Dr Mattia Paganelli

Staff details

Position

Lecturer Computational Arts

Department

Email

Lecturer and researcher in non-linearity, philosophy, and contemporary art

I work at the intersection of contemporary philosophy, non-linear sciences and art.
Drawing on computational complexity, statistical mechanics and algorithmic information theory, my research explores how emergent properties and the dissipative coherence of autonomous systems (metastability) define new epistemological and aesthetic dimensions that constitute the sensual and poetic materiality of contemporary art practices.
My aim is to articulate the challenge this peculiar materiality of information, correlations and distributions brings to the linear understanding of aesthetics, and to develop conceptual tools that can enable both the artist and the thinker to operate beyond the metaphysical split of material-immaterial that still occludes ontological progress and artistic imagination.
The goal is to recast aesthetics not as the expression of ontology, but as the encounter with or the event of an ecology (logic of sense).

Academic qualifications

PhD, Philosophy and Contemporary Art, Birmingham School of Art, 2016 (AHRC Funded) 2016

Teaching and supervision

I would be interested in supervising research on the following subjects:

• incomputability / complexity / non-linearity / emergence / metastability / individuation
• irreducibility / asymmetry / finitude / possibility / materiality
• medium / poetics / sensuality / n-dimensional and ana-dimensional media
• post-ontological aesthetics / epistemology / ecologies / logic of sense / topology
• contingency / recursivity / information / entropy / noise / contingency of necessity
• intensity / diffraction / distribution / multiplicities / circulations / economies
• practice-based research / ana-methodology / encounter / event / collective learning

Module Leader: MA - Computational Arts-Based Research and Theory
Module Leader: MFA - Computational Arts Critical Studies

Research interests

My research looks at the statistical and informational reinterpretation of thermodynamics developed in complexity theory (Prigogine, Stengers, Turing, Chaitin, Cavia) asking how this can open radical new paths for thinking individuation, emergence, and agency as the entropic asymmetry of dissipative structures. The hypothesis is that this introduces a move where the notion of meta-stable equilibrium erases all distance between ‘natural’ and machinic (artificial) and replaces their a priori or virtual explanations for regimes where recursivity produces contingent and yet irreducible forms of autonomous organisation (necessity).

Publications and research outputs

Article

Paganellli, Mattia. 2023. Lyotard and Critical Practice [Book Review]. Philosophy of Photography, 14(1), pp. 129-133. ISSN 2040-3682

Paganellli, Mattia. 2017. Ontology Interrupted: Prigogine, Stengers and the Abdication of Physics. Pulse: a History, Sociology & Philosophy of Science Journal(5), pp. 46-70. ISSN 2416-111X

Paganellli, Mattia and Worrallo, Dane. 2015. Eleven Theses for An Initial degree of Roughness: Transubstantiation, Materiality and Art. Zetesis: The International Journal for Fine Art, Philosophy and the Wild Sciences, 2(1), pp. 121-127. ISSN 2059-2582

Book Section

Paganellli, Mattia. 2021. Asymmetry: How Patterns of Impossibility Mark Dimensions in Knowledge Systems. In: Johnny Golding; Martin Reinhart and Mattia Paganellli, eds. Data Loam: Sometimes Hard, Usually Soft. The Future of Knowledge Systems. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 171-193. ISBN 9783110680072

Edited Book

Golding, Johnny; Reinhart, Martin and Paganellli, Mattia, eds. 2021. Data Loam: Sometimes Hard, Usually Soft. The Future of Knowledge Systems. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. ISBN 9783110680072

Edited Journal

Golding, Johnny; Hewett, Lee; Rogers, Henry; Paganellli, Mattia; Worrallo, Dane; Ceglarz, Jakub; Williams, Grace and Henderson, Joanne, eds. 2014. Twice Upon A Time: Magic, Alchemy and the Transubstantiation of the Senses, Zetesis: The International Journal for Fine Art, Philosophy and the Wild Sciences, 2(3). 2059-2582

Golding, Johnny; Casey, Mona; Cheeseman, David; Hellings, James; Paganellli, Mattia; Rogers, Henry; Wild, Carol and Williams, Grace, eds. 2013. The Cruelty of the Classical Canon, Zetesis: The International Journal for Fine Art, Philosophy and the Wild Sciences, 1(1). 2059-2582

Golding, Johnny; Casey, Mona; Cheeseman, David; Hellings, James; Paganellli, Mattia; Rogers, Henry; Wild, Carol and Williams, Grace, eds. 2013. Wet ⇌ Dry ⇌ thick ⇌ thiN ⇌ (GettiNG beyoND the raW aND the cookeD), Zetesis: The International Journal for Fine Art, Philosophy and the Wild Sciences, 1(2). 2059-2582