Our book Frictions: Inquiries into Cybernetic Thinking and Its Attempts towards Mate[real]ization has recently been published by meson press. The open access PDF version is free, and I invite you all to download it. Similarly, print copies can be purchased online from the vendors listed on meson’s website. Please consider recommending our book to your […]
A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Google saying that my Location History data would be erased soon since I haven’t used their tracking service for a while. In fact, I now think that the only reason why I stopped using that feature – which probably I never turned on myself but […]
Being the continuation of a previous post, this entry aims to explain with a little more detail my work around the notion of techno-diagrammatics and Beer’s Cybernetic Model of Contemporary Capitalism. As I anticipated, I discussed elements of this work in two gatherings. In April, I participated in project Antikythera’s workshop Synthetic Catallaxy in Mexico […]
[This post is, for now, only available in Spanish] El año 2020 escribí un ensayo que me hizo pasar un mal rato. Lo escribí para un Call for Papers con el que un journal chileno invitaba a abordar la relación entre historia del diseño y tecnología. Titulado “Qué historia, qué tecnología, qué diseño”, el texto […]
For some time now, I have been working around what I call techno-diagrammatics. This notion is the product of my study of an old, unpublished manuscript Stafford Beer developed during his last visit to Chile in June-July 1973; a document in which he attempted to model the dynamics of contemporary capitalism, and that I had […]
This is a short of excerpt of a theory-fiction essay written in early 2021 by the Bucles collective – Joaquín Zerené, Dusan Cotoras and myself. It was originally thought as a warm-up for our participation at the transmediale workshop on Research Refusal, and thus for the series of essays and articles we developed there. However, […]
I have just finished reading Benjamin Bratton’s last book, The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-pandemic World, and, given the urgency and relevance of this project, I think that an open, broad, and collaborative reflection is needed – one that, I hope, will unfold from multiple sources and actors. Thus, aiming to contribute, […]
[This is a bilingual note. See English version below.] Hace un par de semanas, en el contexto de la conferencia Constituir lo común organizada por el núcleo de investigación chileno en arte, performatividad y activismo, NMAPA, tuve la suerte de dirigir un taller sobre interfaces – como me pidieron –, que sin embargo terminé llamando […]
After a long process of informal interaction and collaboration, Dusan Cotoras, Joaquin Zerené, and I have finally decided to consolidate our efforts in a joint platform of research. We have called this project Bucles, which is the Spanish word for loops. Through this project we are hoping to achieve two goals: on the one hand, […]
Going from November 2019 to February 2020, and taking place both in Humboldt University of Berlin and the Einstein Center Digital Future, the Applied Cybernetics lectures series was a project I coordinated and curated, aiming to develop an open discussion on the frictions that may have emerged when cybernetic thinking and its conceptual frameworks were […]
[This note is a bilingual one —English and Spanish—, even though the referred content is only available in Spanish] [EN] A few months ago, the Anilla unit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile, invited me to take part of their podcast, Irrupciones en el MAC [Irruptions at the MAC]. Eventually, that became […]
[This is, for now, a Spanish only note. English translation will come soon.] En el taller sobre Cibernética, Información y Algoritmos celebrado justamente ayer lunes 28 de septiembre en ese lugar múltiple que se va construyendo desde y con plataformas de teleconectividad como Zoom, y que convocó principalmente a investigadores y académicos de Argentina, Chile […]
[This is a bilingual note. Español más abajo.] [EN] Last June 8th, I had the joy and privilege of opening the Forum on Current States of the Technological Automation organized by the Chilean publishing house, Qual Quelle. More concretely, it was an initiative put together by the philosopher Zeto Bórquez, who was not only able […]
During this summer semester 2020 (April to July/August-September), I will be teaching a seminar class for Master students at the Institute of Musicology and Media Sciences of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The class will be connected to some of the developments coming from my doctoral research on project Cybersyn, and hence it will tackle the concept […]
Why is that us, humans, want to get close/er to the machines? Last Wednesday we had the first lecture of our series on Applied Cybernetics. There, Dr. Stefan Höltgen gave a talk on the Actualization of Cybernetic Learning, through which he presented the work he and his team did restoring the MORE computer; a device […]
[This is a bilingual note. Español más abajo.] [EN] The notion of the archive has been particularly important for our countries —I think of you, oh, South-America!—. Fields in the humanities such as art history and visual studies, and somehow cultural studies too, have pointed out the central role of this notion when it comes to […]
[This is a bilingual note. Español más abajo.] [EN] Last month, the French thinker Paul Virilio died. We knew about it on September 18th, and today, thanks to the obituaries, we know that the so-called Blitzkrieg Baby past away on the 10th day of that month (Wark, 2018; Bishop & Parikka, 2018). All the more, those homage-texts […]
[This note is, for now, only available in Spanish. Entschuldigen Sie.] La Máquina Universal de Turing —en mayúsculas e itálicas— debe primeramente comprenderse como una máquina teórica; y al mismo tiempo, como una máquina de papel, en ambos sentidos de la palabra. Este dispositivo, el cual es recurrentemente nombrado en campos tales como los estudios y […]
[This note is, for now, only available in Spanish. Entschuldigen Sie.] Pensar las máquinas, convocarlas, (de)construirlas, re-situarlas —todas tareas de investigadores de medios, de alguna filosofía, de artistas mediales y, también, de ciertos ingenieros y diseñadores— requiere de una aproximación radical en dos sentidos del término: por una parte, radical en tanto que descentramiento que permite […]
[This note is, for now, only available in Spanish. Entschuldigen Sie.] La teoría de medios en su vertiente alemana esconde, por así decirlo, un vínculo exquisito con el psicoanálisis y, más aún, con el post-estructuralismo. Digo esconde, porque aunque las producciones contemporáneas de tales teorías no hagan explícito dicho vínculo, éste aparece inevitablemente al desenredar […]