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• Film Screening: Man on a Mission

  • When
    1 May 2024
  •  
    6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
  • Location
    The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park S, New York, NY 10003

  Register

  The Institute of General Semantics

  and

  The New York Society for General Semantics

  Are Proud to Present a Screening of

  Man on a Mission

  A Film By

  Dina Bruno Ciborowski

  and

  Robert Albrecht

  
  

  Man on a Mission (2023) tells the remarkable story of Carmine Tabone whose lifelong mission was to explore the innovative uses of the arts and play in the education and socialization of children. As we entered more deeply into the electronic revolution, Tabone uncovered multiple ways in which the arts and play could be used as media to motivate the development of oral communication, literacy, and social interaction. The video focuses primarily on Tabone’s work as founder and director of a day camp in Jersey City where he and his staff of artists and educators created an oral environment as a means of counter-balancing the power and prestige of electronic media.
  
  Tabone’s approach to education—part theory, part praxis—can be appreciated as a practical application of ideas postulated by both Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman who understood the critical need for counter-environments in the electronic age.

  Engaging, hopeful, and joyous… What a force. All so impressive. The unmitigated joy, happiness, and outstanding creative expression on the faces of the children not to mention the spillover into their lives was a revelation. I found myself singing, swinging my arms, and dancing to the infectiousness of it all.

       —Teri McLuhan, author and filmmaker

  The film is the epitome of Postman's call for loving resistance fighters.

       —Lance Strate, IGS President & Professor of Communication & Media Studies, Fordham University

  I can honestly say that I use Educational Arts strategies every day. It helps my children become deeper thinkers, it helps them identify with characters and situations in stories, it increases their comprehension. The writing pieces that follow, the judgement pieces we can do, all enhance our curriculum’s focus.

       —Danielle Chiaro (Jersey City Middle School Teacher)

  A Q&A session featuring Robert Albrecht and Carmine Tabone will follow the screening.

  About the Directors:

  Robert Albrecht is the current President of the Media Ecology Association and served briefly at Arts Editor of ETC. Albrecht began his work with Carmine Tabone and the Educational Arts Team/Camp Liberty at the same time he began his doctoral work in Media Ecology at New York University with Neil Postman. “Neil’s ideas obviously influenced my work with children and the arts just as my work with Carmine influenced all my subsequent media ecology scholarship.” For 40 years, Albrecht worked as a musician and workshop leader in Jersey City schools and at the Camp. He is also the author of numerous children’s plays that were produced on stage at Camp Liberty. Along with Mr. Tabone, Albrecht is the author of The Arts and Play as Educational Media in the Digital Age (2020), winner of the Media Ecology Association’s prestigious Susanne Langer Award.

  Dina Bruno Ciborowski began her professional life doing improvisation theater in New York City but came to the realization that her background with improv, acting games and role play could be used more profitably to work magic in the primary school classroom. Suddenly students who were bored and detached from schooling were engaged and active participants in the learning experience. Over the past two decades, her creative work with children in Jersey City has included supervising a teen arts program, the co-creation of a number of plays, skits and puppet shows, and continued work with the art and drama techniques that act as powerful tools cultivating literacy, teaching life lessons and supporting social and emotional learning. Dina died in October of 2023 shortly after completing this film. She is missed by everyone who knew her smile, laughter, dedication and insight.

  Registration is free. All attendees must be registered in order to gain admittance to the club. This includes any guests you might want to bring with you.

  The program will take place in the Dining Hall on the 1st floor of the club. Please note that, as an historic 19th century landmark, the site is not handicap accessible. Dress code is business casual and is strictly enforced, including no sneakers, shorts, ripped jeans, t-shirts).

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• Navigating the Now: A Guide to Recognizing What is Going On? A 3-Day General Semantics Seminar

  • Start
    25 Jul 2024
  • End
    27 Jul 2024
  • Location
    The October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester St, London, UK, WC1N 3AL

  Register

  Navigating the Now: 

  A Guide to Recognizing

  What Is Going On

  A 3-Day In-Person

  General Semantics Seminar

  
  

  July 25-27

  London

  
  

  The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the map is confused with the territory, a ‘semantic disturbance’ is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.

  ⏤Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity

  Korzybski’s study of language, perception, and consciousness provides us with some of the most essential and least recognized theories and methods to make sense of this era in which communication has become polarizing, and media is stirring the storm of confusion.

  General semantics is the name of the tradition of inquiry into language, thought, and abstracting that Korzybski founded. Join the Institute of General Semantics (based in New York City) in London, UK, for three days of theory and practical application, story and experiential learning, via an in-person seminar on general semantics and related non-aristotelian systems. The 3-day intensive course will include lecture, discussion, and exercises designed to provide participants with a thorough grounding in the discipline and its applications.

  For those unfamiliar with general semantics, the seminar will provide a comprehensive introduction to the tradition and its 21st century evolution. For those already familiar with the non-aristotelian approach, the course will provide reinforcement, enrichment, and an updating and expansion of the discipline. And for those interested in and/or involved in teaching, the seminar will provide useful guidance on pedagogy related to topics such as language, symbolic communication, thought and behavior, and epistemology and evaluation.

  During the seminar, we will explore how unexamined language behaviors perpetuate misperceptions of past and present controversies in professional and personal spaces. And we will determine which language and listening behaviors respect the infinite worth of each person in the interaction.

  The seminar leaders will include four trustees of the Institute of General Semantics: 

  Lance Strate, Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, President of the Institute of General Semantics, and author of 10 books including Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition, and Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyric Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld.

  Mary P. Lahman, Professor Emerita of Communication Studies at Manchester University, Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, ECHO Certified Listening Practitioner, and author of Awareness and Action: A Travel Companion.

  Nora Bateson, President of the International Bateson Institute, Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, Creator of Warm Data and the Warm Data labs, complexity/systems teacher, filmmaker, artist, and author of Small Arcs of Larger Circles, and Combining.

  Dom Heffer, East Yorkshire-based artist, Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, Art Editor of the journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics, founding member of Feral Art School, and previously associated with The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2021 Visual Arts Centre, Ferens Art Gallery, Cultural Olympiad 2012, and UK City of Culture 2017.

  The seminar will be held over 3 full days (9 AM to 5 PM) on July 25th to 27th in London, UK, at the October Gallery. 

  The seminar fee is $500 for IGS members, $600 for non-members, and will cover the cost of course materials. Participants will be responsible for their own transportation, room, and board.

  We will try to accommodate everyone interested in attending the seminar, but space will necessarily will be limited, so register early to insure your participation!

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• AKML & Symposium

  • Start
    20 Sep 2024
  • End
    22 Sep 2024
  • Location
    The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park S, New York, NY 10003

  Register

  Registration is for 

  In-Person Attendance ONLY

  Click Here for the Call for Papers

  All IGS Members in Good Standing Will Receive Instructions on How to Livestream the Event Online Prior to the AKML

  The 72nd Annual 

  Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture

  and the Symposium on

  Communication,

  Consciousness,

  and Culture

  September 20th-22nd, 2024

  Co-Sponsored by the New York Society for General Semantics

  the International Bateson Institute

  the Media Ecology Association

  the Tomkins Institute

  and the 404 Festival of Art and Technology

  featuring

  Maryann Wolf

  Dr. Maryann Wolf is a scholar, teacher, and advocate for children and literacy around the world. She is the Director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the University of California Los Angeles in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA and the former John DiBiaggio Professor of  Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. She has authored over 170 scientific publications; Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (15 translations; HarperCollins, 2007); Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 2016); and Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital Culture (12 translations; HarperCollins, 2018). She is co-author with Martha Denckla of the RAN/RAS naming speed tests, a universal predictor of dyslexia, and the creator of the RAVE-O Intervention Program for all struggling readers. She has received multiple awards for her contributions to the neuroscience of reading; the major awards from the International Dyslexia Association and the Einstein Award from the Dyslexia Foundation for her dyslexia research; and the Media Ecology Association's Walter Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship for her work on the effects of different media on the intellectual development of the species. Most recently, she was elected a permanent member of the Pontifical Academy of Science.

  Dr. Wolf's Korzybski Lecture is entitled:

  Deep Reading in a Digital Milieu:

  The Beauty, the Threats, and Choice

  This lecture will use research from cognitive neuroscience to present an evolving portrait of the reading brain in a digital world, where the threat of continuous distraction competes with the perception of beauty and meaning in written language. An understanding of how different media shape and influence the development and use of deep reading processes will be used to discuss the antidote of choice by the reader, as well as the potential repercussions for our society and democracy.

  The lecture, dinner, and symposium are being held at the historic Players Club in Gramercy Park, Manhattan. 
  

  Registration is free for IGS members and their guests, but all attendees must be registered in advance in order to gain admittance to the club. More information regarding the dinner and symposium schedule will be made available at a later date.

  Please note that as an historic 18th century landmark, the site is not handicap accessible. Dress code is business casual and is strictly enforced, including no sneakers, shorts, ripped jeans, t-shirts).

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