Ontological Theatre Gordon Pask, Cybernetics, and the Arts

This essay explores the possibility of an ontological rather than epistemological understanding of cybernetics. My argument is that cybernetics embodies a nonmodern ontology, a vision of the world as built from lively, dynamic systems in performative interaction with one another -- in contrast to the ontology of the modern sciences: an asymmetric picture of human agents linked to a passive and static world through the medium of representation. To put some flesh on this idea, I review Gordon Pask's work in the theatre, the arts and architecture. I argue that his projects function as ontological theatre in a double sense. On the one hand, they stage specific examples of a nonmodern ontology more generally; on the other, they are examples of how one might go on in the world if one espoused that ontology. This review encourages an appreciation of cybernetics as a multidimensional form of life.