknowledge our moist media reality.

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KYLIX: #Cybernetic #Peripatetic In his 1967 manifesto Behaviourables and Futuribles Roy Ascott wrote: “When art is a form of behaviour, software predominates over hardware in the creative sphere. Process replaces product in importance, just as system supersedes structure”. As Edward Shanken states, Ascott redefined art as a cybernetic system comprised of a network of feedback loops.

Peripatetikos (περιπατητικός) refers to the act of walking, and as an adjective, "peripatetic" is often used to mean wandering, meandering, or walking about. This kind of “peripatos’’ refers mostly to the method of dialectics which is a discourse between people holding different points of view, operating as the network of a cybernetic system.

The A-Club dinner 2016 was based on the Cybernetic|Peripatetic theme and along with the Master Peripatos, at the Hill of Sophists, the participants aimed to analyse the schema of dialectics in both social and individual level.

Agnieszka Pokrywka, Pixelache Festival, A-Club member

unMonastery view, Stournari str. Exarchia

Left to right: Pam Payne, Researcher @ CAiiA, Planetary Collegium, A-Club member; Andrea Traldi, Becomebecome org, Researcher @ CAiiA, Planetary Collegium; A-Club member; Tia Vellani, Transdisciplinary artist and scientist, Becomebecome 2016 participant.

Neha Chaturvedi, Project Researcher at IDC IIT Bombay, Becomebecome 2016 participant

Left to right: Angeliki Mpia, Architect, Patrai School of Architecture, Becomebecome 2016 participant; Lei Han, Memphis College of Art, Becomebecome 2016 participant.

unMonastery view, Stournari str. Exarchia

THE A-CLUB 8 EVRIDIKIS STR- KIFISIA -ATHENS– GREECE Tel: +30 21 1184 2389 https://theaclubside.wordpress.com/ Email: theaclubside@gmail.com