Dr Tim Ireland publishes new paper, ‘Bateson Information Revisited: A New Paradigm’

Director of Digital Architecture Research Centre (DARC), and programme director for MSc Bio Digital Architecture, Dr Tim Ireland has published a new paper titled, ‘Bateson Information Revisited: A New Paradigm‘. This paper is the latest in a line of papers written in collaboration with Dr Jaime Cardenas-Garcia, University of Maryland. This paper is product of a presentation by Dr Cardenas-Garcia at Conference Theoretical Information Studies (TIS), which took place in Berkeley, California in June 2019.

The goal of this work is to explain a novel information paradigm claiming that all information results from a process, intrinsic to living beings, of self-production; a sensory commensurable, self-referential feedback process immanent to Bateson’s difference that makes a difference. To highlight and illustrate this fundamental process, a simulation based on one-parameter feedback is presented. It simulates a homeorhetic process, innate to organisms, illustrating a self-referenced, autonomous system. The illustrated recursive process is sufficiently generic to be the only basis for information in nature: from the single cell, to multi-cellular organisms, to consideration of all types of natural and non-natural phenomena, including tools and artificial constructions.

IMAGE CREDIT: IS4SI 2019 SUMMIT

Invitation to MSc Bio Digital Architecture Google Hangout

Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP) are pleased to announce we will be hosting a one-hour Google Hangout on Tuesday 3rd March for students interested in finding out about the latest addition to our postgraduate portfolio: MSc in Bio Digital Architecture. This course provides students with the skills and know-how to practice architecture at the cutting edge of digital design. The programme is designed to provide a theoretical basis of Computer-Aided Architectural Design as an academic discipline while simultaneously teaching the use of the computer for analysis of design problems and a tool for the generation of space and form.

Led by KSAP’s Director of Digital Architecture, Dr Tim Ireland, the course is primarily intended for graduates and professionals from a range of design backgrounds, including architecture, interior, graphic and urban design, who wish to develop computational techniques in architecture and gain the ability to use programming as easily as any other form of communication.

If you are interested in finding out more about the programme including course structure, entry requirements, career progression and more, please email ksapadmissions@kent.ac.uk to book your place on the MSc Bio Digital Architecture FREE online Google Hangout on Tuesday 3rd March from 11.00 – 12.00 GMT.

Dr Tim Ireland to speak at Bio-Computational Symposium at The Bartlett School of Architecture

Dr Tim Ireland, Director of Digital Architecture and Founder of KSAP’s Digital Architecture Research Centre (DARC), will be giving a talk titled, ‘Between Life and Architecture’ and the upcoming Bio-Computational Symposium on Wednesday 27 November at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Organised by Claudia Pasquero, Emmanouil Zaroukas and Filippo Nassetti from the Urban Morphogenisis Lab, the symposium will discuss and reflect upon, ‘the link between human and non-human intelligences, architecture and urban design.’

Dr Tim Ireland’s presentation will claim a correlation between architectural theory and the biosemiotic project, and suggest how this coupling establishes a framework leading to an architectural-biosemiotic paradigm that puts biosemiotic theory at the heart of cognising the built environment, and offers an approach to understanding and shaping the built environment that supports and benefits human, and organismic, spatial intelligence.

Sir Terry Farrell introduces masterclass at Kent School of Architecture and Planning

Sir Terry Farrell personally introduced a masterclass session at Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP) on Friday 25th October with a talk about his urban design projects. His audience included students from all levels at the School, plus a group of 35 4th and 5th year visiting students from ENSAP (Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture et de paysage de Lille), led by Gilles Maury and his colleagues. Gilles Maury and the school are old friends and partners of KSAP, and their arrival followed a tour around the South East which included visits to Philip Webb’s Red House and Standen, the University of Sussex and the Ditchling Museum of Arts + Craft. The event was planned by KSAP tutors John Letherland and Dr Ambrose Gillick, with the participation of Dr Tim Ireland and Dr Peter Buš.

Sir Terry followed the design session with a lecture at the University organised by the Canterbury Society. His theme was the way in which his own design career had evolved from his earliest landscape paintings of the Northumberland countryside, through his major London projects, his Thames Gateway plan and championing of Kentish towns, to his current large-scale work in China. Sir Terry was introduced to the audience by Dr Timothy Brittain-Catlin who played a central role in the Twentieth Century Society’s campaign to protect postmodern buildings in England.

 

Kent School of Architecture and Planning launch new Digital Architecture Research Centre

Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP) are pleased to announce the launch of DARC (Digital Architecture Research Centre).

DARC is the newest research centre at Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP) specialising in the application of digital technology in architecture. DARC will focus on the creative use of digital technologies to enhance design and fabrication possibilities for architecture and the built environment. The Centre has streams headed by its members:

  • Generative design and computational creativity
  • Digital fabrication and robotics
  • Digital visualisation and mixed reality.

The Centre is a new interdisciplinary direction for KSAP, founded on members’ expertise and international research profiles, it aims to promote an innovative interdisciplinary research environment exploring intersections between architecture and digital technologies.

If you’d like to find out more about DARC, and about the latest addition to KSAP’s postgraduate offering, MSc Bio Digital Architecture, email ksaadmissions@kent.ac.uk to join the free Google Hangout with Dr Tim Ireland, Director of Digital Architecture, on Wednesday 5 June at 14.00 BST.

Dr Tim Ireland to present recently published paper at 2019 Annual Gatherings in Biosemiotics

Dr Tim Ireland, Kent School of Architecture and Planning’s Director of Digital Architecture, will be presenting his recently published paper entitled, ‘The Fundamental Problem of the Science of Information‘, at the 2019 Annual Gatherings in Biosemiotics in Moscow in July.

The presentation, co-authored with Dr Jaime Cardenas-Garcia (University of Maryland) is entitled, A New Biosemiotics Paradigm: Bateson Information. Biosemiotics integrates theoretical biology with semiotics, a science on signification and meaning.

The concept of information has been extensively studied and written about, yet no consensus on a unified definition of information has to date been reached. The paper seeks to establish a unified definition of information and claims a biosemiotics perspective, based on Gregory Bateson’s definition of information, and provides a footing on which to build because the frame this provides has applicability to both the sciences and humanities.

A key issue in reaching a singular definition of information is the problem of identifying how a human organism develops from a state in which its knowledge of the human-organism-in-its-environment is almost non-existent, to a state in which the human organism not only recognises the existence of the environment but also sees itself as part of the human-organism-in-its-environment system. This allows a human organism not only to engage with the environment and navigate through it, but also to transform it in its own image and likeness. In other words, the Fundamental Problem of the Science of Information concerns the phylogenetic development process, as well as the ontogenetic development process of Homo sapiens, from a single cell to our current multicellular selves, all in a changing long-term and short-term environment, respectively.