It's a cold weather day, time for some Guy Madden movies.
#GuyMadden #surrealism #constructivism

Sophie Taeuber-Arp, 'Military guards' (1918)

#art #womenart #female #artist #ConcreteArt #Dada #Dadaism #Constructivism #ModernArt #marionette #marionettes #theatre #theater #avantgarde #Swiss

(1/2):

Accidentally Constructivist: Asking the Wall if the Moon is Cheese

I'm learning about formal proofs and logic, and honestly, a lot of it feels off. Maybe it’s my background in CS (I dropped out of community college, but the intuition stuck).

First, Proof by Contradiction feels weird. Just because something is "Not False" doesn't necessarily mean it's True. It’s just... Not False. It's like saying just because I didn't lose, I must have won. But what if it's a draw? Why does the lack of a counter-example suddenly count as absolute proof? It feels like we're conflating "undisprovable" with "true." Gödel literally proved that truth is bigger than proof, so why do we pretend the binary covers everything?

And Vacuous Truth seems preposterous. Wdym "from falsehood follows anything"? How can you have a valid proof where the contra-proof is equally valid? "All unicorns are purple" is True, but "All unicorns are green" is also True? What kind of Schrödinger's cat logic is that? It feels like asking a wall if the moon is cheese. The wall says nothing, so logic assumes "Yes." To me, logic is looking for Compliance (did I break a rule?), but I’m looking for Content (does this actually exist?).

I also have issues with Set Theory, specifically the Empty Set. Math admits that Infinities can differ (Reals > Naturals), so why is "Nothing" always the same? In ZFC, an empty set of apples is identical to an empty set of oranges. That feels wrong. Think about the Zero Vector in physics. It has zero magnitude, but it still has direction (2D vs 3D). It remembers where it came from. The Empty Set should be the same, it should keep a trace of what it’s empty of.

#math #logic #constructivism #philosophy

The Constructivist Lens card is my favourite kind of philosophical troublemaker: a reminder that seeing is never neutral and knowledge is always built on scaffolding. MTG parody card.
👉 https://philosophics.blog/2025/12/10/contructivist-lens-parody-artefact/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mtg
#Constructivism #Perspective #Epistemology #Philosophy #Psychology #Language #metaphor #Reality #truth

New card in the Critical Theory parody set: Language Game

Wittgenstein’s warning still stands: meaning isn’t a thing, it’s a use.
We live in the friction between saying and doing, countering and reframing.

👉 https://www.instagram.com/p/DQi2rvWjucT/

#Philosophy #CriticalTheory #Wittgenstein #Language #PhilosophyOfLanguage #Postmodernism #Constructivism #Philosophics #Epistemology #Meaning #Society #Communication #Instagram #MTG

Artifact drop: Constructivist Lens.
Tap to rewrite your ontology as metaphor. Because “truth” was always a house rule.

🔗 https://philosophics.blog/2025/10/31/constructivist-lens-artifact/

#Philosophy #Constructivism #MTG #Satire #CriticalTheory #parody #Postmodernism #Rorty #blog #sociology #psychology #LanguageGames #Philosophics

Used the whiteboard in my lecture today. Free speaking, working through the case in open dialogue.

No slides. Slides destroy the student's engagement, they present the material as fixed, whereas it is alive and needs to be called out.

My institution has rules that require us to use slides. I could not bear the suffocation any longer and just broke the rules. I will have to find some acceptable mix that maintains overall compliance, with the occasional free session smuggled in.

It was so liberating to be able to be in open dialogue with the material, no predetermined progression, the students experiencing the actual construction of knowledge live, sensing the personal investment needed to obtain truth.

The students were on board. Took notes, asked questions, talked to each other when I set them a task. Real learning, live in the classroom. Learning as joyful work, not as consumption. It is possible.

#lectures #pedagogy #HigherEducation #AcademicChatter #noSlides #constructivism

Alexey Viktorovich Shchusev or Алексе́й Ви́кторович Щу́сев, born OTD in 1873, designed Lenin's mausoleum in #Moscow's Red Square https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/russia/moscow.html?s=mb #travel #Russia #Constructivism

My PhD Podcasted (AI-generated): Construction of Generational Labels

https://blog.liberta.vip/academically/my-phd-podcasted-ai-generated-construction-of-generational-labels

#GenerationY #Millennials #Generations #Constructivism #ManagementFashions #PopularGenerationalLabels #ActorNetworkTheory #Sociology

OnlineFirst - "Constructivist economic geographies" by Rachel Phillips, Chris Meulbroek, and Jamie Peck:

#constructivism #methodology #economicgeography

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0308518X251375706

"Olly and Dolly Sisters," László Moholy-Nagy, 1925.

Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) was a Hungarian-born painter and photographer of the Bauhaus and Constructivist schools, who embraced photography as an artistic medium and sought to use it as an art form, rather than just a documentary technology.

The Dolly Sisters were Hungarian-born twins Rosie (1892-1970) and Jenny (1892-1941) who were popular dancers and silent film actresses in the 1920s, famed for their dancing and flamboyant, scandalous lifestyles. While the photograph appears to be one of them, it hints at both with the placement of one to one side and the one black circle hanging in space on the other.

Exactly what he was getting at with this work is anyone's guess, although it eerily prefigures how Jenny would die by suicide in her 40s. However, it's an arresting image, and a great demonstration of how Moholy-Nagy believed that technology and industry can be incorporated into art. He later did a number of innovative installations involving electronics and other technology.

From the Getty Museum.

#Art #Photography #Bauhaus #Constructivism #LaszloMoholyNagy #DollySisters

Heterosexuality is a regime of political oppression 🧶

"Just as racism produces race and not the other way round, sexism produces sex through the relationship of domination that reduces the dominated to things or natural objects."
… said Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz summarizing Monique Wittig

#materialism #beliefs #subjugation #radicality #EstelleSays #materialistFeminism #naturalism #appropriation #sexism #heteroSexuality #saphism #heteroNormativity #feminisms #history #MoniqueWittig #Wittig #literature #homosexuality #lesbianism #feminism #internationalism #patriarchy #linguistics #writing #minorityStudies #universalism #queer #constructivism #antagonism #culturalHistory #lesbians

@cryptadamist

>> a full 97% of U.S. and U.K. participants saw rectangles first. In the Himba villages, however, 96% of people saw circles first.
...
“If you’re trying to get a full picture of the world, you want to have some people in the room who see circles where you only see rectangles.”<<

#opticalillusion #constructivism #eye #brain

Vladimir Tatlin
Meat
---
#constructivism #Russianavantgarde #VladimirTatlin #art #painting

Vladimir Tatlin
Flowers
---
#VladimirTatlin #Russianavantgarde #constructivism #art #painting

“#Constructivism vs. #Realism - Would you rather have the red pill or the blue pill?”

The following #essay has actually been planned for some time and comes from the series “How much #construction does #reality contain?”, which I had already introduced with the older text #realists vs. #nominalists - or the old #dualism #thinking vs. #language.

More at: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2025/01/04/konstruktivismus-vs-realismus/

"Cetacea" was a piece out of four pieces which allowed it to take on different forms and shapes.
Finally shipped of to La 🇫🇷

for available work 🛒
https://thuhstudio.etsy.com

#minimalism #constructivism #architecture #sculpture #decor #art

#void #abstract #brutalism #architecture #layers #lampoon #light #lantern #maquette #architectuur #kunst #museum #light #interior #design #lamp #artwork #productdesign #led #lightingdesign #handmade #robot #beton #concrete

Alexey Viktorovich Shchusev or Алексе́й Ви́кторович Щу́сев, who died OTD in 1949, designed Lenin's mausoleum in #Moscow's Red Square https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/russia/moscow.html?s=mb #travel #Russia #Constructivism

today, april 24, in rome, a conference @ john cabot university: umberta telfener, “the systemic frame. the teachings of heinz von foerster”

THE SYSTEMIC FRAME.
THE TEACHINGS OF HEINZ VON FOERSTER
a talk by
Umberta Telfener

today – April 24 at 6pm
John Cabot University
Via della Lungara 233, Rome
ROOM GL1

 or online here:
LINK TO THE Teams MEETING

The systemic conceptual frame implies a change in the way we see the world, a non-linear causality, the utilization of multiple layers of observation and explanation. We do not look at the tree alone nor at the forest; we consider the relationship among the two and we get information by the differences which create a difference. This paradigmatic shift does not come immediately nor is it natural. Our western languages utilize a subject, an action and an object (the cat runs after the mouse) and we are used to a simplification of interactions. 

The systemic point of view has as a mandate to respect complexity.

I was lucky enough to meet Heinz von Foerster, a Viennese physicist considered the father of constructivism and second order cybernetics. In the seminar I will start talking about his teachings and will develop their implications for everyday life.

What are the epistemological implications of von Foerster’s proposal? Respecting complexity, reflexivity, constructivism, the observing system, individuals as self-organizing systems, positioning, the isomorphism between micro and macro, the political and ethical stances, are all concepts that have to do with his theoretical perspective. We will talk about it.

*

Umberta Telfener is a health psychologist, systemic psychotherapist, professor at the therapeutic school of Milan, Milan Approach, and President of the European Family Therapy Association (EFTA). She taught for ten years at the School of Specialization in Health Psychology at the University of Rome La Sapienza and since the 1980s has been a relationship manager for foreign relations at the Centro Milanese di Terapia della Famiglia.

https://neocyberneticcrew.org

#complexity #constructivism #cybernetics #differences #HeinzVonFoerster #JohnCabotUniversity #reflexivity #systemicConceptualFrame #systemicFrame #systemicPointOfView #UmbertaTelfener