FEEDING BACK

THE AUTOMATA TAPES

Catalog essay from the POSTcode show, Performance Space, Sydney, 1994

Now part of The Brain Project by Stephen Jones.

One means of projecting onto the concept or culture space is to build a model, i.e. a description of the thing. We then work(out) our own thinking about the thing on the basis of information contained in the model, by, in some sense, testing it with our acts upon it, working through the math or figuring out how to build it; this then modifies the model and we build up a solution for our question that satisfies most of the necessary criteria of the system that we are building up. I am deliberately undefined about the types of systems or the contents, but I regard things like consciousness as an act of modeling, and play as an act of the testing of the system in the full wide sense of us as social beings.

The output we generate is reflected back to us, onto us, by the culture/environment within which we generated in the first place. This is the feedback. The consequences of our acts can be seen and noted, they modify the way we act in the next cycle, instant karma, self regulation. As we live in the world we build up a sequence of loops of output being used to regulate our acts in the process of generating more output. We control the set of muscles in the motion of the arm by the position of the hand at the end of the previous microstep of movement, successive approximation, (not that it's stepped movement; with the multitude of loops of differing propogation delay all running together). The data of our eyes and our muscles are returned back in to the movement control to regulate the motion and reach the goal of the movement. Living systems are self-regulating systems that rely on feedback for the parameters of the self-regulating.

When we need to understand something of the world we can operate directly upon it and see what we get back in response...how the world feeds back to us, or, if it's too big or not readily accessible, we can build a model, verbal or actual, and operate on the model and see what the model does in response, to see whether our idea of the aspect of the world being modelled is in any way accurate. But of course in the global situation the accuracy of the model depends upon the accuracy of our view of the world. Internally consistent systems are constructed which we then project upon the world and given enough political power, as an elder of the group, we impose upon others' perception of the(ir) world and their means of perception of the world (language) and the world reflects our way of thinking. An internally consistent model is built up which we then define as being externally consistent and this becomes the culture.

This world view feeds the way we know and the bootstrap takes place. The system of oneself in the world goes live. The world feeds us and we feed the world, our actions and thoughts feed forward into the world and the world feeds back and we regulate ourselves according to the feedback. If there is only me and the world I am in a closed loop. But you are there and impact upon me. My needs for food and response demand an opening of the loop. We exist in open loop relationship with the world only in the sense that others impact upon us from within their closed/open loops.

It is the feedback that returns from the output of my system that brings me into awareness of the otherness, of the impact of others, and brings me to consciousness. We model to play with the epistemological stuff that we are and by the behaviour of that model we modify the known and explore the unknown.

Of course the history of the infinite pathways of this process are what (in)form the culture and the culture then (in)forms us. Our brains are wired up by the culture and the language. We know what we are given and then we project out of selves to question, rework, add to and generally muck about with our friends. Making models of the world/culture is how we know, we then look for differences/dissonances in the feedback from the model and this is the source of (new) information. Loop upon loop of information and energy are the content of our being in the world in relation with the world as it is known to us. It is the openness of the loops which allow us to grow and develop. It is the generativity of our consciousness which allows us to project and feed forward into the world and the feedback which helps us stay there and continue and develop. Loop upon Loop of interaction and experiencing, bootstrapping ourselves into the future in realtime.