Conversation, Fun, and Boredom: Cybernetic Approaches to Intelligent Environments in the Work of Gordon Pask

Description

Public Understanding of Artificial Intelligence Seminar Series, Centre for Digital Media Cultures.

In this talk I explore the work of British cybernetician Gordon Pask through his participation in and influence on architectural projects during the 1960s and 1970s. Pask’s approach offers a paradigm for an intelligent environment that not only adapts to its use but also actively puts this use in question, requiring new actions from its users. This conversational back and forth is an example of the sort of circular interactivity with which the field of cybernetics is concerned more generally, and recentres the question of intelligence on the mutual understanding of participants. Connecting Pask’s work in architecture to the educational context of much of his other work, I ask what is being taught to and learnt by human participants in their experiences of machine learning, and how technologically interactive environments might be conceived so to elicit new questions and understanding.

Period	21 Apr 2021
Event title	Public Understanding of AI Seminar Series
Event type	Seminar
Degree of Recognition	Local