Petervan Studios – April 2024 update

Here is the latest update on Petervan Studios. The previous update was in December 2023. A lot has happened since then. A lot did not happen. Here is an overview.

Winter and Spring

Open skies at sea – Middelkerke – 19 Jan 2024 – Frame from Petervan video

Early blossoms in the garden – 20 Mar 2024 – Picture by Petervan

Family

Joy: Astrid now has a driver’s license: on the one hand, this means I don’t have a car anymore, on the other hand no more taxi service and that is a great luxury. And she took up again her dream of becoming a doctor or a veterinarian. For that, she studies daily to pass the entry exam at Ghent University beginning July 2024. And of course, horses forever 😉 Happy times.

Grief: my mother in law is not well. Mieke and I are trying to help where possible. Difficult times.

The Art Studio

Only a little happens in the Art Studio. Some paintings and sketches. And some soundscape experiments, playing around with the latest Ableton Live and Apple Logic Pro versions.

Also found a good AI service for song generation, called Suno AI. Below is a song generated by prompting Suno AI, based on a rap poem by Dr. Paul Pangaro in a cybernetic manuscript for a 1989 book proposal that never got published. Mind you, the title of the book was “New Order From Old: The Rise of Second-Order Cybernetics and Its Implications for Machine Intelligence”

You can find most of them via the “Artworks” tab on my website.

Petervan Artworks ©2024 – Lollipops – Acryl on canvas – 100×80 cm

I participated in The Stability.AI residency at the HUG Innovation Laboratory between 8 Jan and 18 Feb 2024. Did not get out of it what I expected. And Stability AI is getting quite “unstable” since the fall down of its CEO.

Petervan Artworks ©2024 – Prompt Woman in Arena – Stability AI

I am also playing around in Numena’s Space Elevator VR App, and start imagining what sort of VR performances would be possible. Here is an example that is in the VR elevator wall of the project that feels like a Magritte VR experience. For transport, I used the fly mode of the application.

There is also some progress in the “Claim Your Word” project, A collaborative art project to curate words that never make it into a McKinsey presentation. In essence, all words that make us human. In March 2024, I added a whole set of additional words, resulting in the following updated word cloud:

If you want to suggest additional non-McKinsey words, go to the form on the project webpage above. 

Still in the planning is a personal solo art exhibition in VR and maybe IRL. Some installation concepts will be tried first in VR, and maybe later in IRL.

The performance lecture “City of Play”, about the New New Babylon (and the power of imagination) is on hold. 

However, a new one is in the making “Cybernetic Magritte”, where I share the story of my novice Cybernetic discoveries and learnings, and only use my artwork as visuals, my compositions as soundscapes, and my poetry. Target date: June 2024 and subject to closing the last funding gap.

Cybernetic Virgin

Somewhere in January 2024, I got infected by the cybernetic virus. Here is the video that got me down the rabbit hole

Here is Dr. Paul Pangaro (President of the American Society for Cybernetics), who talks about the remake of Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles, an installation illustrating his Conversation Theory based on cybernetic principles.

For somebody active in many innovation initiatives during my career, it is remarkable that I never got exposed to cybernetics. In that sense, I am a “Cybernetic Virgin”, looking with open eyes at the great cybernetic minds of the 50ies and 60ies. 

Since January, I have devoured massive amounts of cybernetic originals and absorbed as much as I can. This has an impact on my previous plans, whether art-related or intervention-related.

In the meantime, I had a couple of conversations with Dr. Paul Pangoro, and I would not be surprised if one or more projects will follow.

Summer of Protocols

The Summer of Protocols (SoP) is an ongoing research and evangelism effort that aims to catalyze broad interest in the study of protocols as a first-class concept for thinking about the world. It is led by Venkatesh Rao and funded by the Ethereum Foundation.

The results of the first (2023) SoP are now published on their brand-new site. The research and delivery format are all very well done.

This is about protocols in the widest sense: from communication protocols to protocols for washing hands, or protocols for artificial memory or addressable spaces.

Have a look at one of Venkat’s great talks about this project

Together with some friends, we submitted a SoP24 Protocol Improvement Grant proposal for Conversation Protocols for Humans and Machines. Let’s cross our fingers!

Delicacies

Delicacies are back! Check out the Jan, Feb, and March 2024 editions

Writings

Loads of notes, draft blogs, reflections, etc in the pipeline. When I look at some of the material, it feels like I am in a different reality.

The next ones are probably about conversation protocols, cybernetic virgins, and VR experience with eyes in your hands.

No idea what I will publish and when. It’s probably going to come in bursts.

Books

Highlights:

The Cybernetic Brain: by Andrew Pickering

Private I: by Jill Fain Lehman, Paul Pangaro, Ashlei E Watson

Other books I am reading: see my GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscompetervan

Exhibitions

Since Jan 2024

Mudel Deinze – Antoon De Clerck – 10 Jan 2024

KMSKB – Imagine 100 Years of Surrealism – 15 Mar 2024

BOZAR – Histoire de ne pas rire – 15 Mar 2024

Hyper-realism – Along the E5 Highway – Antoon De Clerck – Picture by Petervan

Detail “Les Grand Voyages” – Rene Magritte – Oil on Canvas – Picture by Petervan

Social Media

Somewhere in the beginning of February 2024, I deleted all my social media accounts: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon, etc – ALL of them. I only kept my Instagram to sporadically share some images. 

I felt there was so much noise, that it was not worth my time anymore to daily scan all the new streams for something interesting. I am now subscribed to only a very limited number of newsletters on Medium and Substack. 

I also found conversations got much more interesting when I scheduled some quality time in catchup calls.

The best way to contact me is now via email or WhatsApp.

What’s next?

I don’t know. Focus areas are:

The Summer of Protocols

The Cybernetic Performance

The New New Babylon project

So, that’s it for this edition. 

If there is something worth reporting, the next update is for July 2024. 

Warmest,