{"id":4665,"title":"Electronic Zen: The Alternative Video Generation Self-Correction Through Cybernetics Jud Yalkut Interviews Paul Ryan","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/electronic-zen-alternative-video-generation-self-correction-through-cybernetics-jud-yalkut-interview","version":"da9304cc36500e81cf7d6ca23ad4316d4988b28e56ef197e9665a7c016593d15","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:00.9248436+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Jud Yalkut"}],"authorKeys":["Yalkut, Jud"],"subjects":["Interviews"],"metadata":[{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC1023","url":null},{"label":"Interviewee","value":"Paul Ryan","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Electronic Zen: The Alternative Video Generation Self-Correction Through Cybernetics Jud Yalkut Interviews Paul Ryan.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/electronic-zen-alternative-video-generation-self-correction-through-cybernetics-jud-yalkut-interview.","publication":"Jud Yalkut. Electronic Zen: The Alternative Video Generation Self-Correction Through Cybernetics Jud Yalkut Interviews Paul Ryan. 1984.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/4665.ris"},"links":[],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":47309},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":637}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"\u0022Regarding black and white videotape we make the following assumptions: -Videotape records a person\u0027s genetically determined uniqueness, that is, their firstness. -Videotape records the way of a person\u0027s firstness, that is, the mode in which they have learned to segment the continuum of their experience. -Through videotape feedback a person can learn to enhance their way and learn new ways. -Through imitation of another on videotape, one can learn another\u0027s way. -Videotape can record the given pattern of differentiation of many natural and man made forms in such a manner as they can be understood structurally by man. -Videotape feedback opens up channels of communication in a triad of people sufficient to enable them to stabilize a threefold relationship in a self corrective manner.\u0022 - PAUL RYAN from EARTHSCORE (For an intentional community using videotape). JUD: Jargon? PAUL: Jargon. (Laughter) Vocabulary. Yes, I\u0027ve had to develop a peculiar jargon, because when you talk about tape you develop a new vocabulary on top of tape that has to be different. So, what words come to your mind? I have a friend who used to say: \u0022Think of your five favorite words, and you\u0027ll know pretty much where you\u0027re at.\u0022 JUD: Well, let\u0027s start out with Kleinform, and the differentiation between Kleinform and Klein bottle. PAUL: The Klein bottle is a mathematical curiosity developed by a mathematician named Klein in Germany (NOTE: Felix Klein- 1849-1925), and what I did with it was to transform it into a form. I\u0027ll talk about it and then come to a tighter definition. JUD: Right. PAUL: A bottle gets its stability from gravity. So just by naming it a bottle the cat precluded thinking about it, but when you take the part contained through and come out again, and go back through and then link up again, you\u0027ve got a different systemic, a different relationship, and the stability comes from the interrelationship of the parts and not from it being named a bottle. The Klein bottle itself, if you try to use it as a model of thought, allows a kind of inspin. You can go from the part that\u0027s contained to the part containing, and back and forth, with a kind of an oscillation. With the Kleinform you can\u0027t do that. \u0022The Klein bottle outline passes continuously from part contained to part containing that part, and vice versa, without formation of a part uncontained. In kleinformation such a passage is not possible. This is the essential difference ... This two part pattern of thinking we call inspin. It is like a dog chasing his tail unto exhaustion. Inspining is not thinking kleinform. Kleinform maintains a threefold differentiation of part containing, part uncontained and part contained. If you have less than three self differentiating parts, you are not kleinforming.\u0022 -Paul Ryan in EARTHSCORE JUD: You would equate oscillations with the inspinning process. A pendulum. RYAN: Yes, a pendulum form. Any back and forth, dyadic type of motion, that simply by that motion can become so symmetrically related as to lose context. If you work into a triadic system, you\u0027re insisting upon context. That was McCullough\u0027s idea; towards the end of his life what he got into was triadic logic, because if you have a triadic system, you necessitate thinking about context. I mean, if you stay within that mapping context you\u0027re insisting on context. And it\u0027s a form. I thought it was a language at first; I made that mistake in the last chapter of the book I wrote (NOTE: BIRTH AND DEATH AND CYBERNATION, an Interface Book, Gordon And Breach, 1973.). I took the mathematician Rene Thom uncritically, but it seems that language structure is subject-predicate, and that\u0027s the dominant mode of the way we think- JUD: With modifiers- PAUL: And qualifiers, and so forth. A Kleinform is a different structure for intelligence, and a lot of the struggle that I\u0027ve been in is trying to get this non-verbal form accessible to people in words, so that they can understand it. It\u0027ll come. I\u0027m developing a language that will do that. It\u0027s much more important. People who work with tape understand it quite easily, and dancers have come to understand it by working in the form. JUD: You can\u0027t think of any semantic equivalents? PAUL: Not structural equivalents, not semantic structural equivalents. It\u0027s not a language. I thought it was a language, I called it a language, but it\u0027s not a language. It\u0027s a form. Spencer Brown\u0027s LAWS OF FORM was helpful in thinking about it, though I disagree entirely with his basic distinction of dyadics which he works from. I think that\u0027s acontextural and I think it\u0027s bullshit of a kind, even though it\u0027s elegant. JUD: It\u0027s extremely elegant. PAUL: Yes, and the elegance has an enormous strength, but he and John Lily are both on a kind of attenuated trip from what I can see. I mean they\u0027ve thinned out their thinking for the sake of elegance, but it loses context. The structure involved loses context. That\u0027s my sense of it; I\u0027m sure there are other readings. So, that\u0027s Kleinform. Firstness is another word that I\u0027ve been using. It comes from the Stoics, and also Charles S. Pierce. Pierce was very fond of it. And I liked it because it precluded a hierarchy. If everybody\u0027s got firstness, then there\u0027s nobody that\u0027s first. JUD: As we used to say in the USCO group: \u0022You don\u0027t have to be first to be on top.\u0022 PAUL: Right. That kind of thing. And it also speaks of uniqueness, like if you record it on tape, you can\u0027t imitate it; it\u0027s like a fingerprint. When somebody\u0027s on tape, the firstness is apparent, and you can\u0027t argue with it, nor can they really. (Laughter) You\u0027ve got to come to some relation to it. And I think it\u0027s a genetically determined reality, and the first reality to accept. It\u0027s the first limit system you deal with, your genetic coding, and if you move outside your firstness, to develop ways of behaving that are contrary to your firstness, you wind up schizophrenic. And the culture\u0027s pushed us that way. JUD: Into developed secondness, in a sense. PAUL: Right. I\u0027ve come to use the phrase \u0022departures from firstness,\u0022 related to the conceptualization of the community that works by electric tape, or electric metaphors, basically tape, and there will others, like holograms. Basically nonprint media. Departure from firstness seems to be the mistake, the error which can be made if you push somebody so that they\u0027re forced into a contradictory relationship with their firstness, or if they push themselves, and then a contradiction is created, and so on. Foistness. (Laughter) Other vocabulary? Chreod is another one. Chreod is a term developed by Waddington. That is another thing in the book that I didn\u0027t get entirely clear. What Waddington was after was a necessary path of development, and Thom picked it up and generalized it. It comes from two greek words: Od, meaning path or way, and ere, meaning when it is necessary. There are certain structures, or certain models, that support and describe a process, like the tape I made with the Kleinform on the floor which described and supported the process that was going on. Waddington was working in genetics and embryology and developed this notion that are certain patterns, necessary pathways, that if a process is developing there is a necessary pathway that you can describe, and that if it\u0027s disturbed, it will return to this pathway. What I tried to do with the notion of sacred chreod was to say that in our evolutionary schemae, there are necessary pathways that evolution has taken which, if we disrupt them, or destroy them, we destroy ourselves. Bateson\u0027s rap is that the species that destroys its environment, destroys itself. So that\u0027s what the EARTHSCORE text is about in terms of chreod cells, the attempt to discover those given patterns of differentiation in the evolutionary ecological scheme, which if we destroy we destroy ourselves. And by fixing the word sacred to it, the intent is to release and bring to bear man\u0027s religious traditions and religious sensitivities in relation to the life support system that he has. It\u0027s a very rich notion. Thom and Waddington also go in for the notion of homeorhesis, rather than homeostasis, \u0022rhesis\u0022 being \u0022over time,\u0022 because they say that homeostasis is death. It\u0027s a spatial metaphor, whereas homeorhesis is a developmental process. JUD: What about the terms, cell and chreche? PAUL: Creche-cell. I like the sense of the word. It\u0027s like a crib, in French, and it has the sense of child, and care and tenderness. It\u0027s like the family cell in a sense. You see, the structure of EARTHSCORE is entirely mathematical; it\u0027s a rigorous mathematical metaphor. The words could be changed. The notion is basically a self-corrective cell of three, and then three different orders of cells, which were named creches. The business of the chreche cell is taking care of firstness; that\u0027s its basic function. Chreod cells being cells that decode the given pattern, the differentiation, the ecology, and organize behavior in relation to respecting those patterns. And the work cell would be the cell that interlaced with the society-at-large and maintained whatever was necessary. With the notion of three being self-corrective, you can work exponentially, just increasing, so you go from three to twelve, and then three sets of twelve, three different orders. Once you get to Kleinform, as opposed to Bateson\u0027s work, which is based on the theory of logical types, no class can be a member of itself which assumes a discontinuity between a class and its members. If you accept the conceptualization of logical types, which I think is basically a print metaphor, you\u0027re inevitably caught in a class society, which is what Marx was decoding and was riled against. We\u0027ve got to get to a classless society, and if you work in Kleinform you can have a society with no class, because you assume that people are discrete, such as bits of alphabet on a page. You don\u0027t class people according to discretion; you accept that they\u0027re part of a continuum, which has very large philosophical ramifications. When I read Pierce and saw what he was trying to do with a triadic system, it\u0027s enormously rich, enormously strong, and also his sense of the continuum. But the understanding of a continuum has always been linked up with a unity, a unifying kind of principle. In other words, if it\u0027s continuous it\u0027s unified. You cannot differentiate. Once you pass the continuum back into itself, you have the capacity of the mind to differentiate without severance, without discretion, without cutting off. So you never lose that you\u0027re part of the whole. I don\u0027t know how far it can go as a form. My sense of it is that as a form it will take habit in an evolutionary sense; that we\u0027ve had a period, by my calculations, of the 60s and so forth as a period of trial and error, which was random, and the cybernetic metaphor was used randomly. I sort of came to that through McLuhan, through the use of video, and became dissatisfied with the randomness, in terms of using something like video, and out of the video work, that form came to my mind. It seems now that that form can take habit, that it\u0027s possible for that form to take habit. I used to use the metaphor of guerilla warfare in a random way. For me, anyway, that phase is over. The random is not a coherent metaphor. It was useful at the end of the 60s, but not that useful now, although it was rich. There\u0027s a more formalized possibility that I can see now, using the conceptualization that I\u0027ve come to, or the composition of EARTHSCORE, but the Kleinform is basically that which can take habit. What I\u0027m up against now is trying to find the proper context for that to take habit, and I\u0027m still not sure yet, at this point, what that is. \u0022In English, the verbal formulation that best insures the mind of staying within the rigorous mapping of relationships possible in kleinform is the injunction, never less than three.\u0022 This we call the Canon of Self Correction... That which cannot be decoded or com","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":47309,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}