Afterlives of Systems
Introduction
Under the impression of today's global crisis and the rise of ecological thinking, confronted with smart, ubiquitous technosystems and the impression of interconnectedness, there appears a new urge to excavate the remnants of the past. The articles of this issue suggest that in order to understand present technologies, we need to account the systems thinking that fostered their emergence, and that we cannot gain insight into the afterlives of systems without exploring their technologies.
The nine contributions ask how these debates and affective states survive and live on in today’s discussions of media ecologies, environmentalism, object-oriented philosophies, computer simulations, performative art, and communication technologies. In this sense, they take the renaissance of systems thinking in the late 20th and early 21st Century as an effect of various system crisis and explore new media technologies as stabilizing ‘cures’ against the dystopian future scenarios that emerged after World War II. The articles of this issue suggest that in order to understand present technologies, we need to account the systems thinking that fostered their emergence, and that we cannot gain insight into the afterlives of systems without exploring their technologies.
Articles
Introduction
Christina Vagt and Florian Sprenger
Environment between System and Nature: Alan Sonfist and the Art of the Cybernetic Environment
Etienne Benson
Arctic Infrastructures: Tele Field Notes
Rafico Ruiz
Gaia's Game
Niklas Schrape
Rewriting the Matrix of Life. Biomedia Between Ecological Crisis and Playful Actions
Christoph Neubert and Serjoscha Wiemer
Plutonium Worlds. Fast Breeders, Systems Analysis and Computer Simulation in the Age of Hypotheticality
Sebastian Vehlken