Content uploaded by Claudia Westermann
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Claudia Westermann on Jan 03, 2025
Content may be subject to copyright.
A Courtyard Conversation, or a zoetological approach to the
thinking of things
Claudia Westermann, Yiping Dong, and Lei Feng
Inserted into the entrance to a small courtyard inhabited by four families in
Haiyan village, Kunming, China, the work Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset
Sonata employs subtle interventions in the form of light, sound and kinetic
objects to reveal the aesthetic dimension of everyday objects and materials.
Technology is often seen to be in competition with heritage and tradition –
frequently threatening it to the point of elimination for a new, smarter world.
Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata, however, suggests that technology
can be employed to spark a conversation on the meaning of heritage in
everyday life. Grounded in cybernetic conversation theory, the installation uses
technology to serve aesthetic experience.
Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata reveals the role of architecture as a
means of constructing an enriched life and renders the objects and materials
that make up a village household's everyday tangible in their aesthetic
dimension. Activated by the movement of the visitors, playing in the presence of
the setting sun, the kinetic objects and their sounds engage in a new
conversation on the possibilities of technology to nurture a community's
heritage and values.
The presentation contextualizes the installation Symphony of the Everyday –
Sunset Sonata, linking Gordon Pask’s concept of conversation and Roger T. Ames’
zoetology, a term conceived to emphasize the particular dynamics of traditional
Chinese philosophy.
This is a preprint of a paper to be published in the RSD13 proceedings.
See also: https://rsdsymposium.org/symphony-of-the-everyday/
The website of the project is: https://sunset-sonata.com/
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
2
KEYWORDS: conversation theory, zoetology, cybernetics, public art, everyday aesthetics,
China
RSD TOPIC(S): Cases & Practice, Society & Culture
Presentation summary
Conversation
In cybernetic contexts, the term conversation plays a particular role. Based on the
premise that all understanding is subjective, the idea of conversation is set against the
idea of communication in the sense of transmitting information (cf. Dubberly &
Pangaro, 2009; Pangaro & Dubberly, 2014). It is not too far-fetched to suggest that the
conceptual framework of conversation marks the beginning of design cybernetics. In its
cybernetic conception, the term conversation can be traced to Gordon Pask, whose
work at the threshold of art, design and technology has been of significant influence in
the second half of the 20th century, especially in Britain (Husbands et al., 2008). Pask
had a background in engineering and psychology, but as a polymath and cybernetician,
he engaged in many other disciplines. Teaching at the Architectural Association in
London and at MIT in Boston, Pask worked on projects that would redefine what
architecture is. He worked with Joan Littlewood and Cedric Price on the Fun Palace
project (Mathews, 2005) and with Nicholas Negroponte on various projects of the
Architecture Machine Group (Glanville, 1993). Pask could be considered the grandfather
of design cybernetics. However, he is as well-known in the art world, where he is
generally recognized as a pioneer of electronic art (Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe,
2022).
A basis for all his later work, Gordon Pask’s major theoretical endeavor is the
conceptual framework entitled Conversation Theory (1975; 1976; 1992). The term
conversation thus carries with it an entire world of connotations. Central to the concept
of conversation, an activity that plays out in time between humans or between human
and non-human entities, is the conception of humans as striving to learn and bound in
their understanding by their subjectivity (Westermann, 2019).
In Pask’s universe, the concepts of conversation and interaction are intrinsically linked
(Glanville, 2001). Conversation is interaction operating on the basis of an ethics of
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
3
openness towards an Other (Westermann, 2019; 2020). It can be explained in the
following way. From the constructivist position of subjective understanding, any
reaching out to someone or something else is a reaching out to an Other. This reaching
out is conceptualized as basis for learning, essentially as ‘good’, operating on an implicit
ethics of openness towards an Other. It foregrounds listening over speaking.
Furthermore, there is an aesthetic dimension that is significant for the conception of
conversation and its relation to art and design contexts. Pask conceptualizes aesthetic
experiences as desirable because they provide novelty and initiate learning (Pask, 1970).
For him, “aesthetically potent environments” are learning environments of the highest
order (cf. Pask, 1970). Within this context, play and learning nurture each other. As
outlined in the article ‘The Art of Conversation: Design Cybernetics and Its Ethics’ (2020),
Pask’s concept of conversation carries with it a philosophy of art as everyday practice.
For John Dewey, all everyday experience is a seed that potentially becomes an aesthetic
experience (1934/2005). Pask takes a similar position but initiates a shift to how
aesthetic experience is grounded in everyday life by stating that it is a conversation that
holds the potential for aesthetic experience (Westermann, 2020). With conversation
defined as a particularly rich form of interaction, we leave the realms of a thinking that
is grounded in ontology. Conversation can be linked to both pragmatism and process
philosophy, but in its recognition of recursion as the basic structure, it is cybernetic. It
includes a domain of practice and one of reflection (cf. Glanville, 2014). They are related
in recursion and bound to time as experiential time. It is not by accident that
anthropologist Arturo Escobar has (re-)linked cybernetic and Colombian indigenous
ways of thinking (Escobar, 2018). There are striking parallels as both favor a process-
bound circularity that foregrounds experiential time as a basic unit of conception, and
both embrace plurality. Within the context of conversation, the two can easily be seen
as connected as the embrace of plurality, in its radical openness to other views, initiates
learning time.
The following section shows ways of conceiving in traditional Chinese thought that
resonate with what has been stated above. The presentation then concludes in the last
section by giving an overview of a public art installation that the authors realized in the
late spring of 2024 in a rural context in China, providing an example of conversation as
aesthetic learning experience.
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
4
Zoetology
According to Roger T. Ames, a leading scholar in comparative Chinese and Western
philosophy, the primacy of persistence in ontological ways of thinking is a “source of
security” that has served Western societies well for millennia (2020). It is the basis of
science. With its primary modes of thinking based on deduction and induction,
“substance ontology” serves to justify given hypotheses and has become the dominant
view in what is generally considered to be the Western world (Ames, 2023, p. 81). It is
important to note, however, that substance ontology is not a universal mode of
thinking. The desire for justification that is so present in Western societies, according to
Ames, is not primary in all cultures (2023). In ancient Chinese culture, for example, such
striving for justification played no essential role (Ames, 2023). It is grounded in a
generative logic that is unlike the logic of identity, on which ontological thinking is based
(Ames, 2023). Generative logic is the logic of co-creation. Roger T. Ames suggests that an
appropriate name for this way of thinking that focuses on dynamic life – zoe – in
contrast to ontology’s focus on immutable essences is zoetology. Zoe, an ancient Greek
term for life, is typically contrasted with bios, likewise an ancient Greek term for life. Bios
is political and intellectual life; the concept focuses on how human life differs from non-
human life (Arendt, 1958/1998). Zoe is animal life; it foregrounds life as dynamic, and as
it refers to what is common to all living beings, it is connective (Agamben, 1995/1998;
Dubreuil & Eagle, 2006; Braidotti, 2006; 2010).
In Euro-centric contexts, the intellectual and discursive bios is given primacy. Ames’
choice for zoe is thus programmatic and indicates the degree to which he sees Chinese
traditional thought differing from the ontological philosophy in the ancient Greek
tradition. Zoetology, understood as the art of living, shifts the focus of enquiry from
entities to dynamic relations and offers an opportunity to radically rethink sustainability
in architecture and design as inherent to systemic practice. Zoetology is relational
philosophy; it emphasizes participation in the ephemeral and foregrounds abductive
reasoning over deductive and inductive reasoning (Ames, 2023; cp. Westermann and
Gupta, 2023). Conceived by Charles Sanders Peirce, the term abduction indicates
explanatory or presumptive reasoning:
Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis. It is the only
logical operation which introduces any new idea, as induction does nothing but
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
5
determine a value, and deduction merely evolves the necessary consequences of
a pure hypothesis. Deduction proves that something must be; Induction shows
that something actually is operative; Abduction merely suggests that something
may be. (Peirce, 1934/1960, p. 106)
According to Ames, abductive reasoning is of particular importance for cultures that
give primacy to process and dynamics over persistence (2020, p. 32; The Royal Institute
of Philosophy 2022, 00:26:00). Abductive reasoning produces new meaning:
Perhaps the most interesting reading of Peircean abduction is that it is the
unbounded process of making productive correlations, generating new meaning,
taking as its only boundaries the limit of our imagination.
(The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2022, 00:27:00).
Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata
Inserted into the entrance to a small courtyard inhabited by four families in Haiyan
village, Kunming, China, the work Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata (2024) could
be seen to actualize and confirm the relevance of both Conversation Theory and
Zoetology for a socioecological reconceptualization of the relations that define place and
community. These relations concern the living of humans with other humans and other-
than-human-beings; they concern the living of humans in and with environments and
their technicity as part of their living that has since the beginning of times led humans
to create languages and things – technology in the widest sense.
Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata is a site-specific public art installation. It was
set up in April 2024 in the village of Haiyan, a traditional fishing village located at the
Dian Lake (Dianchi), China's largest freshwater lake. Fishing was the main occupation of
the people living in the villages surrounding the lake, which features a 150 km coastline,
but since the lake has been severely polluted, finishing has been forbidden, and Haiyan
has had to reinvent itself. A pier into the lake serves tourists who want to watch the
famous sunset over the picturesque scenery of Dian Lake.
Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata is a contribution to the Dianchi Art Season, a
public art and design festival that took place at several locations around the lake
between the summers of 2023 and 2024 (Kunming Municipal Government, 2024). The
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
6
authors of the installation, Yiping Dong, Lei Feng and Claudia Westermann, were
tutoring work for the Dianchi Art Season's Student Garden Construction Festival in
Wulong village in the summer of 2023, some of which was presented at RSD12 (Liu et
al., 2023, pp. 20–22). Site visits for the work in Haiyan village and conversations with the
local government and the inhabitants took place in the summer of 2023. The entrance
to a small traditional courtyard house inhabited by four families was given to us as a
potential site. During our site visits, the entrance and courtyard presented an image of
the inhabitants' everyday lives. Many objects, some of them seemingly discarded,
appeared to be witnesses of this everyday life. They gave an impression of the limited
conditions, but they also told stories of past times, memories, desires and hopes. In our
proposal for an installation, our focus was on revealing the aesthetic dimension of
everyday objects and materials through subtle interventions in the form of light, sound
and kinetic objects and, with it, the beauty of the many things and events no one ever
pays attention to because they belong to daily life.
Technology is often seen to be in competition with heritage and tradition, frequently
threatening it to the point of elimination for a new, smarter world. Symphony of the
Everyday – Sunset Sonata, however, suggests that technology can be employed to spark a
conversation on the meaning of heritage in everyday life. The installation takes the
setting sun, which has become so important for Haiyan village, as one of its themes. A
large LED light, mimicking the sun in form and color, is installed in the entrance on the
wall opposite the courtyard house's main entrance door, bathing the formerly dark
entrance in warm light and inviting visitors from the street to enter (Figure 1–4). At the
entrance, visitors are greeted by a symphony played by the hammers of a piano
mechanic on the everyday found objects (Figure 5–8), revealing their sonic qualities and,
with it, new aesthetic dimensions of daily life. Activated by the movement of the visitors,
pushed by small motors, playing in the presence of the setting sun, the kinetic objects
engage in a new conversation on the possibilities of technology to nurture a
community's heritage and values (Figure 1–9). In its reflective and aesthetic dimensions,
the installation is didactic, a learning technology in the Paskian sense, initiating a
conversation between the visitors and the technology and revealing the value of
everyday bare life (zoe) that is dynamic and vital, and of which all the objects and things
are part to which we never pay attention.
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
7
Figure 1. Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata. The setting artificial sun lightens up the
entrance to the courtyard in Haiyan. A group of five people passes by. Photo: Lei Feng
Figure 2. Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata. The setting artificial sun lightens up the
entrance to the courtyard in Haiyan. A group of five people passes by. Photo: Lei Feng
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
8
Figure 3. Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata. Interior view. The setting artificial sun lightens
up the entrance to the courtyard in Haiyan. Photo: Lei Feng
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
9
Figure 4. Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata. Interior view. A child in front of
the installation’s large light/sun. Photo: Lei Feng.
Figure 5. Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata. Interior view. Two frames installed in front of
objects discarded by the inhabitants of the courtyard house. The two frames each hold part of a
piano mechanic, which is activated by visitors’ movements via sensors and pushed by a
small motor to ‘play’ the bike and the bucket behind. Photo: Claudia Westermann.
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
10
Figure 6. Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata. Interior view. A frame holds part of a piano
mechanic, which is activated by sensors and small motors to hit the bicycle behind. Photo:
Claudia Westermann.
Figure 7. Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata. Interior view. Close-up. A frame holds part of
a piano mechanic, which is activated by sensors and small motors to hit the bicycle behind.
Photo: Claudia Westermann.
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
11
Figure 8. Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata. Interior view. Two frames holding part of a
piano mechanic were installed to hit an earthen wall and a timber wall panel. The piano
mechanics are activated by sensors and small motors. Photo: Yiping Dong.
Figure 9. Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata. Interior view. Small speakers in wooden cups,
and a frame with introductory text in front of the brick wall of the entrance to the courtyard.
Photo: Claudia Westermann.
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
12
References
1. Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford
University Press. (Original work published 1995)
2. Arendt, H. (1998). The human condition. The University of Chicago Press. (Original
work published 1958)
3. Ames, R. T. (2023). ‘Zoetology’: A new name for an old way of thinking. Royal
Institute of Philosophy Supplements, 93, 81–98.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1358246123000012
4. Ames, R. T. (2020). Correlative thinking: From abduction to Ars Contextualis in
early Chinese cosmology. Azja-Pacyfik, XXIII, 17–35.
https://doi.org/10.15804/ap202001
5. Braidotti, Rosi. (2006). Transpositions: On nomadic ethics. In Transpositions: On
Nomadic Ethics. Polity Press.
6. Braidotti, R. (2010). The politics of life as bios/zoe. In Bits of life (pp. 177–192).
University of Washington Press.
7. Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (2022). Gordon Pask.
https://zkm.de/en/person/gordon-pask
8. Dewey, J. (2005). Art as experience. Perigee Books. (Original work published 1934)
9. Dubberly, H. & Pangaro, P. (2009). What is conversation? Can we design for
effective conversation? In On Modelling, ACM — Interactions — Volume XVI.4 (p. 22).
10. Dubreuil, L. & Eagle, C. C. (2006). Leaving politics: Bios, zōē, life. Diacritics, 36(2),
83–98. https://doi.org/10.1353/dia.2008.0013
11. Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy,
and the making of worlds. Duke University Press.
12. Glanville, R. (1993). Gordon Pask – a skeleton for an unofficial biography. Systems
Research, 10(3), 9–11.
13. Glanville, R. (2001). And he was magic. Kybernetes - the International Journal of
Cybernetics, Systems and Management Sciences, 30(5/6), 652–673.
https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920110391904
14. Husbands, P., Holland, O. & Wheeler, M. (2008). The mechanical mind in history.
MIT Press.
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
13
15. Kunming Municipal Government (2024). 2024
滇池⻛⼟艺术季
:
家园与未来
[2024
Dianchi Art Season: Home and Future]. http://www.dcdas.cn
16. Liu, S., Richards, L. & Westermann, C. (2023). Assemblage reframing the nearby:
Resisting the spectacle through anti-communication. Proceedings of relating
systems thinking and design (RSD12). https://rsdsymposium.org/assemblage-
framing
17. Mathews, S. (2005). The Fun Palace: Cedric Price’s experiment in architecture and
technology. Technoetic Arts, 3(2), 73–92. https://doi.org/10.1386/tear.3.2.73/1
18. Pangaro, P. & Dubberly, H. (2014). What is Conversation? How Can We Design for
Effective Conversation? In Driving Desired Futures (pp. 144–159). De Gruyter.
19. Pask, G. (1970). A Comment, A Case History, and a Plan. In J. Reichardt (Ed.),
Cybernetics, Art and Ideas (pp. 76–99). Studio Vista. (Original work published 1969)
20. Pask, G. (1975). Conversation, Cognition and Learning: A Cybernetic Theory and
Methodology. Elsevier.
21. Pask, G. (1976). Conversation Theory: Application in Education and Epistemology.
Elsevier.
22. Pask, G. (1992). Interactions of Actors (IA), Theory and Some Applications: Vol. 1 –
Outline and Overview. The Cybernetics Society.
23. Peirce, C. S. (1960). Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce: Vol. V and VI (C.
Hartshorne & P. Weiss, Eds.). Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. (Original
work published 1934)
24. Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata (2024, April). Symphony of the
Everyday – Sunset Sonata. https://sunset-sonata.com/
25. The Royal Institute of Philosophy (2022). Zoetology: A New Name for an Old Way
of Thinking - Roger Ames for the Royal Institute of Philosophy [Video]. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4c2meBp-1k
26. Westermann, C., & Gupta, T. (2023). Editorial: Turning queries into questions: For
a plurality of perspectives in the age of AI and other frameworks with limited
(mind)sets. Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 21(1), 3–13.
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1386/tear_00106_2
27. Westermann, C. (2020). The art of conversation: design cybernetics and its ethics.
Kybernetes, 49(8), 2171–2183. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-03-2019-0186
PROCEEDINGS OF RELATING SYSTEMS THINKING AND DESIGN, RSD13
14
28. Westermann, C. (2019). A Poetics of Designing. In T. Fischer & C. M. Herr
(Eds.), Design Cybernetics: Navigating the New (pp. 233–245). Springer Nature
Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18557-2_13
Authors
Claudia Westermann, PhD, Xi’an-Jiaotong-Liverpool University, https://www.litra-
design.com, Claudia Westermann@xjtlu.edu.cn
Yiping Dong, PhD, Xi’an-Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Yiping.Dong@xjtlu.edu.cn
Lei Feng, Xi’an-Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Lei.Feng@xjtlu.edu.cn
Acknowledgement
Symphony of the Everyday – Sunset Sonata was realised with the support of Xi’an Jiaotong-
Liverpool University, Ruan Yisan Urban Heritage Foundation, and the Kunming
Municipal Government within the framework of the 2024 Dianchi Art Season. We thank
the following individuals whose assistance was invaluable in the realisation of the work:
CHEN Jian, ZHAO Hailin, Matingou Felix De Dieuleveut, LI Qiangda, GAO Liangjie, SU
Lishu, LU Zhiming, LU Qingfei, TANG Yu, YANG Xuefu, and Leeya.