II. Processes and their recordings

With this excursion into the crowds of London 150 years ago I would like to direct attention to the objects by Sylvia Schultes.
The titel of the exhibition Morphologic Fragments I, Swarm Intelligence For Beginners could announce an introductory course for all faculties in an uni- versity calendar; because this subject is impossible to be related to one subject only because it is evenly relevant for mathematics, physics, design, business and political economics. In regards of intellectual history morphology was intro- duced by Karl Friedrich BURDACH who researched distinctive features of embryonic levels of development and who drew conclusions regarding the biological relations of living beings because of the parallelism of physical characteristics taking shape. Because of this systematization was usable for transference to political, social and cultural fields morphology was eventually used for comparisons of historical eras in universal history. Oswald SPENGLER and Arnold J.TOYNBEE stand for this, who tried to identify and to arrange dynamics that make it possible to compare non-symultanous levels of development of various cultures.  The works of both historians are connected by the recording of the dynamics of cultural and historical processes; but whilst TOYNBEE constructed his system open, without results did SPENGLER succumb to the attraction of this method and drew prognoses for future developments that stood in the way of a politically defined development.

This approach cannot leave art un-touched because shape and design are basic for art works, and why philosophers have borrowed imaginations from art in order to grasp conceptually hierarchies in society. So did Karl Marx use 'base' and 'superstructure' to present the formation of society similar to that of a building or sculpture on a base. However the static presens of those is in contrast to the dynamics of social processes and the temporalities that overlay within these. Because of this the question arises how to imagine an entity that could serve as a projection screen of processes; because process
like thinking that represents cultural and organic occurences must include the dimension
 of time decisively!

Chronological courses of processes have always challenged philosophy and art. Today some of these events can be made visible with the help of technical means. When until then artists had a leading position in the field of visualization so has now competition grown by operators of image-supplying technologies. Ever since the 19th century when processes were able to be fixated by photography and films of momentary exposures procedures and correlations have become visible that remained hidden because of their rapidity or slowness of the inertia of the human apparatus of perception. Nevertheless the human ability for observation remained leading when for example it was about capturing observations with optical equipment that allowed to look deeper and deeper into the micro- and macro cosmos. Hand-drawings after natural- scientific observations were pushed aside by technical recordingings only when mid 20th century improved recording techniques - amongst which were also electron microscopy and radio astronomy that made observations in the non-perceivalbe area of the electromagnetic spectrum possible - could depict micro and macro cosmos in detail.  In excess of this nowadays the big challenge above all perceptions is no longer an adequate image but the disclosure of the development of cosmological, historical, ontological, social, biological and technical processes as well as their scientific compilation and systematizing: a complex and interdisciplinary field of which phenomena become predictable as well are able to be made visible by simulation, thus direct presentations by large computers. To what extent they truly become visible has to be debated separately.

In 1991 the swarm researcher Marco Dorigo found first mathematical procedures for the solution of collective movement in the logistics field of transport companies. New was that his distance calculations thought of an armada of vehicles as a whole which means that the disturbance of the movement of one vehicle influences all movement, which is why for optimizing efficiency new calculations of the routes of all vehicles are needed.
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Supported by the department for culture, sports and media of Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg and district office Wandsbek