Baecker - 2008 - Form and Forms of Communication

5.
Design
5.1 Ecology
The sociological theory of communication as form describes a completely determined

calculation of the social only under the condition that a location of the undetermined but
determinable plays an indispensable role in this calculation (Laclau 1994). Without a constant
shifting from the singular of form into the plural of forms and back again, we would not be
prepared to talk of communication. That too is a form of introducing the undetermined and
hence of stipulating degrees of freedom. We emphasise that we are talking of communication
only on the level of what an observer sets out as an interpretation of two organisms in general
and of individuals in particular (von Foerster 2003: 247ff.). And we point out how we can
interprete the interaction of two organisms differently as well, for example as
stimulus/response behaviour in the sense of Behaviourism (Skinner 1974), as the result of
calculations of individual interest in the sense of the rational-choice model (Becker 1976), as
a more or less subtle sublimating of Eros and the death instinct in the sense of later
psychoanalysis (Freud 1989; Hertz 1985), or also as history, which is to be recounted
variously and variously renounced (Benjamin 1969: 253ff.; König 1967).
We consider the distance between interaction, on the one side, and its interpretation, on the
other, as essential, yet nevertheless point out that this too is one theoretical option among
others. Hartmut Esser, for example, designs his model of sociological explication explicitly as
a solution to the problem all previous sociology has not been able to solve, namely
establishing a connection between structure and action, or respectively between the
preconditions, on the one side, and the consequences of human activity in society, on the
other (Esser 1999: 1ff.). In that way, it might be possible to resolve the old opposition
between human individual and society. We, on the contrary, do not consider this opposition
actually central, and certainly not in the sense of Humanism, but, nonetheless, heuristically
helpful. In our theory, we opt for the space of action, for the “missing link” in whatever form,
because it designates the place where the degrees of freedom are introduced, and doing that,
as well as stipulating them, is what permanently occupies the social. From the starting point
derived from the theory of action for determining via a “logic of the situation” and a “logic of
selection” against the background of a “logic of action,” that in addition differentiates itself
less than might appear, as soon as the theory of action is prepared to begin not with action but
with selection (ibid.: 14 ff.). But that presumably will not work, because this would extend
the search governing the theory of action for “general” and “causal” laws ad absurdum.
We consider the gap between structure and action, or respectively the free space for
interpretation when observing interaction, to be an indispensable aspect of the circumstance
Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

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to be understood and explained. Solving the problem is one selection among possible other
selections and so it loses sight of presumably the most important circumstance, namely how
selective selection is. The unsolved problem is, by contrast, in a position to observe every
conceivable selection against the background of a range of choice offering other possible
selections and to look at how and when and for whom every individual solution can then be
convincing all the same.
The formula on the usefulness of unsolved problems (Baecker/Kluge 2003) seems suitable
for fulfilling the condition underlying Claude Shannon’s original insight into the selectivity of
selection: “The system must be designed to operate for every possible selection, not just the
one that will actually be chosen since this is unknown at the time of design”
(Shannon/Weaver 1963: 31). We only need to exchange the technical assumption, anchored
in the concept of the machine or also of the robot to the effect that a system has first of all to
be fashioned, against the social assumption anchored in the concepts of self-organisation and
autopoeisis to the effect that it has already fashioned itself and will always do so anew, as
long as reproducing itself succeeds, in order to be able to formulate the speculation that what
is processual and provisional about communication’s objective, temporal and social horizons
fulfils Shannon’s condition for system design. Every communication has to know what it is
about, how long we will probably hold onto it and who is involved in it, in order to come
about at all. But at the same time it has to contain the observation that the topic can be
changed under certain circumstances, that past and future can be expanded or reduced, other
participants involved or current participants also excluded, as and when. Without this index of
contingency, according to our thesis, we would not be dealing with communication but with
causality. If this index of contingency is a part of system design, then it produces enough
unrest, irritability and sensibility to be able to cope with all possible selections and not only
the one just chosen. As long as which selections are possible for a system remains an open
question, under the likewise associated condition of limiting them too, a system can always
restructure itself to remain equal to possible selections.
Social systems fulfil this condition, in as far as they do indeed successfully support and
incorporate how their possibilities are technically determined in the framework of rituals,
routines, processes, rules and machines for easing communication, yet do not confuse this
determination with their own selves. That is because a form is always social when it commits
to the interpretation of an interaction, which includes including excluded possibilities
(Luhmann : chap. 1). That respectively applies to different degrees for topics, participants and
temporal perspectives. The design of a system aiming at possible selections has to include
exclusion in the form of being, according to the parameters of the system, capable of

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correction, if not absolutely all the time, then nevertheless within expectations. In the sense
here intended, what the collective, science/academia, politics, economics and morality can do,
as described by Bruno Latour, aims at designing a system, where practices of exclusion and
those of inclusion can be conducted in parallel (Latour 2004).
All the same, we ought not to fool ourselves about the extent to which the rules of system
design are being re-set. As it concerns nothing less than justifying exclusion, even when
eloquent instances point it out, complain about it and suggest corrections, this suggestion far
exceeds the formula of democracy the programme of modernity articulates as only
considering universal inclusion justifiable. It corrects the actual politics, however much that is
denied, of excluding women, the sick, the insane, animals and machines, as it favours a
politics of acknowledged but variable exclusion, that is, it begins by not excluding exclusion
any more but by including it (Luhmann 1995b: 138ff.). Bruno Latour assigns the moralists
the task of nonetheless demanding the fundamentally impossible re-inclusion of what is
excluded, regardless of whether it concerns women in Islam, asylum-seekers in Europe or
animals in laboratories, and Jacques Derrida worked on an appropriate formula for justice
(Derrida 1992), all the time underlining the impossibility of that.
It is not superfluous to point out that here is also a correction for what Luhmann
discovered as the modern asymmetry, which demands of society inclusivity whilst conceding
exclusivity to every individual organisation, provided it can be presented as rational
(Luhmann 1997: 844f.). In modernity, everyone belongs to society, but always only few to
organisations. That is the reason why there is only one society in modernity, but many
organisations. Only one society is permitted to exist, because otherwise the exclusions, which
really do exist, would become a problem; and many organisations have to exist, so that
everyone nevertheless has a chance at a job. The system design of modern society seems,
however, to have exhausted its possibilities, for reasons still not clear. Our current interest in
bureaucracy and organisation in the framework of reforming society is also an interest in how
we can learn from organisations to handle exclusions without abandoning the social demand
of, at least in principle, reintegrating the excluded in relation to staff, customers and partners,
but also in relation to products, programmes and profiles.
Our point of departure, introducing and stipulating degrees of freedom, is at once abstract
and concrete enough to examine every system design in the light of Shannon’s demand and
also to be able to vary it according to circumstances. This applies here in four respects, which
we here once again collate under the headings of ecology, difference, fractals and design:
1) The heading of ecology is meant to indicate that we interpret forms of communication
as forms which have to prove themselves according to the ecological rule of vicinity and for

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this purpose are neither bound into a super system somehow coordinating and integrating
everything nor can they rely on the capabilities of such a system. The formula of ecology
always focussed on this as it took care not to talk about “eco-systems”, as a large part of the
relevant literature nevertheless does, and instead it follows Luhmann’s recommendation to
talk about “eco-complexes” (Luhmann 1995a: 505, Fn. 53). Only in this way can we identify
and take complexity, variety and multiple layering further as the actual topic, without
following the traditional European reflex of looking around for the entirety, where everything
is somehow attached to everything and which we only need to know or invoke, in order to
discover the rules of this interdependence and show them to others.
Our forms of communication are no more parts of a whole than organisms are parts of an
eco-system. Instead, we think of every single form and also every single organism
ecologically in that radical sense the, empirically, not totally favoured urban sociology in
1920’s Chicago made fundamental to its work (Park/Burgess/McKenzie 1967; see Abbott
1997): we describe forms, where their capacity for integration lies in how suitable they are for
neighbourhood relations (in the urban sense), namely in including the exclusion of all others.
To this extent, the heading ecology only formulates one more time the idea of differentiating
as differentiating what belongs together. That is because it is the case here that the
interdependence does not exist outside but inside every single form, that is, it is different for
each form. We refuse allegiance to an identity for anything differentiated in this way, and we
consider just that the fundamental civil condition of the social.
2) The heading of difference is here mentioned once again for itself, in order to recall how
the interaction of participants in communication is interpreted in the framework of two
perspectives, which likewise belong together only in the form of their differentiation, namely
in the framework of communication’s perspective and in that of consciousness. Every
individual is considered to have, in principle, an endless outward horizon of behaviour, action
and communication and, in principle, an endless inward horizon of experience, feeling and
perception. These horizons are endless, because we treat them like black boxes, that is, as
horizons of interpretation, which can be investigated in many ways but never conclusively
defined (Glanville 1982; Luhmann 1995a: 117ff.). It is a matter of horizons, because they
give an orientation, yet we cannot approach them without their receding.
The difference between communication and consciousness is decisive for our model,
because it once again secures another form for assuring distance between individuals’
interaction, on the one hand, and their interpretation as communication, on the other. We
observe that individuals seem to accompany their communication more or less consciously,
but at the same time we observe how opaque this consciousness is too. And we observe our

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own interpretation of their interaction as something observation performs, about which we

can never be sure if it is a question of mere consciousness in action or also, and then how, of
something communicable in action.
How I am supposed to know to what extent the forms of communication I observe and
have sketched in this sociological theory of communication are anything else than the
inventions of my consciousness in dealing with my social experiences? I cannot know, but
have to wait for the communication of this theory, which does not depend on me alone. And
were it to be communicated, I have, like everyone else, one more the possibility of tracing the
possible contents of this communication back, not only to the idiosyncratic consciousness of
readers and authors but also to a squabble among sociologists within their discipline, to an
argument among intellectuals or to a praxis in society itself.
Every interpretation of an interaction as communication is an observation and, in as far as
it is observed by others, an action or respectively a communication, for its part. It can be
attributed to mere experience and in that way not only silenced but also made interesting; and
it can be taken seriously as communication and so varied once again, because a new
interpretation is called for. This ambivalence between experiencing and acting, and the
concomitant self-observing of its ambivalent interpretation, is what validates every
communication which is self-aware, and hence, while it is indeed the rule in communication
itself, it is also the special case of its reflection.
3) The heading of the fractal is a further form of securing what is undetermined and what
is determinable. A fractal, according to mathematical conceptualising just as much as to
sociological interpretation of it, is a self-similar, utilised form, that is, one emerging in the
same way on various levels (micro, meso, macro; short, medium and long term, consensual,
dissenting, indifferent) repeatedly, which can be recursively re-identified and iteratively
varied, whilst in the same system many other things are going on and evolving at the same
time (Mandelbrot 1983; Turner 1997; Abbott 2001; von Foerster 2003: 261ff.). Our forms of
communication prevail, as my thesis has it, when interpreting the interaction of individuals,
although and because this behaviour simultaneously displays a succession of characteristics,
which do not obey any particular interpretation. The form is fractal when it not only permits
and repeatedly recovers deviations, exceptions, slip-ups, mistakes and interference but makes
them into the material for reproducing itself (Ortmann 2003). A form is fractal when it
functions more as rhizome than hierarchy and never repeats the same thing as an identity, but
is always confirmed as difference, as twist, as the differentiation it makes (Deleuze/Guattari
1988; Deleuze 1993). Only so can we make sure that the distance between what is interpreted

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and the interpretation, and with that the selectivity of the particular selection, is not lost sight
of.
A further point for understanding the fractal should be mentioned and is one we have as
yet not introduced for itself, yet it is elementary for understanding both the operation of a
form of communication and its robustness as a fractal too. This point concerns the way
communication is bound up with time and hence with a thought Luhmann recognised and
developed as definitive not only for the theory of social systems, but also, in my opinion, for
the general theory of systems (Luhmann 1995a: chap. 8; with reference to Allport 1940, 1954,
1955). Communication, it means to say, only appears as a fleeting event and in this form
ensures that the problem of reproduction constantly arises anew, but also that connections are
both uncertain and variable. We must and we can understand every form of communication,
therefore, as a form of micro oscillation, where, whilst employing expectations and correcting
them as well as perceptions and their shifting, negotiation goes on for every individual event
as to whether and how it is to be understood, adopted and continued. We can only mention
this point in retrospect here, because it certainly underpins our construction, but is not yet
theoretically proven.
For our concept of form as fractal, this idea in any case means that communication can
only be understood and described as self-similar, when it is understood as restless or, as
people meanwhile like to put it, dynamic.
4) The heading of design is once again meant to bring what Shannon formulated as the
demand on every system design explicitly into focus. The circumstance it exploits is classical,
yet has recently been newly presented and rendered theoretically accessible, and indicates that
people always talk about design when a form is examined, shaped and improved with regard
to its function. If we do not oppose form to material or content, but understand it, in Spencer
Brown’s sense, as a self-differentiation within a space arising through it, and if we interpret
function not teleologically or mechanically, but in Korzybski’s sense as the relation between
variables, the heading of design becomes a further key category in the sociological theory of
communication. We give design the following form:
The idea of form, of re-integrating what is excluded, opens up a space of differentiation,

which is functionally determined subsequently, or in the to and fro between form and function

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respectively. That expresses how a design not only differentiates form and function, but
brings it into a context in such a way, that the form informs the function and vice-versa.
Informing the function through the form does not mean determining the function, but
observing it as regards deeming it contingent, and as regards its reflection and variation. At
the same time, that also provides the function, not actually through referring to purposes,
needs or intentions, but itself as an interpretation gained by observing the form and one, in
contrast to the form, still having to prove itself in each case. In other words, we can vary the
form of a design (teacups, chairs, architectural concepts, clothing, cities, public offices,
websites….) with a view to possible functions as well as discover new and different functions
with a view to the form.
If we take these four headings of ecology, difference, fractals and design seriously, we
can, in the framework of a sociological theory of communication, name in conclusion some
conditions, where the help of such a theory makes it possible to intervene in the
circumstances it enables us to describe through its offers of interpretation.
The theory, I surmise, has a practical value. Yet that has still got to be shown, and we will,
of course, not depart from theory in the framework of presenting it. “Theory” is hence, if so
desired, a fifth heading, under which the conditions are set down, allowing the point of
departure in indeterminateness, as chosen in the present approach, to be reflected as a
determined one. The sociological theory of communication harks back to an ecological
indeterminateness, and hence one in the best sense sociological, not to a cosmological,
theological or anthropological one. It expects what it can furnish as determinations to be
drawn from the world’s conditions of living and from the already tested conditions of
communication and not from the order of the whole, from divine decree or from teachings
about humanity. The cosmos, the gods and humanity are classifying figures, which, for their
part, have to allow themselves to be measured against their capacity for proving themselves in
realising a life under ecological conditions. And they are classifying figures we can call on to
reflect this life via another perspective from that of our own niche in it.
5.2 Interfaces
The sociological theory of communication derives the guarantee of the determinable

indeterminacy it talks about from the difference between communication and consciousness.
At the latest since William James’s question as to whether consciousness exists (James 1922),
both consciousness and communication have been capable of figuring as horizons for
attributing their workings as fulfilling a function in reproducing meaning. Consciousness, just

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as much as communication, presents infinite horizons, from which pointers to meaning can be
newly gained repeatedly, which, however, all over again make it also possible to trace
determined states back to those undetermined. Recently new “locations of indeterminacy”
have come into play with computers and the internet (Luhmann 1997: 118), which join in
communication with their own calculating capacities and for which we will not, however, be
somewhat better prepared until the moment we allow our experiences with consciousness and
communication to culminate in describing them as an infinite horizons. The step from the
World Wide Web to the Semantic Web (Fensel 2003) may still be pipe dreaming, but it will
both fashion itself and be controllable only to the extent that we behave as if what we, in fact,
do not master in dealing with spirits, gods and humans, but are all the same used to, were only
a qualitative matter.
The vanishing point making it possible to apply the sociological theory of communication
practically is the concept, known from the design sciences, of the interface or the junction, as
the case may be (H. A. Simon 1981; White 1982). Here, we pick up Niklas Luhmann’s
suggestion once again, when we say that every design represents a structural link between
communication and consciousness (Luhmann 2000b: 148f; see above section 4.7). A teacup,
a television set, a flag, a logo, a pub, an internet portal or a corporate identity are designs in
all those respects, where they address the perceptive capacity of a consciousness
communicatively. The same goes for communication, which we can observe at any time in
terms of its design, although we only do that as an exception. It goes for the print of a book,
the gestures of a body, the tone of a voice, the smell of a leather chair, and how a knife suits
the hand, in as far as here not only are signals being given as to how things can be treated
materially, but also signs are being set as to what meaning can be achieved with them, what
difference can be respectively reconciled. No communication can manage without such a
design, and every design can be read in terms of this demand by communication (Alexander
1964; Norman 1989).
That means, however, that design occupies the junction between communication and
consciousness and does this in a manner accepting their operative separation, in order to
sound out which communicative intentions respectively can be bound up with what type of
perception or structurally linked to it in such a way that a sort of attention can be secured,
which typically oscillates between irritation and fascination. We know about the bottleneck
factor of attention being scarce since the theory of organisation has become empirical and has
not only discovered the boundaries of rational decision-making but also described them
(March/Simon 1993; Simon 1982). And we know since Georg Simmel’s description of the
modern “style of living” (Simmel 1978: chap. 6) how important is an economy of attention

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(Franck 1998), which can find, between indifference and interest, disgust and desire, boredom
and curiosity, a balance capable of being both lived and represented.
In all societies, we presumably find virtuosi in this style of attention, which always has to
include representing its own selectivity, the criteria for it and their inscrutability, if it wants to
be communicatively successful and exemplary. Since antiquity, the concept of ethos, the art
of living, has gained currency and formulates the problem of how one and the same life has to
be conducted, of how it corresponds to the demands of a particular society, whilst
simultaneously assuring an individual keeps a distance vis-à-vis society. With one eye on this
paradox of a socially furnished freedom for the individual, Michel Foucault spoke of the tasks
of ethopoiesis (Foucault 2005), of generating an ethos, which is at once our own and not our
own. Homer’s heroes, the youths of the Greek academy, the Roman Stoics are just as much
examples of a virtuoso design of communication and consciousness as are the shamans of
tribal society, the ladies of courtly society, the Puritans of early capitalism, the dandies of the
19th century and the hippies of the 1960’s.
In each case, attitudes of consciousness, although and because inscrutable, are here
brought into a form of communication, which is capable of address but cannot be pinned
down. A design for the interface between communication and consciousness consists in trying
out restrictions, which allow expressing distance and engagement, irritation and fascination
simultaneously for perception and for communication in the alternation of sequences. This is
because only so, as is to be assumed, can the one, as does the other, can communication as
does consciousness, be experienced at all. Irritation makes obvious how dangerous is the
game we join here, and fascination how unavoidable. Who actually wants to know what
another person is thinking? And who wants to know what behaviour they desire?
But for that very reason, it is attractive to find out a segment of what we do not want to
know and to prove by that segment that we then do, in actual fact, leave the rest alone. In this
way, we operate at the point of interface, we mark it, exploit it, shape it, suffer by it and are
happy about it, and on both sides we allow the infinite horizons of communication and
consciousness to arise, which make specific how, beyond knowing, there exists not-knowing,
and, beyond design, collapse.
It is worth testing out the theorem of what design grants as the unity of the difference
between irritation and fascination also on door knobs, buttons to make electrical gadgets
work, coins, clothes, meat counters, house façades, cityscapes, airports and football stadiums.
Normally, we do not notice how we navigate on a hair’s breadth between too great an
irritation and too great a fascination, in order to be coolly interested in what is offered to us at
any particular time and to deal at our ease with what that involves. With our gaze

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unshakeably directed at the design, we deploy a succession of both social and psychic
techniques, in order to dismiss what possibly does not correspond to it. But minimal
disruptions are enough to have us experience irritation and fascination as unbearably
identified with each other and either to make off or to wind up, consciously and
communicatively, at the limits of our own possibilities.
Artists exploit this. Yet, for their manoeuvring against whatever is the dominant design,
they are also constrained to keep to a design, which counts as aesthetic and can be accepted in
this form, namely as a mere suggestion to observers. Art is the re-introduction of design into
design; and it can typically choose whether it does this on the side of the form already
discovered by design, or on the side of the medium this form calls upon. In the first case, it
works on Beauty, in the second on the Sublime, if we understand by that something which
still needs sounding out as to whether it is possible at all (Kant 2000: §§23-29).
The interface between communication and consciousness is, however, only one example
offering points from which to initiate a design comprehending numerous other cases: the
interfaces between humans and machines, bodies and things, organisation and society, family
and school, politics and economy, religion and education, or truth and science. Each of these
interfaces combines two infinite horizons; each of these interfaces gets to deal with a
boundary, where quality and structure does not, in fact, result from the differentiated
circumstances, but precedes them (Abbott 1995. Every design, therefore, does not deal just
with irritation and fascination being simultaneous, but also likewise with truth and lies, in as
far as the latter is undeniable in the moment a design works with signals, signs and symbols,
which the infinite horizons in question necessarily include as contexts of their selections. Lies
and truth are given criteria the moment signs are employed to designate something, which, by
definition, cannot be identical with the sign itself (Eco 1979).
For us, every design for a interface counts as true if it sends signals, sets up signs and calls
on symbols, which are all validated in the sense that they display references capable of being
examined independently of the signals, signs and symbols. The signals should not lead people
astray. The signs must show what they designate. And the symbols must, in actual fact,
accomplish the translations they invoke. Correspondingly, whatever sends false signals, sets
up deceptive signs and invokes worthless symbols counts as a lie. But how do I find that out
in each case? From what point on am I prepared to attribute a truth or, as the case may be, to
suspect a lie? It is not by chance that meanwhile the very words “truth” and “lie” have
become difficult for us. We have learned to distrust all signals, signs and symbols, yet, at the
same time, we scarcely notice that we constantly trust the signals, signs and symbols we are
confronted with all over the place. We believe our trained consciousness and our subtle

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communications warn us off, whilst our perception is just not able to avoid following things
as they are offered to it.
Against this background, the concept of the interface acquires a heuristic value aimed at
being able to describe what has long functioned, in order to be able to test out how it is that
what functions here actually does. When a consciousness believes it understands a sentence it
hears; when my body accepts the armchair pushed across to it; when I literally buy into the
bank for the solidity its advert signals, when children learn that they can behave differently at
school from at home; when politicians claim that exceeding their country’s balance of
payments means success; when priests profile their educational measures as ministry; and
when scientists/academics confuse their theses with truth, interfaces are called on in favour of
a communication, which initially functions in each case and can then be brought into doubt.
In other words, truth and lies apply, for themselves, to the design of the system. They allow
interfaces to vary long enough until they fit, even when we, in the case of sitting on a chair,
know that the ideal chair does not exist, because we change our sitting position every ten
minutes, so that the design of the interface finds its criterion in variability, not in truth or lies.
5.3 Intervention
It is only on the level of design that we have the chance to intervene in circumstances
characterised by the infinite horizons of communication and consciousness. Ecology sets the
conditions for successful interventions; interfaces provide starting-points. Each intervention is
correspondingly unpredictable, but this unpredictability is the condition making it possible.
To clarify this condition that makes it possible, we only need to take the heading of
interface literally and to read it as intruding, as transmitting, as intervening. If we think of
individuals in their environments, who mutually observe each other, go along with each other
in entering and quitting the forms of interaction, organisation, society and protest movements
and use the meaning functions of system, person, medium, network and evolution to make
sense of what selections and attributions of communication are involved at any given time,
then it seems advisable to see intervention as a communication with two sides, which tries to
encourage particular communications and discourage others. In other words, interventions are
communications, which suggest a change, where it would not come to it otherwise, and hence
risk both marking an old communication and offering a new one. Interventions are hence
communications, which profile themselves by contrast with their own improbability, as
neither their self-interest may speak against them, nor may the old communication have

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reasons on its side, which speak against intervention, or lead the new communication into
problems intervention has no answers to.
An intervention is the exception. Only by remembering this, do we have a chance of not
only understanding why it nevertheless happens so often, but also of understanding when it
can be successful, The typical stating-point for an intervention is a conflict. Only conflict can
guarantee that intervention’s self-interest can be deemed secondary, that the motives for
changing communication are plain and that almost every new communication can figure
initially as attractive. If this is the case, intervention only has, difficult as that may be, to resist
the conflict’s inherent dynamic, which profits from the fact that the world of the conflict is, as
regards the topic, the apparently obvious past and foreseeable future as well as the
participants, one where communication is so much more evident than in any other.
That does mean, however, that intervention has to find a third party, which describes the
partners in the conflict as such and hence makes it that much more difficult for them to vote
for and not against the conflict and makes them offers about how things could go on after the
intervention. Intervention must make itself, with a view to this third party, increasingly
invisible and make so attractive the communication newly coming into reach, that
discrediting the old is indeed scarcely worth mentioning any more.
Hence, intervention is, in the first place, observation (Willke 1994: chap. 2). It has to
clarify the conditions under which it can be effective, and it is clear to it that the conditions
are not to be clarified causally, but, as in the ancient Chinese teachings on wisdom, only in
the context of a situation’s potential (Jullien 2004). Then intervention has to be irritating, that
is, to insinuate its observations into the circumstances in such a way, that the latter observe
themselves with a view to altering themselves as necessary and possible, without getting the
idea of observing the intervention instead (Luhmann 1995b: 90 ff.). And thirdly, the
intervention has to have something to offer which defines the conditions under which it can
be attractive to engage with it (P. Fuchs 1999: 94f.).
All that culminates in describing an intervention and the forms in which it appears:
therapy, counselling, but also punishment and education, as forms addressing conflicts in
order to give interfaces a new shape. An intervention has hence the following form:

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Marking a conflict opens up a space for differentiation, which can be used for seeking
interfaces, determining them and sounding out their potential for variation. Hence, an
intervention is design’s mirror image. Whilst in design, form is reflected in order to vary
function, a conflict is reflected through intervention in order to vary a interface, that is, to
give it a new shape such that the conflict is less obvious or hurts less. The interface is
function’s zero point, just as conflict is form’s.
Hence, an intervention is, once again differently from art, a form of reintroducing designs
into design, yet here not at the point of Beauty and of the Sublime (the all-too-much), but at
the point where both form and function fail. And with that, it comes right where the interface
is, which can be asserted at any time against communication, which acts as if it could
reconcile it, and which, if need be, seeks conflict, in order to prove just that.
At present, design and intervention, shaping and changing systems of reproduction and
disrupting communication are displaying certain tendencies towards convergence. We are
beginning to take seriously what Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores recommended about
anticipating collapses, in order to grasp the situation in which a new design is meant to
prevail (Winograd/Flores 1986). Fashion stages its clientele’s image-crisis, management the
organisation’s bankruptcy, the university its students’ failing, politics the outbreak of
violence, in order, in each case, to gain support for its projected changes. This side of
collapse, intervention is manifestly scarcely available any more; this side of a failing
interface, a new design can scarcely be given away any more.
This tendency to convergence bespeaks a paradoxical trust in robust ecologies, as if we
could disrupt interfaces at will, because in the latter the observers’ environment finds enough
resonance to stimulate them into new attempts at order. We can doubt whether that is
justifiable. However, our concept of communication may be suitable, not only theoretically
but also practically, to observe more accurately which relations between observers come
about and which conditions prevail.
On the other hand, this tendency to convergence is, in turn, not so new, when we consider
that, in society, law has always aimed, in this sense, at shaping it through offering
mechanisms for identifying and resolving conflicts (Luhmann 2004). As soon as observers
wanting to assert claims recognise the opportunities coming out of reaching back to the
enforcing mechanisms of the state and the law, they can engage in appropriate conflicts, even
when these claims are not covered by their own power and persuasive capacity. In this way,
someone can go onto the street with a video camera and film traffic infringements and bring
them to the notice of the police as well, without on their own ever being able to prevent them
(and without preventing them this way either). Here, society is shaped by conflicts being

– 165 –
marked, so that everyone can consider, on confronting them, whether they engage with them
or would rather avoid them. It is precisely in this way that communication between
individuals takes on a particular form, which it would not take in another case.
In comparison to that, it becomes attractive to reflect on, and to try out, those of
communication’s formative possibilities, which do not range over how attractive conflicts or
their avoidance are, but over how attractive economic exchange, loving intimacy,
scientific/academic curiosity, religious fervour, artistic experiments, neighbourly
conversation, organised activity or communal protest are.
Of course, it remains the same thing, whether we orientate ourselves according to
interfaces and commit to the ecological circumstances of mere vicinity. Perhaps we can say
that avoiding conflict only gains its profile thanks to the possibility of conflict and hence, in
order to remain attractive, always contains this possibility. Then this would be the measure
for every design: having handy the conflict between those things separated by interfaces,
whilst making offers for avoiding conflict attractive.

– 166 –
Index of forms
form:
p. 15
p. 35
p. 37
p. 38
forms:
p. 52

– 167 –
p. 63
p. 65
p. 68
p. 73
p. 75
p. 84

– 168 –
p. 85
p. 92
p. 100
p. 107
p. 118
p. 127
p. 136

– 169 –
p. 137
p. 138
p. 143
p. 157
p. 163

– 170 –
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5.

The sociological theory of communication as form describes a completely determined

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

own interpretation of their interaction as something observation performs, about which we

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

The idea of form, of re-integrating what is excluded, opens up a space of differentiation,

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

The sociological theory of communication derives the guarantee of the determinable

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

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