International Symposium ‘Gift of Nam June Paik 9’ Coevolution: Cybernetics to Posthuman

Hosted and organized by Nam June Paik Art Center, Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation

Nam June Paik defined cybernetics as various relationships between humans and machines, art and machines, art and technologies, humans and art and even among diverse arts (artists). He understood that it would generate varying combinations out of these relationships. Nam June Paik put his ideas about cybernetics into artistic practices: he performed Robot Opera with robots he himself had made and manipulated, expressing simply and playfully the complicated relationship between humans and machines.

Cybernetics as a discipline was first introduced by Norbert Wiener, as he attempted to explain the regulative relationship between humans and machines. When a number of scholars gathered and discussed on the theme at Macy Conference, however, cybernetics dynamically developed into a emerging epistemological concept. Nam June Paik’s theoretical ideas and artistic practices correspond to (or lead ahead) the few steps of the radical development of cybernetics achieved throughout history: the first wave cybernetics, which was at the level of mechanic feedback, and the second wave cybernetics, which characterizes as reflexity and self-generation and the third wave cybernetics, at the center of which is emergence, are all relevant. These steps express a posthuman evolutional point of view on how the boundary between humans and machines is deconstructed.

Our symposium looks into a contemporary approach to the phased developmental history of “cybernetics” and at the same time analyzes Nam June Paik’s works on machines and art. We expect it will develop into a dynamic and contemporary discursive space where presenters from diverse background freely discuss in small spaces. We hope that each participant exists as a subjective observer and there will be sensitive and exciting reactions within that space.

Program

July 8
1–2:30pm
“Sudden Unintended Acceleration as a Psychosis of Machine”
Youngjun Lee (Machine Critic, Professor of Kaywon University of Art & Design)

2:30–4pm  
“Cybernetics and Later, The History of the Integration and Simulation for Processing Human Elements in Circuits”
Kyuheun Ko (Adjunct Professor of Sung Kyun Kwan University)

4–5pm
Discussion


July 15
1–2:30pm
“Cybernetics and Cyborg: Some Philosophical Questions”
Jinkyoung Lee (Professor of Seoul National University of Science and Technology)

2:30–4pm
“Cognitive Ecological Outline of the Strategy for Social Solidarity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”
Kwanghyun Sim (Professor of School of Visual Arts, Korea National University of Art)

4–5pm
Discussion


July 22
1–2:30pm
“Cybernetic Lyricism: Gregory Bateson, Nam June Paik, and the Mind as Conjunctive”
Seongeun Kim (DPhil, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art)

2:30–4pm
Artist Talk: Taeyeun Kim, Špela Petrič

4–5pm
Discussion


July 29
1–2:30pm
“Transductive Ensemble of Nature, Human, and Technical Objects: The Techno–Aesthetics of Nam June Paik and Posthuman” Jaehee Kim (Professor of the Ewha Institute for the Humanities (EIH), Ewha Womans University)

2:30–4pm
“Inside Out, Outside In: Technical Media as Exteriorizations of Cognition and the Art Installations of Nam June Paik” 
N. Katherine Hayles (Professor of Literature at Duke University)

4–5pm
Discussion