🌊 Order and Chaos: The Model of the Story
Course Description
It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience. — ALBERT EINSTEIN
To become wise you’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this latticework of models.— CHARLIE MUNGER
All Models Are Wrong But Some Are Useful. — GEORGE BOX
In this Unit, we will take inspiration from Story, Drama, and Paintings to contemplate certain aspects of Human Experience and Intent. We will try and make sense of these aspects of experience using Models that we will create. These Models may resemble a Thought Experiment, or a Diagram, or a simple Procedure, or a piece of Computer Code, or a Cultural Tradition. The Models should provide data and directions for artistic and design endeavours.
In effect, we will go from Stories to Data rather than the other way around.
The Models will be understood, internalized, fitted in with what we already know, and generalized to new applications. This will done with the help of activities based on games, videos, art-related activities, open source software tools, field experiments, field visits, readings, additional readings, writings, still more writings, and discussions.
At the end of the Unit, the students will use the gamut of Models / Tools / Techniques encountered in class to design an artifact or performance, working individually or in teams.
What you will learn
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The 4 As of Complexity Science - “Agents, Actions, Again, Aggregate”
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Complexity concepts and how to identify them and apply them in practice
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Game Theory
- Prisoners' Dilemma and Stag Hunt
- Coordination Games and Schelling Points
- Public Behaviour and Policy
- Viral Trends, Biases, and Epidemics
- Urban Patterns and Social Behaviour
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Basics of Networks as a Complexity Phenomenon
- Network Structure
- Network Effects
- How the Spatial (Static) affects the Temporal (Behavioural) and vice versa
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Complexity in Geometry:
- Proximity
- Delaunay and Voronoi Patterns
- Fundamentals of Fractals
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Probability and Randomness
- Randomness and its manifestation in Real Life
- Using Randomness as a Design Tool
- Hypothesis Testing
- Basics of Design of Experiments
- Data Gathering and Analysis (aka “Research”)
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Basics of Machine Learning Algorithms
- Classification
- Clustering
- Regression
- Why all these &*@!#^%$ matter in Art and Design
Some Teasers!!
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This century was named by Stephen Hawking as the Age of Complexity. (Weblink).
A few years ago, Hawking was asked what he thought of the common opinion that the twentieth century was that of biology and the twenty-first century would be that of physics. Hawking replied that in his opinion the twenty-first century would be the “century of complexity”. That remark probably holds more useful advice for contemporary students than they realize since it points to at least two skills which are going to be essential for new college grads in the age of complexity: statistics and data visualization.
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Documentary: The Secret Life of Chaos. (Weblink)
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TED Talk: Benoit Mandelbrot - Fractals and the Art of Roughness. (Weblink)