In this paper, the author provides a critical examination and a creative reversal of the legacy of cybernetics. It seeks to both interrogate the underlying rhetoric fueling the post-biological technocracy and explores how embodied, bio-adaptive, game-based networked performance practices can serve as an antidote.

In the scholarly community, the concept of complexity is typically associated with science. However, the consumer view on complexity is different. To understand the conceptual structure of complexity, the author analyzed self-declared interests harvested from complexity-related blogs in LiveJournal. The author arranged the interests into a semantic network, based on their similarity of use. The network has a modular structure and consists of four clusters linked with four aspects of complexity: Science, Philosophy, Art and Soul. Apparently laypersons perceive complexity not only as a scientific phenomenon but also as an intricacy associated with creativity, search for wisdom, and a potentially painful soul search.

Mapping Paris: Social and Artistic Networks, 1855–1889 charts and analyzes 19th-century social networks in order to map the artistic collaborations taking place in Paris between the Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1889. In doing so, it allows scholars to view the data in novel ways and to foster considerations of aesthetic dialogue through crossed paths, acquaintances, friendships, conversations and collaborations in the social condenser of Paris. This article focuses on situating the project on its theoretical foundations, considers some of the research questions that can be investigated through such a methodological tool and contemplates the implications on the discipline of art history.

In this article the authors present an ongoing research project aimed at supporting scholars in the exploration of historical networks through a highly visual and interactive environment for the construction and the manipulation of graphs. They briefly illustrate and discuss a set of techniques defined within a multidisciplinary academic context to better integrate scholars and students’ knowledge beyond the graph.

Network science has shown itself to be useful in understanding a complex system by allowing us to unearth novel and intriguing patterns among its components. It is playing a particularly integral role in understanding social systems where collaboration between people is essential. Music is one such domain, as evidenced by how its centuries-old history is filled with intriguing episodes of collaborations between its central personalities and the influences they exerted on one other. In this article, the authors present their findings in the network understanding of the landscape of collaborations in western classical music.