[co-teaching by Justin Hoffmann]

Communication occurs on many levels and in many places. Rules and guidelines alter our perception of reality and act as a means of control.

When information about the current "state of events" or of past events is used to influence or control present actions -- a system is said to be using feedback. Feedback is the basis of any intelligent behaviour, either machine or human. By reacting to its environment and learning from its history, an organism is able to achieve balance in a changing world. Effective design creates, exposes and influences feedback loops.

Part 1

In which loopings are you strangled? Which spirals of information do you recognise in your neighbourhood? Which processes of feeding and backfeeding are bothering you? Collect material / Describe a looping system.
[spirals of violence in israël and palestina, hunger in africa -- ban on smoking in the usa, scenes of a marriage, bowing in japan, anxiety to fail on high schools, summer of love, the cockroaches in my kitchen]

Identify the participants.
[the individual, a family, a community, a company, a society]

Describe the place in which communciation occurs.
[waldmannstraße 38, the green room, mongolia, international space station, on any screen, along the highway, in my head, basements in berlin]

Describe the pathways or links that exist between the participants. What allowes the feed- and feedbackmessages moving?
[talking, reading, typing, haircutting, touching, tv, radio, internet, hypnosis, wiring, viewing, airwaves]

What is the level/scale of the system?
[worldwide, universal, high-/lowclass, microcosmos]

Which rules and guidelines are active?
[laws, religion, morality, psychoanalysis, art, politics, education]

Is there a regulator?
[shame, hunger, tiredness, saturation, abstenation, disease]

Visualise the looping in different ways.
Use pages/posters on size A3. Use a grid of squares. Define typo-/pictographical tools. Act like an editorial designer.

part 2

Create a "looping form", define the starting material and the rules which when followed takes part in and improves the quality of an existing looping system. With each loop, the system should act to accumulate, intensify, and clarify its information.