From Problem-solving to Co-ontogenic Drift:

How do Learning Narratives Self-Generate?

The term co-ontogenic drift was coined from the language of the pioneering biologist

Humberto Maturana and the work of cybernetician Francisco Varela

Inner responsiveness of an embodiedand contextually situated self

A Move Into an Active Learning Experience of Possibilities

First Year Embodied Line Project developed into an Instructional performance

Where the audience became part of the learning process

Focus is on ‘logic‘ of relationships to develop a situated self through a felt awareness of a shared environment.

The intra-action within the learner and the inter-action between the learner and the environment contribute to the field of embodiment.

The environment ( the wave pattern) interacts with the system-in-progress, the designer (circle), which includes other systems/people. Social interactions occur in which they mutually influence each other in a consensual domain where new patterns are created.

For deep learning to take place structural changes come into play. In a living systems approach, a network of relationships develop that opposes a hierarchical command and allows for communication between people and between people and objects to develop.

‘When a living system reaches out to its environment, it is as if the system is drifting in the medium formed by its holistic environment, which, in human terms is all- inclusive.’ An organism selects behaviours according to what it knows at the time.

‘Evolution is a natural drift, a product of the conservation of autopoiesis [self-generation] and adaptation’ which sums up the relationship-of-discovery between operationally closed (autopoiesis) and structurally open.

Co-ontogenic drift in our context of design happens when we enter into a network of co-creation.

We allow for structural changes and the co-emergence of new worlds of meaning and a constructed reality enacting a symbiotic collective.

Ontogenic drift is a biological and natural process of change in a system since it points to a continual selection of what is at hand and it leads to possibilities inherent in the idea of co-creation.

Caring for the Earth: Design moving from existing independently to an experience of co-existence.

The process was self-generating and lines and planes were allowed to develop into unexpected forms.

‘Co-drifting has a certain meaning for each of us which arises in our doing together.’Our drift is not a reaction to representations, but a creation of the story of our movement through the world.

Knowledge is always created as a form of movement. In the creative process, the consciousness of the self is primarily involved in its cognitive state

‘Our lecturer has been our facilitator, merely acting as a constructive perturbing unit. She does not determine the exact direction of the drift or growth [and yet] as a consequence of her experience she could trigger drift in all areas of our development where it was most relevant and essential’.

From origination to presentation

Innovation as a natural process of adaptation experienced by the student

Interpretation of the ‘message’ in the complex communication network

Design knowledge begins with self-constructed spheres of experience, being present and conscious in the moment in time and space.

Thank You