arjun's itp-blog

artist material drafts:

written on .

made after tanika’s talk on applying for open calls. working note for developing the following:

  • Demographic Information that identifies potential candidates for the institution and its funders
  • Resume (1-page summary of your professional background)
  • Biography (50-100 word description of you)
  • Statement (100-200 word description of your practice)
  • Proposal (200-1000 word explanation of what you plan to do as part of the opportunity)
  • Work Samples (3-10 examples of previous work; some calls require mock-ups of proposed work)
  • References (up to 3 professional contacts who can speak on your behalf)

biography:

arjun spends his life makes things. sometimes people ask; often he wonders.

he grew up all across india; was trained as a visual-designer; and worked in behavior-design before pursuing a graduate-degree at the interactive-telecommunications-program at new-york-university.

he is currently a first-year student, and is exploring the artistic potential of code & electricity.

statement:

arjun’s practice is rooted in the study of emergence produced by complex systems. using simple rulesets, often to reify lived-experience, arjun composes computational-machines that produce unpredictable multimedia output.

references:

  • mimi
  • tom
  • tanika
  • shobhan

research:

  • from notes from dynamics of complex systems, by yaneer bar-yam:
    • A complex system is a system formed out of many components whose behavior is emergent, that is, the behavior of the system cannot be simply inferred from the behavior of its components. The amount of information necessary to describe the behavior of such a system is a measure of its complexity.
    • Our purpose in studying complex systems is to extract general principles.
    • Can we describe a system composed of simple parts where the collective behavior is complex? This is an important possibility, called emergent complexity.
  • on emergence:
    • In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole.
    • In Heideggerian thought, the notion of emergence is derived from the Greek word poiein, meaning “to make”, and refers to a bringing-forth that encompasses not just a process of crafting (techne) but also the broader sense of something coming into being or revealing itself.
    • Objects consist of components with properties differing from the object itself. We call these properties emergent because they did not exist at the component level. The same applies to artifacts (structures, devices, tools, and even works of art). They are created for a specific purpose and are therefore subjectively emergent: someone who doesn’t understand the purpose can’t use it. The artifact is the result of an invention: through a clever combination of components, something new is created with emergent properties and functionalities.[52] This invention is often difficult to predict and therefore usually based on a chance discovery. An invention based on discovery is often improved through a feedback loop, making it more applicable. This is an example of downward causation. (Haugen, Rune Andre; Skeie, Nils-Olav; Muller, Gerrit; Syverud, Elisabet (2023-02-07). “Detecting emergence in engineered systems: A literature review and synthesis approach”. Systems Engineering. 26 (4): 463–481.)
  • from philip w. anderson (physicist): The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts.
  • on reification:
  • on algorithm:
    • The modern meaning for algorithm is quite similar to that of recipe, process, method, technique, procedure, routine, rigmarole, except that the word “algorithm” connotes something just a little different. (knuth; art of computer programming)
    • A procedure that has all of the characteristics of an algorithm except that it possibly lacks finiteness may be called a computational method.
  • on machine:

connections: