Workshops and Conferences
"Short report from the workshop: between primary and secondary information: Gilbert Simondon and the question of complexity and control."
CCP held a one-day workshop on May 15, 2019 on the relation between the concepts of information in the works of Gilbert Simondon and different stages of cybernetic theory up to some strands of complexity theory.
The guiding intuition for the day was to understand Simondonian concepts as tools that could bridge gaps between paradigms of control and paradigms of complexity.
The two invited guests are experts in the ontogenetic philosophy of Gilbert Simondon: Andrea Bardin from Oxford Brookes University recently published a very precise monograph using the complete works of Simondon plus unpublished archive material to demonstrate a Simondonian political philosophy of individuation. By way of rich historiographic descriptions, he situated Simondon and portrayed his intellectual milieu. Pablo Rodriguez from Universidad de Buenos Aires is a Spanish translator of Simondon and has written on aspects of communication and organization in Simondon.
The well visited workshop was divided into two parts: we started in the morning with a close reading and lively discussions of selected passages from L'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information and from Communication et information.
In the second part, the invited guests gave short presentations on the topics of historical epistemology in Hobbes and Simondon, on concepts of information in cybernetics, on the development of key concepts in cybernetics from Norbert Wiener to Heinz von Förster.
The workshop concluded with a session on biopolitical implications in different 20th century theories and the productive role of control concepts therein.