Special Lecture
Introduction to Art and Culture in the Global Age
Matthew Fuller:
In Praise of Plasticity

In the course compulsory to all the GA first year students, “Introduction to Art and Culture in the Global Age”, we will invite Professor Matthew Fuller, Director of Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London, and Researcher in Media Theory, Software Studies, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, to deliver a lecture entitled “In Praise of Plasticity”. Auditors from other Departments are all welcome.

＊No booking required. The lecture will be conducted in English.

Date: Friday, July 14, 2017
Time: 18:00～19:30
Venue: Lecture Room 5-401, Department of Music, Ueno Campus, Tokyo University of the Arts

Lecture Abstract:
“In Praise of Plasticity”
Plasticity, in neurology, is the ability to adapt, change, grow and find new forms at multiple scalar levels whilst retaining, rerouting or developing function.
This paper will discuss the notion of plasticity as it is articulated by the term ‘underspecification’ in Gordon Pask’s cybernetics, by the forms and practices of machine learning and by anarchism. The first two are clearly related by a technical and philosophical genealogy, the latter significant as an attempt to render learning, transformation, and an attempt to have the widest degree of redundancy or requisite variety in decision making processes.
(Matthew Fuller)

Advance Reading:
Matthew Fuller, Elephant and Castle, Autonomedia, New York, 2011, p.72 (line 14 onwards) – p.77.

Profile:
Matthew Fuller
Fuller is the author of How to be a Geek: Essays on the Culture of Software (Polity). Other titles include Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture (MIT Press), Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software and Elephant & Castle (both Autonomedia). With Andrew Goffey he is co-author of Evil Media (MIT Press). How to Sleep: In Art, Biology and Culture (Bloomsbury) is to be published in 2018. He has worked in and with artists groups such as I/O/D, Mongrel and YoHa. Fuller is an editor of books including Software Studies: A Lexicon (MIT Press), and is a co-editor of the journal Computational Culture (http://www.computationalculture.net). He is Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Organized by Yoshitaka Mouri Lab, Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Global Arts

Inquiry:
Faculty Room, Department of Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices, Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts
Office Hours (Ueno): 10:00-19:00 (Mon, Thu, Fri)
Tel (Ueno): ＋81-(0)50-5525-2725
Office Hours (Senju): 10:00～19:00 (Tue, Wed)
Tel (Senju): ＋81-(0)50-5525-2732
info-ga(at)ml.geidai.ac.jp