ASC 2020 Global Conversation/UK's Cybernetics Society’s “Cybernetics and the 21st Century: Stories of Practice”

I had the privilege of participating in the American Society for Cybernetics 2020 Global Conversation back in September. This event was held in coordination with the UK's Cybernetics Society’s virtual event “Cybernetics and the 21st Century: Stories of Practice,” and consisted of a series of live online conversations running across various time zones. Speaking of time, information can reach us from many dimensions, including information from an aspect of consciousness outside of time. This goes well beyond Ilya Prigogine's assertion that the arrow of time flows not only from the past, and may hold a clue to the manner in which we will eventually be able to apprehend things that are presently beyond our kin: Things that are beyond human understanding require a consciousness beyond human understanding, a consciousness that transcends space and time, in other words, a posthuman consciousness. If anthropocene time is informed by post-anthropocene time, then this alchemical feedback loop sheds a whole new light on existentialism's perennial claim that the human condition is not fixed. Other topics of discussion included (but were certainly not limited to) exopedagogy (the term for an inclusive vanguardism in which highly abstract work is made accessible to everyone in an educational, child-friendly cultural space) and publication venues such as Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research (a peer-reviewed journal presenting the cutting edge of ideas, projects, and practices arising from the confluence of art, science, technology, and consciousness research). It was marvelous to have provocative conversations on such topics with these beautiful and brilliant minds! All conversations from the event can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist...

And all prerecorded presentations can be found if you click here: https://asc-cybernetics.org/asc-2020-global-conversation/ and scroll down to the links under the heading "Event Schedule."

ZANE GILLESPIE

After six years as Minister of Music at Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church (UMC) in Holly Springs, MS, I was recently called to continue to work to address public engagement in music participation as Director of Music Ministries at First UMC in Water Valley, MS. I am a Composer, Theorist, and member of both The College Music Society as well as The Poe Studies Association (PSA). I am also an active pianist and vocalist, specializing primarily in church music. My paper entitled ““Mesmeric Revelation”: Art as Hypnosis” has been published by the international, peer-reviewed journal Humanities. In addition, another paper of mine entitled “A Model of Triadic Post-Tonality for a Neoconservative Postmodern String Quartet by Sky Macklay” has been submitted to the peer-reviewed Music Theory journal Perspectives of New Music. At the end of February 2015, I served as Chair for the session entitled “Aesthetics and Philosophy” at The Fourth International PSA Conference in New York City. On June 21, 2014, my Quartet for Alto Saxophone and Strings, a commission from concert saxophonist Walter Hoehn, was performed as part of Concert V of the Eighth Annual Belvedere Chamber Music Festival held at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Memphis, TN. Characteristically neo-romantic (in the original sense of the word), my music earned me the Nancy Van de Vate Award for Composition three times from the University of Mississippi Department of Music. A native of Pontotoc, MS, I hold degrees from the University of Mississippi (BM; MM), and the University of Memphis (DMA) where I was the 2011 recipient of the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music's Smit Composition Award. I live in Memphis, TN.