Orgs: A Many-Headed Reading

Orgs: A Many-Headed Reading

Date: 
02.02.2017 21:30
Edition: 
2017
Format: 
Performance
Location: 
HKW - Lecture Hall

>Observe: Physarum networks are slow, much slower than plant or animal networks and very much slower than silicon computing
>Comment: But their circuits are self-growing and self-repairing, producing systems tolerant to interruptions or failure
>Comment: Repeated exchange between environment and organism rather than a centralized program or algorithm
>Observe: Stable relationship is maintained through active discourse
>Conclude: Here, the law of competition bows before collaboration

Jenna Sutela presents a performative, sonic transcription of the material from her forthcoming publication Orgs: From Slime Mold to Silicon Valley. The publication focuses on decentralized organisms and organizations. It expands upon work that Sutela has been producing over the past couple of years, layering contemporary organizational charts, or organizational mazes, and the navigational intelligence of Physarum polycephalum, the single-celled yet “many-headed” slime mold dating to the Proterozoic eon. The reading, like the publication, will be experimental, partly simultaneous; bringing together multiple voices around questions related to a technological future which may be headed toward a neo-biological civilization.

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