Another fantastic day at Wysing yesterday - five hours of informative talks woven together by wonderful artists' films. It was brilliantly curated by Lotte and Gareth and the whole Wysing gang were out in force - live-streaming the event, running the cafe and generally making the whole thing run smoothly. And, as ever, a really fantastic and engaged audience. Central to the whole event was the absent Polish logician Alfred Tarski (1901-1983) whose work on developing a method to realise the truth - which he did through creating a meta-language that speaks in relation to an object-language and which I mentioned in a blog entry from last October here - has been central to our whole programme this year. We were very lucky indeed to have Michael Potter, Professor of Logic at the University of Cambridge, talk about how Tarski developed his theories and the importance of the truth to logicians. His talk was a real highlight for me and I loved the idea of logicians across the centuries, puzzling over endless paradoxes in search of clarity. For me, clarity came, as it so often does, in the art - Wojciech Bruszewski’s 'Matchbox' 1975 being the perfect end to the day but also wonderful to screen Anna Barham's 'Argent Minotaur Slept' 2012. Anna was in-residence earlier this year and, as it happens, was also taught by Michael Potter when she studied philosophy at Cambridge. No doubt we'll be posting from photos from the day on our Facebook page soon. Next up is a talk on folk traditions and superstition, this Thursday, 3 October, more info here.

Tags: alfred tarski | 

Thanks to Philomene Pirecki for sending this page from Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus where he references Artistotle's  writings on the truth paradox. This is exactly what Alfred Tarski was aiming to address, and which led to the creation of his T sentences - A and B is true if and only if A and B is true, etc. All starting points for our forthcoming residencies which, in case you don't already know, includes some fantastic artists who will be living and working at Wysing over the next year - Anna Barham, James Beckett, Michael Dean, Cécile B Evans, David Osbaldeston, Seb Patane, Charlotte Prodger and Florian Roithmayr.

Tags: albert camus |  alfred tarski |  philomene pirecki | 

A sentence of the form “A and B” is true if and only if A is true and B is true.
A sentence of the form “A or B” is true if and only if A is true or B is true.
A sentence of the form “if A then B” is true if and only if A is false or B is true.
A sentence of the form “not A” is true if and only if A is false.
A sentence of the form “for all x, A(x)” is true if and only if, for every possible value of x, A(x) is true.
A sentence of the form “for some x, A(x)” is true if and only if, for some possible value of x, A(x) is true.

Tags: alfred tarski |