Subject:
PARADOX Seminar event at Arcosanti AZ 10/24-26
Resent-Date:
Fri, 22 Aug 1997 20:05:16 GMT
Resent-From:
arcology-l@legba.vortexworks.com
Date:
Fri, 22 Aug 1997 17:05:10 -0700
From:
paradox <paradox@verbum.com>
Reply-To:
arcology-l@legba.vortexworks.com
To:
mail@verbum.com
Verbum and the Cosanti Foundation
are pleased to announce
the first annual
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PARADOX SEMINAR
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Urban designer and philosopher Paolo Soleri, the Cosanti Foundation and
the
residents of Arcosanti invite you to an experiential conference on
cyberspace, arcology and human evolution. Join us for a weekend of
critical
discourse, music, immersive media, and the experience of Arcosanti, a
prototype 21st century town in the Arizona high desert.
Weekend Retreat at Arcosanti, Arizona
October 24-26, 1997
* Paolo Soleri Presentation: The Paradox Project
* Panel Discussions
* Ambient Salon
* Techno Concert/Dance
* River Walk
* Cafe at Arcosanti Cuisine
PANELISTS
* Scott Fisher - virtual reality pioneer (Telepresence Research)
* John Graham - internet video entrepreneur/nanotechnology expert
(Graham
Technology Solutions)
* Michael Gosney - multimedia publisher/producer (Verbum)
* Michael O'Rourke - new media producer/theorist (Dimension 7)
* Mark Pesce - co-inventor, VRML (Blitcom)
* Paolo Soleri - urban designer, philosopher (Cosanti Foundation)
* David Traub - new media producer/consultant (Inner Ecology Software)
(others to be announced)
MUSIC
Ceiba - Kode 4/Adam Om, Claire Corich, Ethan Miller, Eric Kalabacos
VISUALS
Dimension7, Verbum
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Friday, October 24
2:00 - 5:00 pm Registration Visitor Center Gallery
6:30 Night Bronze Pour Foundry
7:00 Dinner Cafe
8:30 Welcome Presentation Music Center
Amphitheater
9:00 - 12:00 Ambient Salon Vault
Saturday, October 25
7:30 - 9:00 am Breakfast Buffet Cafe
9:00 - 8:00 pm Exhibits/DemonstrationsVault, Ceramics, Gallery
9:00 am Panel Discussion Music Center
Amphitheater
12:00 pm Lunch Cafe
1:00 Presentation Music Center
Amphitheater
2:00 Panel Discussion Music Center
Amphitheater
4:00 Panel Discussion Music Center
Amphitheater
5:30 Performance Vault
6:30 - 8:00 Dinner Buffet Cafe
9:00 Pictograph Performance Sky Theatre
10:00 Techno Concert/Dance Vault
Sunday, October 26
9:00 - 2:00 Brunch Buffet Cafe
12:00 - 4:00 Ambient Salon Vault
2:00 - 3:30 River Walk Agua Fria River
4:00 Fini Ritual Vault
ACCOMMODATIONS
Camping on Arcosanti grounds is $15 per night. Rooms available within 30
minutes of the site. Request a complete list of accommodations in
Prescott
and Sedona via email: shiflett@aztec.asu.edu, or contact: AZ Tourist
Bureau
888-249-8470, AZ Assoc. Of B&Bs 800-284-2589, 1800-OUTWEST Reservations
800-688-9378, 1800-GO-Sedona Reservations, 800-467-3366, Red Rock
Reservations 800-890-0521, Sedona Central Reservations 800-445-4128,
Sedona
On-Line, Inc. www.sedona.net.
TICKETS
Full weekend $150 ($200 after October 1)
Camping $15 per night
REGISTRATION
Send check for $150 per person (made payable to "Cosanti Foundation") to
Paradox Seminar, Arcosanti, Box HC74, Mayer, AZ 86333. A complete
registration package will be sent to attendees in September. ATTENDANCE
IS
LIMITED! Contact Mark Shiflett, Registration Coordinator at 520-632-7135
or
via email at shiflett@aztec.asu.edu for more information.
THE PARADOX PROJECT The Cosanti Foundation is planning to start
construction of the Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Complex on the south
slopes
of Arcosanti. The complex is mainly intended to be the eventual
residence
and work place for participants in the Paradox Program, those digital
"insiders" who are at home on the Internet, working in digital media,
developing their nexus with Cyberspace.
The Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Complex:
- Loggia
- Greenhouses
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Cloister
The complex is named after the Jesuit priest and paleontologist who in
the
1940s presented the idea of the Noosphere, an anticipation of the
Internet
and Cyberspace.
"The experience will not be in the domain of hyper-consumption
encouraged
by our culture and by Cyberspace, but in the domain of frugality. We
choose frugality in view of its hold on interiorization and its
coherence
with the limitations and the glories of the planet.
Since Arcosanti is a place in search of the miniaturized by way of
complexity, and since cyberspace is a non-place in search of the complex
by
way of miniaturization, I am proposing an internship for
insider-outsider
interaction via the practice of building and living in a non-virtual
environment frugally imprinted, a habitat dedicated to urbanization."
--- Paolo Soleri
NEO-MONASTIC INTERNSHIP The Paradox Project's neo-monastic internship
program will offer participants the chance to live, study and work at
Arcosanti, with a primary focus on the construction of the Teilhard de
Chardin complex. Study and discourse will be encouraged, though Soleri
has
observed that "we are offering not a contemplative Buddhahood, but an
active and less narcissistic 'cement mixer-hood.'" Complete internet
connectivity will be offered for personal work and activities, which
will
be combined with the 5 hour per day, 5 day per week construction
schedule.
PAOLO SOLERI AND ARCOSANTI Paolo Soleri, born in Turin, Italy, awarded
a
PhD from the Torino Polytechnico in 1946, came to the U.S. in 1947 to
study
with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West. He settled in Scottsdale,
Arizona
in 1956. Soleri's urban design ideas have since been developing in the
form
of the landmark 1971 MIT Press book, "Arcology: the City in the Image of
Man" and various other books, touring exhibitions, the Cosanti
studio/foundry compound in Scottsdale, and Arcosanti, a prototype
arcology
for 7000 people 60 miles north of Phoenix near Cordes Junction, Arizona.
"Arcology" is a term coined by Soleri to describe the concept of
architecture and ecology working as one integral process to produce new
urban habitats. Arcosanti is an "urban laboratory" experimenting with
basic
arcological design ideas, combining a compact, complex urban structure
with
large scale solar greenhouses on 10 acres of a 4000 acre preserve. Even
though the existing structures at Arcosanti represent less than 10% of
what
will be the finished arcology, the site has a lively community, a stream
of
visitors (it is an official Arizona tourist site) and has hosted many
festivals, conferences, music performances and educational programs
since
the late 1970s. [ http://www.arcosanti.org ]
PRODUCED BY VERBUM AND COSANTI The Paradox Seminar is a joint
production
of multimedia publisher Verbum, producer of San Francisco's annual
Digital
Be-In, and the Cosanti Foundation, a not-for-profit, public educational
foundation devoted to the support of Paolo Soleri's architectural and
urban
planning research.
VERBUM Verbum, Inc. is a San Francisco-based multimedia publisher and
production group founded in 1986 by Michael Gosney, Cosanti Foundation
Board member and director of the Paradox Seminar. The firm's Verbum
Journal was an influential magazine for early digital artists and
cyberculture aficionados, and Verbum Interactive, published mid-1991,
was
one of the first multimedia CD-ROMs. Producer of many instructional
books/CD-ROMs for digital media professionals, Verbum has just completed
its first consumer product, Peter Norton's PC Guru CD-ROM. Verbum has
produced numerous events, including CyberArts International, the Imagine
Exhibit of digital art, and the Annual Digital Be-In in San Francisco.
[paradox@verbum.com - http://www.verbum.com - http://www.be-in.com ]
PARADOX SEMINAR TOUCHSTONES
Themes:
* Paradox Project - neomonastic internship program at Arcosanti
* Cross-disciplinary Philosophical Discourse vs. the Corporate
Cyber-elite
* Cyberspace/Cityspace
* Morphogenetic origins of digital media
* Carbon and Silicon - evolutionary symbiosis?
* Electronic Media (the basic plumbing), Cyberspace (the design of the
human metamind), and the Noosphere (the emergent "cosmic" holon)
* The Web, Immersive Media, and New Inner Dimensions
Proposition:
Understanding our relationship to the planetary organism - on magnetic,
ecological, biological/ chemical, and noetic levels - would seem to be
essential for the fully conscious and conscientious development of a
human/Gaian "metamind." The intelligent design of the cyberspace
interface/
network would ideally incorporate the proven systems and techniques of
the
natural world, such as:
- miniaturization for increased complexity/richness
- distributed processing
- fractal memory
- fuzzy logic
- pattern recognition
- holonomic networks
- redundancy, redundancy, redundancy
The full realization of the elegant underpinnings of the metamind might
not
be best left solely in the hands of the existing cyber-elite - the
digerati
(the powerhouses of the industry and culture) and the cybernauts (the
hands-on builders and early inhabitants of cyberspace). A broader
vision,
more encompassing dialogue and cross-disciplinary cooperation for this
great evolutionary work is needed.
The steady exponential increase in microprocessor performance during the
short and tumultuous history of the digital realm is astounding given
the
seeming influence that individuals and institutions have had over the
process in the trial-and-error, survival-of-the-fittest battleground of
the
commercial marketplace. The almost spontaneous emergence of the
hypermedia
World Wide Web is an even more obvious example of something bigger at
work:
it is a remarkable creation that seems to transcend the individual cells
-
the brilliant hackers and aggressive marketers and savvy venture
capitalists - who are contributing the code-genes and tech-flesh of this
new organism. It would appear that the entire electro-digital media
field
is not so much created by us as coming through us, using us, in a
morpho-genetically programmed evolution toward some greater whole that
we
are just beginning to perceive. Given this scenario, the fear-driven,
profit-motivated, ego-competitive, cyber-elite that gave birth to the
fundamental tools and systems is in need of a complementary
cross-disciplinary consensus on the advanced design and development of
cyberspace.
We are at a critical juncture on many fronts in the short and tumultuous
history of the human species. Digital media, with the potential it
offers
for a quantum leap in human consciousness (through education, personal
growth, new perceptual tools, and enhanced communication), could spawn a
new wave of cooperative genius in our societies, bringing about the
invention and vision we need to overcome the adverse affects of our
primitive technologies on the Gaian ecosystem, to appropriately manage
our
global population, and to support a new phase of cosmic human evolution.
It is the intention of the Paradox Seminar and the Paradox Project
program
at Arcosanti to contribute to these developments.
---Michael Gosney, Conference Director
VERBUM, INC.
123 Townsend Street, Suite 645
San Francisco, CA 94107
415-777-9901
fax 415-777-9929
www.verbum.com
COSANTI FOUNDATION
www.arcosanti.org
--
Lou Dallara Techno Visionary Reduce..Reuse..Recycle
http://www.waterw.com/~ldallara http://www.arcosanti.org
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