Author: agent Paranyushkin

EightOS

EightOS / ∞OS is an open-source operating system for the bodymind. Its objective is to explore how the dynamics and behavior of natural systems can be modulated in physical, cognitive, and social realms. EightOS is concerned with the aesthetic, intuitive, and scientific understanding of this exploration. The key interest in EightOS practice is the notion of confluence — be it to another person, to a group, to space, or the environment — in order to create the conditions for adaptability, resilience, and evolutionary development to emerge. While EightOS finds its expression as a physical, artistic, and cognitive practice it is strongly linked to technology. The "operating system" metaphor highlights the approach where the body is seen as the hardware and the habits, cultural patterns, behaviors, and beliefs are seen as the software. EightOS offers the tools and methodologies that can be used to reprogram this software, making references to disciplines ranging from...

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InfraNodus

InfraNodus is a tool, framework, and methodology for generating ideas and insight with network thinking and AI. It also promotes cognitive variability, which helps make perception and thinking more adaptive and resilient. InfraNodus uses a combination of text network analysis, data visualization, natural language processing, and AI to extract the most important elements of any discourse and to encourage a user to change their perspective and connect their ideas in a new way. Starting as an artistic research project by Dmitry Paranyushkin in 2012, InfraNodus evolved into a subscription-based online tool that is used by thousands of people and companies worldwide in applications ranging from competitive intelligence and discourse studies to ideation and writing. Its unique interface is comprised of a visual rhizomatic representation of the main concepts, topical clusters, and relations between them, which would probably make Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault very happy. This interactive graph can be used to explore any discourse...

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Circadian

Circadian Press is a publishing house founded by Dmitry Paranyushkin and Diego Agullo in 2017. In 2019, Noam Assayag also joined our team. We focus on books that bring the word into action. Works that present both the practice and concrete ways of inscribing it into the real. Some books can take shape of a manual, and some may be more poetic, but in every book, readers should find concrete ways to try out a version of reality they propose by themselves. Most of the Circadian books are written by people who have a very specific practice and who are interested to share it with the world. When we select the authors to publish, we do not look for self-help books or manuals on how to improve ourselves. Rather, we're interested in the books that our readers can use to explore themselves and to make their lives more interesting or even more...

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Embodied Decentralization @ Ethereum Conference | 09/2022

Ethereum conference is a regular gathering of people interested in blockchain technology from around the world. In the frame of the JOY space at the conference, I hosted an EightOS session where we explored how decentralization of trust (often talked about in crypto circles) can be explored in an embodied way. Interestingly, numerous principles in blockchain technology are very much similar to the patterns that are present in nature, due to the higher level of resilience and adaptability they provide (nature had to evolve this way to avoid a single point of failure and to have backup options). For example, blockchain, by design, has a high level of decentralization, which makes it more resilient against a malfunction or an attack. Yet, when talking about "decentralization" as a concept, we approach it intellectually or in application to a specific engineering problem, losing the "sense" of what it might actually feel like. In my...

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Ecological Variability

The concept of Ecological Variability is a module I use to have a point of reference. Variability is very important. Things that don't change eventually solidify or die down. At the same time, too much variability can be too much sometimes. And this is not even a preference that you might have. It all comes down to ecology. Self-sustained dynamics that will evolve and develop will survive. Those who don't adapt or insist in a rigid kind of way will gradually run out of resources. So in the end, it's good for the environment if the dynamics of this variability is ecological. Species can co-exist, organisms can develop and grow, people can think of creative stuff and science instead of impeding crises and wars. This is how it translates into politics, everyday life, movement, and anything else. Interchangeble cycles are good. If they have variability — even better. Sometimes it is also important to...

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Ecological Thinking Framework @ InfraNodus | 07/2022

In August 2022, I presented the ecological thinking framework in the context of InfraNodus tool for insight generation. InfraNodus platform has thousands of users who use it for ideation, knowledge management, and text analysis. I decided to integrate this framework directly into the tool, so it would be available to the users within their existing workflows. After the functionality was released, I also hosted a webinar where I showcased this methodology and proposed several ways to integrate it into research practice. The basic approach behind the ecological thinking framework is closely related to panarchy, embracing the iterative nature of any developmental process: a period of extensive growth is followed by stagnation, followed by release, which frees up resources for reorganization. It is a useful framework for thinking about ecological systems, particularly in the context of limited resources. In panarchy, recession and crisis are seen as an opportunity to optimize the existing...

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Mattang @ La Maison Forte | 06/2022

La Maison Forte is an organization in South France dedicated to the cultural and economic development of rural territories. They approached me in 2021 to work together on analyzing the problems and needs of the people who live in the region using the research methodology of InfraNodus, the tool that I've been developing. We decided to use InfraNodus to create cartography for new ideas and possibilities in the region. In the frame of this project, called Mattang, La Maison Forte conducted interviews with 50 inhabitants of the region. We then processed those interviews using InfraNodus to extract the main topics: what people like, the problems they experience, things that could be improved. We used the built-in structural gap detection to detect possible new ideas that we could propose back to the community based on this collective discourse — bridging the different topics that came up during conversations in new ways. As a result,...

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