The architectural relevance of Gordon Pask

Architectural Design

Volumn 77, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 54-61

  Haque, Usman ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 43249139342     PISSN: 00038504     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/ad.487     Document Type: Article

References (9)

1. Quoted in Mary Catherine Bateson, Our Own Metaphor: A Personal Account of a Conference on the Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation, Alfred A Knopf (New York), 1972
2. Nicholas Negroponte, Soft Architecture Machines, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1976
3. In this context it is important to note the enormous contribution that Robin McKinnon-Wood, friend, collaborator and business partner, made to Pask's work; he built and helped design several of the Paskian machines described here. For more on this collaboration see Ranulph Glanville, 'Robin McKinnon-Wood and Gordon Pask: a lifelong conversation', originally published in the Journal of Cybernetics and Human Learning, Vol 3, No 4,1996, now available online at www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/vol3/v3-4rg.htm
4. Gordon Pask, A Comment, a case history, a plan', in Jasia Reichardt, Cybernetics, Art and Ideas, Studio Vista (London), 1971, pp 76-99, provides a good description of the project
5. ibid
6. See Gordon Pask, 'SAKI: 25 years of adaptive training into the microprocessor era', in International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, Vol 17, 1982, pp 69-74
7. 'Sensors and effectors determine how events in the world at large are related to the internal informational states of organisms and robotic devices. Sensors determine what kinds of distinctions (perceptual categories, features, primitives) can be made on the environment. By "evolving the sensor" perceptual repertoires can be adaptively altered and/or enlarged. To the extent that devices can adaptively choose their own feature primitives for themselves, they gain a greater measure of "epistemic autonom" vis-à-vis their designers. Such devices are useful in ill-defined situations where the designer does not know a priori what feature primitives are adequate or optimum for solving a particular task. From Peter Cariani, 'Epistemic autonomy through adaptive sensing', Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE ISIC/CRA/ISAS Joint Conference, IEEE (Gaithersburg, MD), 1998, pp 718-23. An expert on Paskian systems, Cariani has reconstructed Pask's sound-sensing chemical computer
8. For more on this see 'Distinguishing Concepts: Lexicons of Interactive Art and Architecture' also in this volume
9. See Jasia Reichardt, Cybernetic Serendipity, Studio International special issue, London, 1968