OfAC recognizes that societies are now irreversibly complex.

Plotting complexity is a necessary condition for positive societal change.

OfAC intervenes to advance sociocultural complexification.

Understanding, translating and mobilizing complexity is our mission.

Reports

Images, Information, and Meaning

Claire Lehmann
Pieter Schoolwerth
Peter Wolfendale
Joshua Johnson
Jul 26, 2016
New York

Images, Information, and Meaning

Miguel Abreu Gallery

Where is the meaning of an artwork? Does it come from the object that we view? From the artist’s intention? From the viewer’s interpretation? Or from the culture and institutions which enshrine it? Taking recent essays by writer and artist Claire Lehmann and philosopher Peter Wolfendale as a point of departure, this event proposes to examine the multiple channels which inform the production and reception of art, and to locate new ways of thinking through these processes.

Mar 06, 2016
London

Complexity in Tate

Tate Britain

OfAC sits down with philosopher Roman Frigg, for a conversation on the potential and pitfalls of modelling complex systems. Professor Frigg presents a critical look at our current tools for constructing models, our epistemic limitations, and the consequences for prediction given these constraints.

Mar 01, 2016
New York

Augmentation and Alienation: Between Emancipation and Control

Parsons School of Design

What role does the problem of Alienation play in the construction of our future — is it a condition to be eliminated or augmented? What impact does augmentation have on our relation to the question of representation? Finally, to what degree does the augmentation of our capacities constrain or enable human freedom?