Welcome
UPDATE, JUNE 2009: Due to funding constraints, this workshop has been postponed indefinitely. We regret this outcome, and presume to hope that the initiative may some day be revived.
The enactive approach to understanding cognitive systems is relatively new. Within that approach, a set of concepts and a novel vocabulary are being collectively refined that allow new ways of understanding complex systems that arise, are maintained, and die within complex environments, and how meaning arises for agents within them. We believe these tools and this vocabulary may be of use to researchers in allied fields, including but not limited to arts, media and cultural studies, anthropology, economics, and sociology, and will promote mutual learning amongst them all. A central issue of interest that brings these disciplines together is the notion of ‘value’ and how this can be viewed as facilitating the thoroughtly entwined dynamics of identity and context.
Our first workshop is intended to start the dialogue, and it is hoped it will be the first of three annual meetings that will play a significant role in creating a new level of interdisciplinary research enquiry. Attendance will be limited to about 25 people and we are looking to balance the interest from different disciplines and find people who will have a strong interest in continuing the research conversation after the meeting. The agenda of follow-up activities will be developed by all the attendees as a part of the workshop.
This workshop was originally scheduled for December 2008, but due to funding constraints, it has been moved to June 2008. Exact dates and attendant details will be posted here in December 2008.
Core Literature
In order to establish a starting point for our discussions, we are proposing to use the following four papers as centeral reference points. Each paper can be down loaded here. Each also has a dedicated thread in the forum, so feel free to discuss, ask questions, criticize and elaborate there.
Workshop Details
Submitted by Fred Cummins on Wed, 07/02/2008 - 07:59.The first Culture and Cognition workshop will be held in the Watershed Media Centre, Bristol, U.K. in June, 2009. The original date of December 2008 has been postponed due to funding uncertainties.
Registration for the workshop is by invitation, following a period during which we gathered expressions of interest. If you were not part of that process, but are very seriously interested in attending, please contact Fred Cummins directly.
Cognition and Culture: an enactive view
June 2009. Exact dates t.b.a.
Watershed Media Centre, Bristol, UK The purpose of this workshop is to help to develop a robust vocabulary and set of concepts that are capable of sustaining dialogue between researchers in cognitive systems, cognitive science, arts, media, and culture by using the insights and approaches of the enactive approach to cognition. Over the last two decades it has become clear that cognition is strongly entwined with the physical structure of the body and its interaction with the environment.
