In the spring of 2025, Notam, in collaboration with Axel Vatne Barratt-Due and nyMusikk, launched a reading group for technology, music, art and philosophy. 

This autumn we're starting up again, and over the next few months we'll continue to read and discuss the books The Real World of Technology by Ursula Franklin, and On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects by Gilbert Simondon. We follow a reading guide set up by music philosopher Patrick Valiquet, and explore together how these works enter into dialogue with each other.

Spring 2025 we read: 
- Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 (p. 48 - 134) of The Real World of Technology by Ursula Franklin. 
- Introduction, Part I and Part 2 (p. 15 - 159) of On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects by Gilbert Simondon. 

We hope that as many people as possible will join the reading circle. It's open to everyone, and you can choose whether you want to attend all the sessions or just a selection. You do not need to have read all the material in advance. 

The meetings are online and you can join here:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82641446678

This autumn, we start reading with On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, part III, chapter 1, (p. 167 - 190). 

Patrick Valiquet has written the following introduction to the reading: 
"What is the origin of technical becoming, and how do technical realities processually distinguish themselves from other forms of life? In the final part of MEOT, Simondon presents technics and religion as coupled systems of relations with nature, through which humans move from representation to action by developing various practical and ethical conventions. Once again, Simondon sets out to describe in the language of complex dynamic systems how technics and religion originally arise from magic. 

Franklin similarly thinks of modern technology as animated by 'patterns' that replace usefulness and satisfaction with exploitation and discipline. Are these patterns absolute, or are more humane patterns of relation with nature now possible? Is magic recoverable through care?"