Matter and Thought: Gordon Pask’s Practice-Based Research

Abstract

For the cybernetician Gordon Pask (1928-­1996), the process of thinking was inextricable from doing and making. He maintained that concepts were bound with materials and procedures. This paper investigates the notion of a self­organizing system as explained by Pask in a group of essays written between 1958 and 1968. The concept was central to Pask’s work as he described many of his artifacts and later theorized both conversation and the aesthetic experience as self­organizing systems. I will focus on a series of experiments he conducted with metallic threads, which I believe allowed him to articulate his theories of self­organizing systems and to develop a practice­based approach to research.