Tangle Circuits and the Limits of Knowing: A Workshop at RSD14

What happens when design confronts the unknowable? At the RSD14 conference at OCAD University in Toronto, Canada, Louis H. Kauffman and Thomas Fischer hosted a workshop challenging a fundamental assumption of design and technology: that we can reliably predict and control the outcomes of our actions.

Titled “Tangle Circuits and the Limits of Knowing,” the 90-minute session guided participants through a multi-faceted exploration of ignorance, paradox, and limited predictability. The workshop introduced a lineage of cybernetic devices, which includes Ross Ashby’s “Black Box” and Heinz von Foerster’s “Non-Trivial Machine,” which demonstrate how even simple systems can defy straightforward analysis and prediction.

The core of the experience was hands-on engagement with the Tang[ib]le Interaction Kit, a modular system for building “tangle circuits.” These deceptively simple circuits, using Double-Pole Double-Throw (DPDT) switches, create configurations where the effect of toggling any single switch becomes profoundly difficult to foresee. Participants moved from crafting Möbius strips as metaphors for paradoxical distinctions to wiring and experimenting with these confounding circuits themselves.

The workshop culminated with Louis Kauffman introducing his Crossing Algebra, a formal calculus developed to describe the behavior of these paradoxical systems. This algebra provides a new language for navigating realms beyond traditional Boolean logic. Through lectures, paper craft, and electrical play, the workshop reframed ignorance not as a failure, but as a fundamental design condition. It asked critical ethical and epistemological questions: How do we design systems we cannot fully comprehend responsibly and ethically? In a world of “wicked problems,” tangle circuits demonstrate the limits of knowing, inviting systems designers to approach creative practice with humility and caution.