Nora Bateson: Warm Data, 'Combining,' and "Who Can You Be When You Are With Me?" | Urgent Futures #27

10/02/24 • 103 min

What if our interpersonal relationships and the polycrisis have a lot more to do with each other than we might initially think?

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

My guest this week is Nora Bateson.

Pick up your copy of Nora's latest book, Combining, here.

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Nora Bateson, is an award-winning filmmaker, research designer, writer, educator, and international lecturer, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. She is the creator of the Warm Data theory and practices. Nora’s work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems.

She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father Gregory Bateson.

Her first book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles, released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016 is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity.

In her latest second book Combining, Nora invites us into an ecology of communication where nothing stands alone, and every action sets off a chain of incalculable consequences. She challenges conventional fixes for our problems, highlighting the need to tackle issues at multiple levels, understand interdependence, and embrace ambiguity.

She was the recipient of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity in 2019.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe

What if our interpersonal relationships and the polycrisis have a lot more to do with each other than we might initially think?

My guest this week is Nora Bateson.

Pick up your copy of Nora's latest book, Combining, here.

She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father Gregory Bateson.

Her first book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles, released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016 is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity.

She was the recipient of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity in 2019.

Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe

Previous Episode

Al Hassan Elwan: Edgelording a New Avant-garde (POSTPOSTPOST™ Admin Reveal!) | #26

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds signals in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

My guest this week is Al Hassan Elwan.

Al Hassan Elwan is an interdisciplinary designer, brand consultant and creative director, born in Cairo, Egypt. They are now based in Los Angeles, where they completed a postgraduate degree in architecture with a focus on media studies from SCI-Arc in 2022.

Al is the founder of POSTPOSTPOSTTM, a brand that produces films, publications, and fashion on the edges of the cultural vanguard while simultaneously building an art movement. POSTPOSTPOSTTM has garnered a following on Instagram by posting contemporary cultural commentary, niche content, and avant-garde theory in the format of memes. Al is the instigator and co-editor of POSTPOSTPOSTTM's inaugural publication, POSTPOSTPOST: Reflections on a New Avant-garde, which features contributions from over 30 artists, writers, and academics, including Shumon Basar, Jack Self, Carly Busta, and Ana Viktoria Dzinic. POSTPOSTPOSTTM has been featured in various publications such as Dazed, FlashArt, Frieze Seoul, Novembre, DAMN Magazine , and others. Al is also the writer and director of POSTPOSTPOSTTM’s launch film, produced by Liam Young - which is now published on DIS [dis.art]. Their theoretical work has been published in RealReview and DoNotResearch, among others. They are also a part-time lecturer at MSCHF.

Besides their POSTPOSTPOSTTM work, Al is the co-founder and Creative Director of the brand strategy and design firm, pew. design bureau, which is based in Cairo, Dubai and Los Angeles. pew. has worked with notable clients including Google, YouTube, Vice, Unilever, and UN Women, and their work has been featured in Entrepreneur, World Brand Design Society, LA Weekly, the Brandberries, Cairoscene, and others.

I first met Al when their fever dream of a new avant-garde, POSTPOSTPOSTTM, was just taking shape. It immediately struck a chord with me. A decade ago I was drawn in by metamodernism, the proposed structure of feeling that emerged in the wake of postmodernism. A lot of people have a lot of feelings about metamodernism, and this isn’t the place where I’m going to get into it—though I am planning some pieces on Reality Studies, so be sure to subscribe over there.

I bring it up because when I encountered metamodernism, it had an electricity to it that felt true, capturing something in the zeitgeist that I hadn’t seen named quite so well prior. And this is exactly how I felt when I encountered POSTPOSTPOSTTM in 2022. Of course, the 2020s are many worlds away from the 2010s, with new forms of digital culture and sociality. Ideas can go from fringe to center in an eyeblink—looking at you, Brat Summer and very demure. And speaking for myself, there’s this paradoxical feeling I get when I navigate platforms whose algorithms prioritize de-nuanced, hard-line certainty—all the while I feel increasingly disoriented and uncertain.

POSTPOSTPOSTTM consistently manages to distill that weird feeling. Al delights in ambiguity, even as they weigh into murky and fraught topics. I won’t burden you with a deep media theory argument, but simply say that the work feels important to me. In this conversation, which I’m honored is something of an admin reveal for the account, we get into a full range of stuff, from their background growing up in Egypt, their experience in architecture, memes (of course), and much more.

As this show is finding new audiences, some of the folks who ar...

Next Episode

Taryn Southern: The Peril & Promise of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), Generative AI, and Spatial Computing | #28

How close are brain-computer interfaces? And how big of a deal is AI, really?

My guest this week is Taryn Southern.

Taryn Southern is an award-winning storyteller and creative technologist exploring the intersection of emerging tech and human potential. Her groundbreaking creative experiments blend innovation and art, offering insights into how we can all engage technology to lead more creative, joyful, healthy and productive lives.

A digital media pioneer, Taryn’s career began at the forefront of the online content revolution. In 2007, she hosted and produced a TV series documenting her travels to meet MySpace friends and uploaded her first viral video to YouTube. Over the next decade, she created over 1500 videos garnering more than 1 billion views.

In 2017, Taryn began experimenting with emerging technologies to push the boundaries of her creative work. She composed the world’s first AI album, which landed on the Top 100 US Radio Charts and received widespread media attention. She then combined VR, blockchain, AI and spatial computing to create an award-winning Google VR series, earning her the AT&T Film Award. Her directorial debut, I AM HUMAN, a documentary on brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, won numerous awards, and is now available on Apple and Amazon.

Since 2021, Taryn has served as Chief Storyteller at a leading implantable neurotechnology company, where she launched the world’s first BCI museum and oversaw communications strategy for two successful funding rounds totaling over $230M. An advocate of women in science and tech, she has also angel invested in future-forward companies such as Oura, Etched, Extend Fertility, Vessel Health, and Forever Labs.

Prior to her work in emerging tech, Taryn’s creative work spanned both traditional and new media. She sold a musical comedy pilot to MTV when she was 23 years old, co-hosted Discovery Channel’s #1 late night show, guest-starred on primetime network TV shows, and created digital series for Conde Naste, Airbnb, The Today Show, Snapchat, and Maker Studios. She was an early advisor to YouTube, Google VR and Snapchat product teams, and consulted for companies like Conde Nast and Marriott on digital content strategy and narrative design.

Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe