Frank Gillette Evolving Catalogue Raisonne & Selected Archives

Notes for a Proposol on Conceptual Gaming 1973

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1. "Trouble arises, writes Gregory Bateson, "precisely because the "logic" of adaptation is a different "logic"

from that of the survival and evolution of the ecological System'. The purpose (goal, object, context) of the game is one of simulating ecologic and behavioural complexity...of distinguishing the sets of relationships between, and the channels of influence exchanged by conceptions of the world and their subsequent control over behaviour in the world.

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2. The game is played by 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 people with a computer system which provides the constantly evolving context within which conceptual models are created and embodied in a range of media, from diagrammatic print-out to holographic simulation. The system also provides the criteria by which models are tested.

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3. A primary function of the game is the development of a variety of world-process orientations articulated or embodied in more and more encompassing contexts.

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4. How does the game evolve models which separate the contingencies of economic and social behaviour from the bionomic contingences of the ecologic system in which the given behaviour is a constituent part?

 

5. How does the game evolve corresponding values governed by a meritocracy of ecological description?

 

6. How does the game separate mythical attitudes based upon the successful domination of nature from Conceptions based upon the successful interaction with natural forces?

 

7. LEXICAL POINTS OF DEPARTURE:

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Sequential

Linear

Historical

Labour

Acquisition

Product, Goal

Dualistic

Continuity

Environmental Exploitation

Ideological

Static Image

Taxonomic

Maximum

Money

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8. Michael Apter pictures the structure of cybernetics thus:

 

 

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How does the game reflect the interactive flux between these structural elements?

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1  [Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, New York: Ballantine Books, 1972, page 339.]

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2  Michael Apter, The Computer Simultaion of Behavior, New York: Harper & Row, 1970, page 43.  

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Frank Gillette, 'Notes for a Proposal on Conceptual Gaming', Radical Software, vol. 2, no. 5 (Winter 1973)