Louis Kauffman and Thomas Fischer
Read the workshop paper, embedded below, for background information, a discussion of tangle circuits, and references. Louis Kauffman’s ARC25 article, Crossing Algebra and Systemic Design, is recommended as a pre-read for this workshop.
This 90-minute workshop invites participants to explore two questions that are fundamental and omnipresent in systemic design research and practice:
- What can be known?
- What can be predicted reliably?
- What do limits on knowing and prediction imply for design?
These questions are not new. Yet, given today’s growing mistrust of expertise on the one hand and reliance on technological innovation in service of social, economic, and environmental control on the other, they are relevant and controversial as ever. This workshop will introduce, and make available for interaction, a tang[ib]le interaction kit to allow participants to explore these questions by configuring, and trying to predict, “tangle circuits.”
Outline
The scope of this 90-minute workshop will be focused on design epistemology, design research, and design ethics. Delivery and facilitation methods will alternate between frontal slide deck presentations and hands-on group experimentation. An initial slide deck presentation will cover the historical and conceptual context of tangle circuits and their significance. In essence, it will cover and expand upon the ground covered in Section 1 above, well-illustrated and in greater detail. This will be followed by a hands-on paper craft session in which teams of two participants will familiarise themselves (or refresh their understanding of) Möbius strips. Using paper strips and paper clips, participants will be introduced to viewing untwisted paper bands as metaphors for strictly maintained distinctions and twisted Moebius strips as metaphors for and “paradoxical” suspensions of distinctions. Then follows a second hands-on session in which participants will engage with the Tan[ib]le Interaction Kit.
Participants will be invited to configure, manipulate, and play with tangle circuits, experiencing how simple topological transformations (like the Möbius twist) can create systems that transcend traditional Boolean logic. A final slide deck presentation will then introduce formal calculus, named crossing algebra, and its use in describing and analysing tangle circuits. Participants will receive a copy of a crossing algebra pictorial handout.
Along the way, participant questions and group discussions will be welcome and addressed as time permits. Various connections will be drawn between the characteristics and behaviour of tangle circuits on the one hand and design practice, design research, design epistemology, and design ethics on the other hand. Through playful experiential learning and speculative epistemic experimentation, four interconnected themes will be investigated:
Design practice: What is the significance of paradox and distinction in design? What is the value of transcending traditional Boolean logic in design? For example:
How do designers come to terms with the unknown? How do designers operate in the absence of distinctions, sufficient knowledge or explanatory/predictive models? How do designers operate in the presence of paradox and conflicting requirements, if not based on logical reasoning alone?
Design research: What are the roles of oscillation and recursion in design? For example:
How do design developments and design tutorials condition each other in studio education? How do prototypes inform their own revisions?
Design epistemology: What are the limits of knowing and predicting in an age of technology? How do we explain and predict phenomena that resist analysis? For example:
How much can be ascertained through trial-and-error, especially when the challenge at hand is creative and wicked (Rittel and Webber, 1973), i.e., a “one-shot operation” in which the designer or planner has “no right to be wrong”?
Design ethics and responsibility: How much can we expect to control reliably? How little technology does it take to create systems beyond human comprehension? For example:
What ethical obligations do designers have when creating systems that may evolve beyond existing explanatory principles and anticipated cause-and-effect relationships? What does this reveal about our techno-positivist hubris?
Targeted participants
- Design-minded systems researchers
- Systems-minded design researchers
- Anyone interested in the philosophical foundations of creativity and the ethical implications of technological complexity
No prior electronics experience is required—only curiosity about the intersections of paradox, creativity, and design research/epistemology/ethics.
Intended key benefits, insights, and takeaways
- A historical overview of difficult-to-predict cybernetic devices
- Hands-on experience of paradoxical systems through tangible interaction
- Novel perspectives on creativity as boundary-making and paradox-embracing
- Insights into the epistemological and ethical dimensions of design
- Practical appreciation of how topological thinking can transcend logical limitations
Materials provided
- Tang[ib]le Interaction Kit (modules, wires, etc.)
- Paper strips and paper clips for Möbius demonstrations
- Presentation slide decks
- Crossing algebra pictorial handouts
ARC25 Pre-read
Crossing Algebra and Systemic Design
Excerpt: The significance of the crossing algebra is that it is an extension of indication into the structure of the connectivity of form. In this way, the idea of distinction relates to the intricacies of networks and topology. The cybernetic implications of the Mobius algebra and its network interpretations are just beginning.
