Leonardo/OLATS, Co Sponsor of YASMIN,

is pleased to announce

AROUND SIMULATION

A YASMIN discussion January/February 2010

Discussion at: http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions

or follow on the blog: http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/

Moderators: Pier-Luigi Capucci and Jennifer Kanary Nikolov(a)
Invited Discussants: Louis Bec, Karin Bervoets, Wafa Bourkhis, Roberta Buiani, Derrick de Kerckhove, Michele Emmer, Laura Gemini, Derek Hales, Margarete Jahrmann, Ignazio Licata, Giuseppe O. Longo, Cristina Trivellin, Natasha Vita-More.

We extensively use and live into simulation. In our everyday life we imagine situations, events, projects and decline them to the future: we simulate possible worlds and test them in a sort of permanent “what if” which is continuously reworked and modified. This process has been methodologically formalized in the sciences, where we build models, simulations, which try to describe facts, events and phenomena. Models and simulations have a very important cognitive role in knowing and understanding the world we live in.

Simulations are in the way we represent the world, in tools like photography, cinema, and video. It is in the visualization systems we use to model any types of processes (natural, social...). It is in the images we use to communicate, in the computer built stories like the recent movie “Avatar” by Cameron. Simulations doesn’t only refer to images but to sounds too, since the sound synthesis, the acoustic effects, the multitrack recording studio’s possibilities literally build the sound of an artist, creating a sound space which is totally independent from the real, synchronous and direct dimension of the live concert. Moreover simulations can refer to other senses too, involving the taste, the smell and the touch as well, playing a pivotal role in communication and creation.

But there are also other kinds of simulations that could be called “behaviour simulations”. Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, Robotics simulate the behaviour of the living organisms. Sometimes certain complex behaviours of the living organisms spontaneously may emerge in robotics, A-Life, synthetic biology, showing a sort of “third life” in evolution.

So, what is simulation? How does it work? Does it only stick to human representations or visualizations or does it refer to a more general realm? What are the layers (technological, social, imaginative, conventional) that construct simulation? Which conflicts and power relations (in material or technological and sociocultural terms) are involved in their construction? And how do we make sense of them? Can these mechanisms be modified, enhanced, re-elaborated through artistic practice?

Maybe you can find some insights in this paper (“Simulation as a Global Resource”) I presented to Consciousness Reframed X in Munich the last November, which you can find here (http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/capucci_simulation_global_resource.html).
 

The simulation topic on Yasmin will be moderated by Jennifer Kanary Nikolova and Pier Luigi Capucci.

Pier Luigi Capucci ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Since the early ‘80 Pier Luigi Capucci has been concerned with the communication’s studies, the new media and the art forms, and the relations among arts, sciences and technologies. Currently he is professor at the University of Urbino, at the SUPSI - University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland, at the NABA in Milan, and supervisor in the M-Node PhD Research Program of the Planetary Collegium. In 1994 he founded and directed the first italian online magazine. He is the director of Noema, a web magazine devoted to culture-sciences-technologies interrelations.

Jennifer Kanary Nikolov(a) ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Jennifer's current PhD at Plymouth University, Planetary Collegium, aims to improve psychosis simulations developed in a scientific context by suggesting a new immersive model that makes use of installation art techniques: The Labyrinth Psychotica. Jennifer is currently the main tutor of the Honours Program Art and Research, an experimental collaboration between the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and The University of Amsterdam.