Different stories in design: provocations from the work of Gregory Bateson
The work of cybernetician Gregory Bateson provides a valuable entry point to explore the limitations and possibilities of mobilising design in the context of systemic complexity. Common throughout Bateson’s diverse work was the exploration of living systems of all kinds—octopuses, cities, families, institutions, minds, or ecosystems—in terms of communication and learning rather than matter and energy. For Bateson, these varied contexts all participate in the same sets of ecological relationships.
Addressing these contexts separately from each other, including in well-meaning attempts to mitigate problems, distorts the overall pattern of relationships, reinforcing the underlying causes of ecological crisis. This reductive way of engaging is embedded in the stories built around modernity, human agency, technology, innovation, and design. In their later work, Bateson explored themes such as dialogue, metaphor, and a secular rethinking of the ‘sacred’ as different logics of operations that could lead to different stories and other forms of engagement.
How may we use Bateson’s provocations to rethink the problematic stories around design and modernity as mobilised in contemporary design practices?
Organised by Dulmini Perera
In a series of two dialogues, a workshop and paper presentations spread across RSD11 Symposium, we bring together several scholars, practitioners, and artists to explore the ways in which Bateson’s provocations can be used to rethink problematic stories around design and modernity as mobilised in contemporary design practices.
Dialogue 01.
Gregory Bateson and the Political
Fred Turner and Phillip Guddemi join Jon Goodbun to discuss the question of Gregory Bateson’s relationship to the political by looking closely at periods of Bateson’s life where he was not only engaging with political problems but attempting to intervene in the very possibility-space of the political. Moderated by Dulmini Perera.
Dialogue 02.
Cultural Premises, Conscious Purposes, and Design: Conversing with the legacies of Gregory Bateson and Vern Carroll
We propose to discuss, through sharing cases from both ethnography and design practice, the relationship between cultural analysis and dialogic explorations of ‘sense-making’ (B. Dervin, 1998; B. L. Dervin, 2010) and, furthermore, whether there is a space for identification of cultural premises and cultural analysis in “innovation research methods” (Peter Jones) that can serve the larger purpose of designing beneficial social interventions. Bateson himself was deeply sceptical about the utility of conscious purpose for human adaptation. Contemporary systemic design practice arguably challenges narrow notions of conscious purpose.
Workshop
Cultural Premises, Conscious Purposes, and Design
Building on Dialogue 2, Eve C. Pinsker, Michael D. Lieber, Fred Steier, Tim Gasperak, and Daniel Wolk will work with participants at this workshop to explore the relationships between premises (cultural/ epistemological) and design.
How are cultural premises identified – how have the researchers/designers facilitating this session identified them? How do these understandings relate to practices of dialogue and sense-making? Does the identification of cultural premises have a place within design practice, specifically the practice of designing social interventions? Is identifying cultural premises an intervention – does making these largely implicit assumptions or premises explicit have consequences?
Indicative references
Bateson, G., & Bateson, M. C. (2005). Angels fear: Towards an epistemology of the sacred. Cresskill, N.J: Hampton.
Bateson, N. (2021) Aphanipoiesis. 65th Annual Proceedings for the International Society of the Systems Sciences. https://journals.isss.org/index.php/jisss/article/view/3887
Boehnert, J. (2018). Design, ecology, politics: Towards the ecocene. Bloomsbury.
Steier, F. (Ed.) (2005). Gregory Bateson: Essays for an ecology of ideas [Special double issue]. Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 12(1-2).
(more) Different stories in design
Seeing RSD11’s Seven Foci Relationally
RSD11 Keynote. Dr Tony Fry is a Tasmanian-based award-winning designer, cultural theorist, educator and writer. For this talk, his context: seeing the event’s seven foci relationally.
#NewMacy: Becoming
The #NewMacy Studio construct is to enable deep participation through activities such as prototyping, play, exploration, enactment, and improvisation.
#NewMacy ACT I: Redefining Stability
Re-defining Stability. A contextual framing for #NewMacy and the #NewMacy “Acts” at RSD11.
#NewMacy ACT III: Reintroducing Stability
Reintroducing Stability – #NewMacy conversations to construct an ever-inclusive and participant-directed platform for dynamic stability and growth.
Cultural Premises, Conscious Purposes, and Design: Conversing with the legacies of Gregory Bateson and Vern Carroll
Panellists: Tim Gasperak, Michael D. Lieber, Eve C. Pinsker, Fred Steier, and Daniel Wolk. Facilited by Dulmini Perera and Simon Sadler. Presentation of words, story, and music by Stephen Nachmanovitch. Organised by Dulmini Perera and Eve C. Pinsker.
Gregory Bateson and the Political
Moderator: Jon Goodbun. Panellists: Phillip Guddemi, Simon Sadler, and Fred Turner. Organised by Dulmini Perera.
#NewMacy ACT II: Studios
#NewMacy Studios: Participants can expect to converse, prototype, experiment, play, and improve.
A Cybernetic Picnic
Online. Ioannis (John) Bardakos, Claudia Jacques, and Claudia Westermann
Feral Systemic Design: (re)wilding methods and methodology for systemic architectural design -66
Eric Guibert
How Many Ecologies? From Bateson to Guattari and back again -80
Jon Goodbun
Social Network Analysis for Cybernetic Interaction Design in Technology-Supported College Curricula -17
Shantanu Tilak, Marvin Evans, Ziye Wen, and Michael Glassman
Syntegrity for Designing Designing -152
Jose dos Santos Cabral Filho and Ana Paula Baltazar
Systems Thinking, Evaluation, Learning, and Sustainability in Community Transformation -159
Eve Pinsker
The Model of Logical Paradox: Addressing design and double-bind communication in public services -143
Linda Blaasvær, Tore Gulden, and Frederick Steier
Special thanks
Thanks to those who have proposed and developed the focuses: Gareth Owen Lloyd, Christopher Daniel, Dulmini Perera, Sally Sutherland, Ben Sweeting, James Tooze, Jeffrey P. Turko, and Josina Vink.