Gulp, a week's gone past I and haven't posted anything! I have been reading and researching online, but it has been a busy work for me at work and I haven't done as much as usual. I'm also starting to get ready for a Digital Arts and Dance show I'm involved in in a few weeks. I'll post some more about this sometime soon.

I've been researching "computational autopoiesis". This is a field of computing/mathematics that looks to simulate autopoietic systems using, typically, the tools and technologies developed in the field of artificial life.

Now, I was pretty sure that if there was one direction that my research wouldn't take me in then it was 'alife'. Not that I don't find it interesting in some respects, but aesthetically the idea of making work composed of blobs on a computer screen appearing to interact with each other doesn't appeal.

However, as is the nature of research, I'm finding my prejudices challenged over this topic. While, lot's of alife work *does* lead to blobs bouncing around computer screens, some of the underlying theory is actually rather good.

I'll introduce an 'alife' category in my del.icio.us links and see what else I can uncover that's of use.

I've added links to my Google Video and Flickr Pictures accounts. At the moment they contain mostly older work of mine, but I will start uploading new materials in the not too distant future.

It's been a productive week MA wise. I have been doing quite a lot of Web research in to art movements and artists, trying to place my work in a wider context.

An interesting find was the Open Systems exhibition I missed (!) at the Tate. I have the book on order, but already I'm starting to find quite a bit of relevant research by searching for information about the artists whose work was exhibited. I wish I'd seen the exhibition though.

I also started to get my Web links in order. I am using a delicious page to organise them. This week's task was to present our links in Harvard format. I am actaully fairly familiar with this and I think it was more important for me personally to get my links out of my Web browser and in to a form that other people can access.

During my on-line tutorial this week we discussed the action research approach to creative practice. Based on my past research activities I had imagined that I would follow a methodology along these lines, but I wasn't previously aware that it had a name. It's something else that I'm now starting to read up on.

I mean, it was only on for three and a half months! I managed to miss a really interesting-looking exhibition at the Tate entitled Open Systems: Rethinking Art c.1970. It's probably the most relevant exhibition to my work that's been on for years and I missed it. Oh well, I've ordered a copy of the book by Donna De Salvo, which I think will be useful anyway...

I had a busy week last week. I joined the online seminar via my Internet link in Bulgaria (I'm back in the UK now), which worked perfectly. The seminar itself was useful, despite a little confusion over the PG module we need to do!

I managed to re-read 'The Web of Life' while I was away and am currently re-reading 'The Tree of Knowledge'. I also added 'Hamlet on the Holodeck' to my reading list as it seems to be a book that other students are finding useful.

I managed to revise my project proposal to take account of my current thinking, and whilst it may appear somewhat unintelligible to others at the moment (!), it lays things out clearly to me.

The resulting artworks will be much more accessible than the underlying theory might suggest.

I've decided to re-read what I regard as the three 'essential' texts for my current research. These are:

• 'The Tree of Knowledge' by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Valera
• 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind' by Gregory Bateson
• 'The Web of Life' by Fritjof Capra

When I have finished I will write a posting about why these books are so important to my work.

I'm a couple of days late doing this! I have an excuse though, I have been travelling and am now in my place in Bulgaria after a weekend at a conference in Constanta, Romania.

I enjoyed the MA 'chat' on Tuesday. It was good to start the process of meeting people, although I haven't really been as active on the discussion board as I should!

Despite being a busy week for me, I've still had the time to create this blog and start posting thoughts about my work. That's good.

I wonder though what the others students will make of my project. I have a pretty clear idea of the piece of work I want to make and see the MA as an opportunity for me to make the time to do it and to get feedback from others. I don't know (yet) if this is the approach being taken by the other course members.

OK, enough of the theory for now (although there will be lots more coming up). What might the artwork look like?

Well, this is my current thinking. I want to create three pieces of work. The first will be based around 'life' (taking in to account the theory stuff I'm in to). The next will be about 'consciousness', and I'm not 100% sure about the last piece (although I have some ideas). It is the life piece I will create as part of the MA.

Each of the three pieces will be in turn made of three smaller pieces. In the gallery context this will take the form of three portrait-oriented high-definition video screens arranged as a Triptych.

On each screen there will be a rich, multi-layered, video sequence (similar in style to my previous live work (such as the SofaLofa visuals), but in HD quality. Each will be mixed/generated in real-time (using Max/MSP/Jitter) from video footage I will collect over the coming year.

Each screen/piece will have a speaker for playing a part of the soundtrack and video camera. The pieces will 'listen' to each others' soundtracks and respond by changing their own sound and video in ways I have yet to finalise. Each screen will also be 'aware' of the presence of the viewer via its video camera (as with A Choreographer's Cartography) and, again, respond in some way.

The three screens, plus the viewer will form a system in which I can explore emergence and autopoisis through the generation of sound and the mixing of images. I want the work to both be about my theoretical interests (in terms of the imagery used) but also to to exhibit these actual properties.

The next two pieces of work would then expand the interactive space so that each group of three screens would interact both with themselves and with the other sets of three screens. It will become a system of systems with the viewer or viewers being an integral part of the whole.

It's important that the work have a gentle and almost 'sublime' quality to it, a bit like Flow (that's so long as I have the ability to achieve this!). Hence the use of HD video and perhaps lighting effects around the exhibition space. I would like to evoke the feeling you get when viewing a beautiful stained-glass window.

I will also look to present the work as a live cinema performance on three video projectors with live music. Finally, I will explore the possibility of presenting it as outside projections on a public building. These are forms I have used in my work previously.

And that is the starting point for my project.

Before I start writing about what I imagine the artwork will look like, I should also introduce some other concepts that are important to my work. These are 'complexity', 'self-organisation' and 'emergence'.

Complexity refers to systems or environments that have a lot going on in them and are therefore difficult to make predictions about. The weather is 'complex', human brains are complex, societies are complex. However, they are not random. One feature of complexity and complex systems is that it's hard to make sense of the whole by studying the individual bits.

Self-organisation is the process in which these systems are able to structure themselves without a centralised guiding force.

Emergence is the process by which brand new structures and properties appear in a complex system. These new properties can seem completely unrelated to the constituent parts of the system, have no guiding force, be unpredicable and spectacular.

I probably need to explain these concepts further at some point.