      10 Jan 2013 @ 07:04, by Heiner Benking
Today is the "kick-off" of the Anthropocene Project in Berlin. [link] Please check the programme and come back later for comments and insides about the outsides! What is happening here the next 4 days and next 2 years about the matter! PLEASE EXCUSE THAT THE IMAGES / SIGNETS ARE NOT "CLEARED" yet and need some polish... but hopefully provide an idea and message to come grip by grasping, groping and groking I will try to exchange with some "copyleft" stuff a.s.a.p. ....
THE ANTHROPOCENE PROJECT looks like an aspiring and laudable major effort, bringing exact and fine arts and sciences to one place so we can feel collectively different assumptions, attitudes, modes, senses, and expressions in a new project, drafting in the LAB a new international transdisciplinaryy, holistic and multi-modal research agenda.
No question it is good to bring sciences together - transdisciplinary efforts involving policy makers, exhibition makers and even "normal" citizens, pupils and the broader public: The questions remains how to secure lasting relevant action to scheme results that matter! BUT, did't the Council of Europe try this in 1995 already with the help of Munich's Goethe Institue in 1996 or so !??? [link] And how about all the other integrative ne research schemes the last decades. I just remember a seesion where I presented at Humboldt University about Mapping Natural and Cultural Diversity (Tropentag 2004). ***** It was well received by the participants but there is nor follow up for anything beyond the realm of one discipline/field (see citation above) or the ISKO conference 2002 in Granada. See Charles François about Vague Subject Areas [link] and how they need to be see across scales [link] or Nathan Keyfritz (IIASA) about transdisciplinary kearning and sectarianism cited here: [link] and the Harmonization lecture with the Medical and Scientific Network: (PDF): [link] SMN: (See below the hard-cover copies I had with me in the HKW. Literature available, pls. request !) So the question comes up: Arent't we just re-inventing wheels here at the HKW !???, avoiding to "connect the dots" [link] and ignore much of what is there already, even long before the internet!!? It is obvious that such a task of designing episodal and epochal Eras for the better in Situation Peace Rooms with new forms and modes of participation can not be a write-up during the first sessions. I feel I will open a co-working pad so we can look from outside and observe adn comment what is going on about the Anthropocene, For now I hope I can outline the task ahead by linking to this Interview in Europe's World: tinyurl.com/Predicament-Humanity and the UN-AMR 2008 recommendations I collected around IHTEC adn CGI: [link] and this more recent struggle towards internet and society, but keeping for example A.&W. Humboldt and C. Ritter in mind: tinyurl.com/internet-society as we need to only stratigraphy, but also common frames of references: [link]
and shared models, vizualisations and other forms of deliberation and participation/mediation, multi-track/modal Diplomacy- and Peacemaking: enjoy GYC-2011: tinyurl.com/Predicament-Humanity
Such gargantuan series of events over days and years in the HKW with maybe 1000 participants at a single day is of quite another magnitude when compared to other efforts and formats and can in no way a panacea or address all the questions I raise above. So it great to have here in the HKW opportunities to not only gather a large auditorium but also in many lecture halls, cafes, lobbys, ... where you not only have formats like activity islands, but also incorporating the design an international research effort/programme with many partners and interests and at the same time with the mandate and mission "please" and entertain the public, invite participation and learn and negotiate beyond the need to agree !
So to do justice to the whole series or any one event of the NEW ANTHROPOCENE project is not easy, specially when participants want to be entertained and are used to come for "their" topic - demanding their "bread" in view of their "games" in modern Roman Empire settings, but today people participants switch channels and modes, we call this "dumbing-down" multi-tasking and digital-amnesia demence**** nowadays, when concepts and percepts are lost in different quarters.....
But with the general focus and some details and issues in this new project of the ANTROPOCENE ERA I have some problems. Please do not be too critical with my late night fumbling jotted down over the last 4 days (it is Sunday morning now). You are reading a scratch diary to trigger discussions, so often me as a trim-tab will be not producing the needed precision, abstraction and synthesis on the proper level of granularity. But for this be discuss in March "Formal Ontologies" http://benking.de/futures/WissOrg'2013_Submission_25.htm - so come back to Berlin/Potsdam in March !! for the ISKO Knowledge Organization 13. [link]
But please better read before the concept by the organizers (below) and check the website, programme and speakers, while I check who is attending and what someone like Anthony Judge [link], who was not only with us around DROPPING KNOWLEDGE here in Berlin in 2006 [link], but is in the scene now for 40 years !! Maybe he should be invited next time !! to get independent agendas onto the research and realization agendas !! [link] - maybe also see what our AGORA Friends from Cyprus (Yiannis Laoris who by the way even studied in Leipzig !) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiannis_Laouris do with the European Commission Framework for Research Strategy Prioritization: [link]
A much too long introduction and synthesis, so maybe skip this into.
In a nutshell:
This event has great potential and is a real challenge as there have been solo many efforts to merge and morph, combine positions and perspectives, and soooo many misunderstandings between "schools" like humanists and structuralists. (See me metnting this very central point of departure for our ANTHROPOCENE negotiations and and around Media in general: [link] or [link] and my transcripts of an interview with Claude Lévi-Strauss (ARTE.tv): [link] that we need more than just some more wording or great image schemas & soundbytes.....
Still on deck, all eyes and all ears!? this is YOUR portal for some time later...: [link]
I recall another event of this magnitude and focus when I also struggled for a few days (in Beijing 1992) in view of all the preps for the Earth Summit, when I wrote early in the morning my paper for the ICSU-CODATA: and a Masterplan for Islands of Data in a Labyrinth of Environmental and Economic Information: ..
[link] The only difference in my eyes? I was much younger and much much more naive ! We knew about the same about the magnitude of proportions and consequences about CLIMATE CHANGE as we know now. Maybe not so "precise" here and there, but also not so questionable and maybe oddly wrong ! in some cases. We were also a that time were searching for a grid or frame as we do now, so I believe we should combine the great WELTBILDAPPARAT of the Conference Logo and add the other 2 line graphs above to get towards where we need to go, but with a multi-modal embodied, immersive and at the same time negotiable Space-Model, we tried to call another Covenant in URBINO (2003) with the Earth Charter crowd: Ecological Integrity, Democracy, Governance, and Education: The NEED and a WORK-REPORT towards an embodied Covenant – Earth Charter Open Space, AND Global Ecological Integrity, Human Rights, and Human Responsibilities: Intersections Between International Law and Public Health, June – July 2003 Urbino, Italy [link] http://benking.de/covenant/sld001.htm BUT in a way which allows different cosmologies !!! to co-exist and engender each other, as presented as Sharing and Changing Realities with Extra Degrees of Freedom of Movement … AIZU 1997. [link] (see Fig. 2 and 6), and maybe draw multiple overlapping "frames" of mind around the Weltbildapparat [link] of our Confererence Logo (above in green). See also Konrad-Lorenz Institute SummerSchool 1997: Woldview Compositions [link]
Prologue Recommendations:
I was remembered when I heard about the project some months ago about our "Which World in Trouble?" we did around the UN Climate Summit 1995 in Berlin ***** and our GLOBAL CHANGE [link] and LOCAL and GLOBAL CHANGE [link] and Alfred Wegener Foundation profile [link] and large exhibitions in 1990 and 1991 and the early days of General System Sciences and cited in our ISSS Wholeness Seminar contribution: Longing for Unified Knowledge" (Ivan Havel) with the "essence" response: "Not my Field" [link] in the first round of plenum questions and comments.
Interested? See this citation "Much is Known, Unfortunately in Different Heads" Werner Kollath we used in our Environmental Data Harmonization Projects in the late 80ies under the Umbrella of UNEP benking.de/Global-Change/info-about-info.html More!?: [link] and this proposal of a "Research Agenda" close to our Anthropocenic Agenda today: [link]
I will make a transcript in a minute as I feel we need old and new thinking and arts and sciences when we want to tackle such epochal and critical questions. I invite to check the work on Metaphors [link] and (Cognitive Spaces [link] and Ekistics Pointers [link], Architecture [link], Optics, Analogies to some to multi-modal tangible approaches (ISSS 1998) the NEW RENAISSANCE Series and maybe start here (2008): [link] and the answers to these questions (1998): Is Humanity Destined to Self-Destruct?" and my essay: "Show or Schau? www.benking.de/show-schau.html
Gravel Pit - PLEASE COME BACK LATER **** WORK IN PROGRESS
About the research and transdisciplinary cooperation more personal views and concerns. ***** hey are like starting in many ways from square one, ignoring earlier efforts and doing the new wording, branding game, opening the door for new research projects instead of having checked what was done and worked even in times before the internet.
I spoke from the floor and at the press conference. I will try to sum-up later, we have 4 days to go !!
So far I really did not hear anything special or new, but this is my "problem" or fate. To have media and the public to mumble over the word "anthropocene" in contrast to anthropcentric and poly-centric and multi-perspective. So we need to make multi-modal fusion projects concrete, all agreed….
Most interesting here is the width and professionalism of the participants which show that "time is running out", that a broader awareness of the criticality is rising.
Interesting possibilities to revisit ignored milestones and maybe harness from the learning curve to build constructively and "open", avoid single, quick-fix approaches.
Paul Crutzen, I have not seen for 23 years, is unfortunately not here, but he hast to harvest another "honorary PhD" .. so is life... I will add here an anecdote about who has the most PhD h.c. in which field. ***** Funny when I look back.. ******
The 4 days programme and the whole scheme until 2014 is really a broad cultural and societal communication effort. I wonder if in Munich and all the other events in many places will help to make a difference, so we do not only create new wording (plastic words=Worthülse). I will try to keep an eye on the matter - even when quite frustrated...
Epilogue Recommendations:
You read already a long text Thanks ! Maybe this is of help now:
Skizzen für Weltbilder und Welthäuser benking.de/skizzen-2003.htm Mit anderen Augen sehen [link] House of Eyes [link] and Ulm School of Design: MAN- MASS- MEDIA - Interaction and Manipulation - New Horizons and Orientation Thanks to a New Mental Architecture (1996) [link]
I distribute material about Global Agora's SDP [link] and (PDF)http://benking.de/futures/connecting-dots&spaces.pdf , Ignorance and Compassion [link] and [link] the Encyclopedia entries [link] and pointers to possibilities [link] and maybe you like: [link]
In a project (John O'Connor) by a WORLD BANK advisor there were some thought about creating index-spaces (see CUBE and WPC proposals ****** and the NRC-UIA-FAW outline (Uhlir, Benking, Judge) ***** I also recommend metaphors for user-interface design from ****
So far at the conference nobody has responded with: Yes I know it.... Too bad, maybe I did a bad communication job the last 23 years !? Or what to we need to do to tackle the hidden mindsets, mindbugs and mindboggles [link], or ways to Imagine, present, communicate and deliberate, even before discussing lifestyles, diets, technology impacts and foot and handprints.
Please come back later. Meanwhile maybe check: MULTI-PERSPECTIVISM, PANORAMA OF UNDERSTANDING, PANORAMA THINKING, COGNITIVE PANORAMA, COGNITIVE SPACES, and some more terms here: [link]
7
And PLEASE do not forget this are a "besides" notes parallel to teh conference to trigger questions and go to the mode of learning from differences and going "beyond the need to agree" in shared negotiated "realms" as I said from the floor the second evening in the STATION. I feel I should collect PROs and CONs, Challenges and Recommendations as "time is running out" and we need to come to performances, agency, and other ways and formats for not only speaking about participation and in reality continuing the "talker" mentality. But this is another and hopefully future issues: Dialog, Deliberations, Empowerments, Fusion and and.
What was most rewarding for me the last 4 days? Meeting up with the Munich and SanDiego mindset anad action orientation and meeting with Dr AK Giri from Mumbai, another participant ! So it was good to meet the invited celebrities and thought and perfomrmance leaders, but the surprise and by accident honourary guests.... This is a sign for the quality of such an event ! I cordially invite to check-out "Multi-track Dialog, Peacemaking, Education, and Governance": See: 21stCenturyAgora, [link] the Open-Forum and our Magic Roundtable and Salon efforts: [link] Here you find a more recent exercise: OCA-Connecting Dots & Spaces. [link] Enjoy and come back, ask questions and apply/realize the "given and not-given". ***** (Schwartzkopf)
In a Nutshell: The Kick-off of this new research agenda which want to include the "others" and their different forms of "expression" and "presenation" using difdferent "formats" is definitely a good first step into good directions. I even feel we can discuss orientations, proporetions, consequences, values, frames, .... here and the different approaches and assumptions and expectations became clearly visible. A central approach needing tom "walking the talking". We do around the Earth Focus Foundation in Geneva since years interesting work with youth, maybe we should include the "scenes". Here my "final" recommendations for anyone who made it till here on this blog's long journey: Global Youth Conference (GYC 2012) towards Rio 2012 [link] and (GYC 2011) to add some sources and spices: [link] Good Night and Good Luck.
PLEASE EXCUSE MY HASTILY TYPOS and SCRATCH - I feel WE should work on it!
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This is the opening text of the organizers of THE ANTHROPOCENE PROJECT: AN OPENING: [link] Check it out !!
Our notion of nature is now out of date. Humanity forms nature. This is the core premise of the Anthropocene thesis, announcing a paradigm shift in the natural sciences as well as providing new models for culture, politics, and everyday life. In a two-year project, HKW will explore the hypothesis’ manifold implications for the sciences and arts.
The “Anthropocene” is the new geological “age of mankind” as proposed by the Earth sciences. Popularized by Nobel Prize winner Paul J. Crutzen around the turn of the millenium, the term now stands for one of the most trailblazing scientific concepts of the present. The transdisciplinary Anthropocene Project explores this concept, using research and presentation methods from the arts and sciences. If the opposition between humanity and nature is now suspended, how do we change our perspectives and perception? Is it still possible to think in concepts like “artificial” and “natural?” What does it mean for our anthropocentric understanding and our future if nature is man-made? What impact does the notion of global changes has on political decision-making? Which image of humanity appears if nature is shaped by mankind?
  
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