Conference to look at culture behind self-organizing systems

People who play the online game The Sims may be adept at
deciding which kind of kitchen they would like for their house or
what their families will look like, but these gamers are not
necessarily aware of the theoretical and conceptual aspects
involved with such a game.

A game like The Sims, for those not familiar with it, is a
self-organizing system, in that the game does not tell players to
create functional societies and economies, but instead sets simple
rules and guidelines that allow those types of outcomes to emerge.
This is the idea behind a self-organizing system at its
simplest.

These basic principles, but taken to far more complex levels of
analysis, are what will be discussed during “Self-Organizing
Systems: rEvolutionary Art, Science and Literature,” an
all-day conference featuring a large community of professors,
researchers and students that are interested in this new and
emerging way of looking at reality through computational
simulations.

“Simulations are everywhere; they are what we constantly
do as human beings. They are unexplored promises and can tell us
incredibly relevant things about human behavior,” commented
Nicholas Gessler, a professor of anthropology and co-organizer of
the conference.

Simulations and the study of self-organizing systems extend
further than the realm of computer games by allowing hypothetical
social science, anthropological or environmental theories to be
simulated and explored freely without the constraints of time,
energy or space.

“An incredible idea would be to one day be able to create
simulated laboratory rats for pharmaceutical testing without time
limitations or constraints,” said Michael Chang, a third-year
design and media arts student and speaker at the conference.

According to Chang and Kate Marshall, a graduate English student
also speaking on the panel, another reason why the
“Self-Organizing Systems” conference is an important
and engaging event for all who attend is the opportunity to
interact and collaborate with professors, researchers and their
peers.

Gessler and Katherine Hayles, professor of English and Design |
Media Arts and co-organizer of the event, heartily admitted to the
superior knowledge and ability of the more technologically saavy
and artistic students to create provocative simulations. But they
also emphasize the importance of bringing in students from other
departments, such as English, to create an interdisciplinary
convergence at the conference.

“With literature, the study of self-organizing systems is
no longer off into its own research world. Literature has allowed
this broad subject to become socially produced,” said
Marshall. “It has become part of culture.”