A poster on Biopoiesis was presented at the Subtle Technologies Conference in Toronto over the weekend.
Read More | Leave a CommentMay, 2012 Monthly archive
I want to talk a little bit about digital technology and ontology and its relation to interactive arts (and by extension my dissertation). Here of course I drawing quite a bit from Andrew Pickering and his historical analysis of cybernetics.
There seems to me to be a dichotomy between the practices and ontologies of interactive art practices and the ontology of the underlying technology that employed in these practices. Few would dispute that the digital computer has many aspects of our existence. One could reasonably argue it has transformed our thought processes. Indeed, digital computation espouses a dichotomous worldview where computation is seen as separate from the natural world. The hegemony of digital computation is so complete that it is often difficult to imagine alternatives to its cold, detached worldview.
In trying to “humanize” technology are we in sense legitimizing the ultra-rational, detached Cartesian worldview underlying these technologies? Are we simply reacting to them and in a sense “reform” them by trying to create more embodied relations with them, missing possible alternatives to them? Is there another way? Can we re-imagine cultural production with non-traditional computational methods and mediums? Mediums which are more inline with our ontological stances?1
I don’t really have any answers, other than I believe there are no easy answers. I just wanted to highlight the fact that these are some of the questions that I have asked myself while working with Biopoiesis and Protocol. Provisionally, I can say that my approach of utilizing cybernetic ideas to literally embed an alternative ontology into the design of an arts-based technological system and how this ontology shapes the work offers a way for me to think about technology (“intelligent” technology in particular).
Notes
1. Many researchers are of course working on alternative computational technologies, technologies having what I consider to be alternative (e.g. cybernetic) ontologies embedded in them. Cultured neurons flying planes and using slime mold to make computers (as Adam Adamatzky has done) are couple of examples. My contention is that artists need to tap into the alternative ontologies represented in such work a little more.
In an earlier post, I discussed the concept of ambiguity in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and what I see as its ontological resonance with cybernetics, particularly its ontology of “unknowability” . I argued that certain interactive arts practices, that I refer to collectively as the “emergent arts” bring these ontological visions “down to earth” so to speak, by amplifying our experience of them. I would like to continue that discussion a bit here.
What I am trying to do is take Merleau-Ponty’s conception of ambiguity and use it as a sort of umbrella term to describe the experience of encountering and interacting with all these emergent, complex processes that artists are exploring and how this idea of ambiguity is akin to a co-evolutionary dynamic that these processes are part of. In other words symbiogenic experience is ambiguous. In Merleau-Pontian terms these are experiences featuring systems and process that are constantly in flux, in development and indeterminately present. They may cause us to react or reflect in different ways to similar situations, perhaps due to various contingencies connected to those situations. An experience may even be “overdetermined”, meaning it has contradictory significance for us while still functioning as a coherent whole . In this sense ambiguity is really a form of openness to alterity and change.
To understand symbiogenic experience one must come to grips with this ambiguous experience with nature. I will argue that the interactive artworks that I collectively refer to as the emergent arts intensify this experience and will investigate how reflection over time will lead to diverse, even contradictory characterizations of experience but which may lead (I assert) to a sort of accretion of a general (though still ambiguous, incipient, something you can’t quite “put your finger on”) feeling of embeddedness and co-determination with an increasingly technologized environment.
In the common meaning of the term, ambiguity has of course, a very lengthy tradition in the arts, along with surprise, wonder and metaphor. In his 1970 paper “The Aesthetics of Intelligent Systems” , art theorist Jack Burnham provides vital insight on the impact of intelligent systems on the arts when he notes that the emerging expansion of the art experience brought upon by the then nascent field of interactive or technology-based art “encourages the recognition of man as an integral part of his environment”. Burnham stated his belief that “the ‘aesthetics of intelligent systems’ could be considered a dialogue where two systems gather and exchange information so as to change constantly the state of the other” (emphasis in original). This idea of an artwork as establishing a dynamic, emergent interplay with human participants is not only common today but is often the central concern of many interactive artists. In particular, concepts such as emergence, autonomy and self-organization that were not in the vernacular of the arts, or art theory and criticism in Burnham’s time, but which nevertheless resonate with his ideas of a mutualistic and autopoietic art experience, are claimed by many contemporary artists who work in the area of artificial life (a-life) as one of the central concerns in their work. These concepts (and by extension the concept of interactivity) — are threaded through the material practices of cyberneticists like Gordon Pask and many interactive artists. I propose that the strangeness and indeterminacy of the dynamic interactions present in these works evince and amplify a sense of incomplete knowledge of an increasingly complex world, full of interacting emergent systems; the totality of which is just beyond the grasp of our comprehension but which we nevertheless adapt to via constant interplay and shifting sets of embodied relations. A phenomenology of emergent arts practice, when read through the lens of neocybernetic theory functions as a way of “naming” (in the sense of reifying as way of generating new concepts and modes of thinking, or updating old ones) the indeterminate complexity that concepts like emergence, autonomy and self-organization come from and may suggest conceptual markers from which to construct new models and modes of analysis.
More to come.
Works Cited
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In his recent paper “The Implicit Body as Performance: Analyzing Interactive Art” , Nathaniel Stern argues that Mark Hansen & Katherine Hayles privilege technology in their analysis of interactive art experience. He argues that their analysis treats the body as if it merely responds to technology and that the body and technology are characterized as two “extant entities”, with each acting as a “catalyst or glue” to combine one with the together. In contrast, Stern argues that the body, technology and world are not “pre-formed” and that interactive art “intervenes into entwined relationships that are always already emerging” . Yet, in her discussion of Simon Penny’s piece “Traces”, Hayles says that embodiment emerges from dynamic interactions with the environment. This seems to contradict Stern’s claim that Hayles posits or presupposes a distinction between artwork and a participant. It appears here that Hayles is arguing, much like Stern that a participant’s embodiment is realized only through relational, dynamic, co-emergent interactions with the environment that Hayles says are always in flux. Thus, the a priori co-emergence of body and artwork that Stern emphasizes is implied, though not completely spelled out, in Hayles’s analysis. While Stern is right to point out this potential contradiction and source of ambiguity, it nevertheless leads to some confusion regarding the body and embodied experience with regard to the interactive artwork. I believe the confusion stems from a lack of consideration about the notion of boundaries and it this concept that I would like to focus my discussion on here.
Stern eschews discussion of boundaries, arguing that in effect they don’t exist and are presupposed by Hansen and Hayles. His analysis draws from performance theory and Brian Massumi’s theory of the body as relational in order to construct his analytical model. Yet It seems to me that there are strong connections here to enactive cognition (whose roots can be traced by to cybernetics and autopoietic theory) and Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology, evinced by Stern via his notion of body and world co-determining one another through recurrent interactions. In addition, there is also a similarity to the idea of cybernetics showcasing a world of “emergent becoming” that Andrew Pickering describes . Further drawing from these areas may help clear up the confusion I mentioned above. This is where I would like to begin my discussion of boundaries.
Though not at the forefront for their analysis of interactive art, Hansen and Hayles’s concept of boundary is drawn more or less directly from cybernetics and autopoietic theory. For a closer examination of the interrelated cybernetic concepts of boundary, closure, circularity and autonomy we can turn to Hansen and his notion of “system-environment hybrids” (SEHs) . Arguing against Hayles’s call for a total dissolution of boundaries , Hansen instead argues for a flexible and adaptive understanding not only of system boundaries and the concept of closure as originally developed by its authors , but also more broadly, for an understanding of the legacy of neocybernetics. Hansen asserts that the technical sophistication and intensity of our environment has evolved to such a degree that we must pay closer attention to the agency wielded by it (through increasingly technical means). This agency calls for a more provisional, dynamic, contingent and ultimately less stable notion of closure, thus differentiating system closure from autopoietic closure. Like systems proper, SEHs reduce environmental complexity through contingent selection of particular environmental processes, which may be described as a form of boundary formation. What distinguishes an SEH is the very nature of this boundary formation, one where the distinctions between system and environment are less discrete and always already in (re)development. Thus, as Hansen notes, they realize their autonomy “through constitutive relations with alterity” (emphasis in original) wherein the (increasingly technical and “intelligent”) environment itself can compel or suggest changes. Instead of the organism selecting which aspects or perturbations of the environment are relevant to it (as in traditional autopoiesis), the environment itself can force or suggest certain changes in the organism rather than merely being a source of perturbations.
We see here Hayles’s and Stern’s analysis is not as different as it may appear. Hayles calls for a total dissolution of boundaries, while Stern avoids discussion of boundaries altogether, presumably because they don’t exist in the first place. What is never considered is the (somewhat paradoxical) idea of evolving, permeable but nevertheless still present boundaries that characterize the openness to alterity and environmental agency that is at crucial of the co-emergent processes that Stern calls for and which I assert are a central component of the emergent arts. Hansen’s more nuanced and granular notion of boundary is crucial for appreciating how in in his words, the “biological flexibility of the human being can open up new cognitive dimensions but only when correlated with the most creative, culturally and technologically catalyzed interactional possibilities” . Thus, this sense of a collective form of agency I believe can be brought into high relief via the varying relations of alterity and “creative interactional possibilities” common in the emergent arts. More to the point, this biological flexibility made possible by shifting, contingent boundaries is, I assert, how Stern’s amplification of “entwined relationships” are made possible. Closure, after all, is what gives a system its autonomy. This autonomy is crucial for any interactive art experience that is characterized by an intervention into “entwined relationships”. Thus it stands to reason that the multiple and contingent levels of closure made possible by shifting, evolving boundaries result in variations and degrees of autonomy and thus precisely the kinds of complex, diverse and always emerging relationships that Stern describes and that characterize the emergent arts.
There is still work to be done here in connecting these ideas with the experience of an interactive artwork. How is this collective form of agency arise or emerge in experience? Like Hansen, I am asserting that the alterity of intelligent machines is “a crucial source of connection to a world ever more difficult to grasp directly” , and that this can give rise to what I call symbiogenic experience. Making these connections between Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and these neocybernetic theories is the task that lies ahead.
Works Cited
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My dissertation approaches the production and analysis of interactive art from a cybernetic (particularly 2nd-order cybernetic) perspective combined with an existentialist phenomenological lens based on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I argue that there is a natural resonance between the two. Examples of this resonance include:
- a concern with the subjectivity of human experience and its role in the processes of conducting scientific research and of coming to know
- taking into into account the observer’s actions in the process of observing
- a concern with interacting with systems (as opposed to detached God’s-eye view) as a form of observation and knowing
- the circularity (“reversibility” to use Merleau-Ponty’s term), interdependence and autonomy of the relationship between the observer and the observed
- a dynamic of mutual co-specification between a system/a body and an environment and how such systems specify their autonomy and bring forth a world for themselves via these co-emergent interactions
- an ontology that does not separate people and things
In working with Biopoiesis (and to a certain extent Protocol), my experience always seems to lead me back to cybernetic concepts of circularity, self-reference and autopoiesis. The interactive art experience (and particularly the experience of what I call the emergent arts) are self-producing and reproducing processes, based upon action-grounded conversations in the sense exemplified by Gordon Pask in his Conversation Theory (Pask 1976). This model stresses the circular, interpretive process of individuals in the construction of meaning: you say something I interpret what I think you mean, I tell you what I think I mean and so on until there is some agreement This is a radically constructivist approach, stressing that knowledge does not exist independent of a knower or community of knowers. More specifically, interactive artworks (or at least those that I refer to as within the realm of emergent arts), like cybernetic systems, become complete artworks not through their construction or installation, but through the circular relations that emerge between the technical systems and contributions of interacting observers. Between the exchanges of both a given piece’s technical system and a given interactor’s embodied and cognitive systems, circular relationships of conversation may be established and autonomy may thus be achieved. Such an experience, I argue cannot but have a co-evolutionary element to its experience. As art (and interactive art in particular) is about experience, examining cybernetic concepts such as recursion, boundary, autonomy, adaptability and conversation — and how they are manifested in interactive artworks — through a phenomenological lens seems like a novel and productive approach.
While still at an embryonic and speculative stage, I believe that I can harness cybernetics concepts and analyze them phenomenologically to help explicate the symbiogenic framework. Here are a couple of things I am looking at right now:
- Analyze 2nd-order cybernetic concepts — which happen in time and over time — through the lens of Merleau-Ponty’s notions of time and time consciousness
- While my dissertation isn’t directly concerned with theories of interaction or aesthetics of interaction, I think that the symbiogenic framework, as it is based upon interactions between humans and technology, needs to recast or expand ideas of interactivity to include behavior and experiences that escape immediate consciousness and are outside immediately phenomenological reflection. Thus some “interaction” is not deliberate or even conscious but nevertheless can over time, lead to shifts in perception. This is what I call co-evolutionary in cybernetic-phenomenological sense (e.g. autopoietic mutual specification, Merleau-Pontian notions of shifting perceptual relations with objects)
- Make connections to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of ambiguity (I will have another post on this coming up soon)
Clear as a bell?
Read More | Leave a CommentA rough draft of my literature review was completed some time ago. I will revise this as I progress on my dissertation but I though I would include it here. Hopefully it provides a decent overview of my conceptual framework.
Download the first draft of the literature review.
Read More | Leave a CommentContinuing my discussion from last time, this post represents my first attempt at developing a taxonomy if interactive artworks for my dissertation.
Tentatively titled “The Emergent Arts”, this chapter outlines a various characteristics of new media and interactive arts practice that engage in processes that establish a foundation for the shifts in perceptual and bodily experience that I characterize as co-evolutionary. These artworks thematize reciprocal interplay (and even co-evolution) of humans and machines and give an intuitive sense of connection or enmeshment with an increasingly intelligent technological environment. Many of the artworks I draw from may be characterized by the drive for “symbiotic intelligence” between humans and their increasingly technologized environments that Jack Burnham described . These works engage in similar processes and approaches to the artworks documented in Chapter 5 (the chapter on my own projects) and form the basis for understanding symbiogenic experiences. I refer to this range of works collectively as the “emergent arts”. The parameters chosen for the development of this taxonomy come directly from my conceptual framework. Part of this framework (and of the dissertation in general) is establish connection between cybernetics and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. While the bulk of the phenomenological and cybernetic analysis will be done in another chapter of the dissertation, I think it is important to keep this in mind when reading this taxonomy. The cybernetic aspects at least will become evident as we move along.
To further clarify what I mean by emergent arts, it may help to look at interactive art more broadly. What is it about interactive art in particular that can give rise to a heightened or transformative sense of co-evolution with an intelligent, technological environment? While the general conception is that interactive art offers heretofore unparalleled levels of gestural and immersive interface to technological systems, others have given a more nuanced account of it’s uniqueness. From Gordon Pask’s “ambiguity of role” Pask , to Burnham’s “symbiotic intelligence”, to Mark Hansen’s embodied technicity , all have as a basis a certain level whether directly discernible or not a sense of agency. Novel forms of animism, autonomy and even raw information processing power, which may sometimes be interpreted as form of agency or even intelligence.
This sense of agency and autonomy is the foundational element to what I maintain is the most crucial aspect that distinguishes what I call the emergent arts from other interactive arts practices – namely the evolving, emergent relations of agency and alterity — characterized here as co-evolutionary — that give rise to an experience that I describe as symbiogenic. This is where the emergent arts sets its self apart as a distinct form interactive art experience. What is attractive and compelling in these works is not only the cybernetic and “systems approach to creation” that Roy Ascott describes , nor just their abilities to expand human consciousness and transform our experience of the world and of our being within it by encouraging us to enter into states of mutual influence with them. But rather like 2nd-order cybernetics and its concern with observing systems, autonomy, self-organization and emergence, the emergent arts are also reflexive and self-referential, as they often explore, examine or critique the very systems and technologies used in their making. The emergent arts typically do not marshal interactive techniques in services of more “traditional” arts practice such as narrative or emotional evocation via raw sonic or visual power or some external subject matter. Emergent art systems are on some level, about the systems themselves – often simply about their agency, autonomy, ability to self-organize and to simply be, to exist and get on in the world and with others. As such they often thematize or are characterized by interactions and behaviors that give rise to experiences that I characterize as a co-evolutionary, as these works literally, couple with their environments, not simply through a series of input/output relations but rather as an ongoing (re)organization of the system in response to environmental perturbations, which circle back and perturb aspects of the environment, which in turn cause new perturbations to the system, and so on. Cybernetic indeed.1
Another important aspect to consider is that in my view of the emergent arts are not cold detached representations of generative or complex process but instead materially encompass and generate those processes through their material configuration. Thus, merely simulating complex emergent process visually or sonically on a digital computer does not in and of itself constitute emergent art as I conceive it. Rather it is differing relations of adaptivity and unpredictability relative to complex and dynamic environmental conditions that form the aesthetic and experiential “DNA” of the emergent arts.
With this in mind I will now outline various characteristics of emergent arts practice that I consider relevant to themes and concepts of co-evolution with intelligent systems. These works are analyzed not so much according to their respective mediums or technologies, but rather through the approaches taken and perhaps more importantly by the set of emergent relations they set-up and bring forth and which aspects of experience they emphasize, whether it is interaction or reflection on material or the cybernetic processes themselves, etc. They also cannot be defined simply by listing a set of characteristics (and in fact works in one category may share many characteristics with those in other categories). They must be considered holistically, where overall “top-down” patterns of relations provide context for the experience of sensorial or interactional modalities. Thus, an interactive sound piece that responds to ones presence and motion like David Rokeby’s Very Nervous System exhibits quite different holistic patterns of relations than another interactive sound piece that responds to one’s presence and motion like Usman Haque’s Evolving Sonic Environment. The intent here is for the framework I am developing to be flexible and dynamic. Nevertheless, the aim here and now lies in providing an overview of the emergent art field and a context for evaluating these individual artworks, as well as those discussed in Chapter 5. The works explored here can be analyzed across five general characteristics:
Intertwining/direct coupling. Many emergent artworks feature a directly physical or embodied form of interaction. These works necessitate direct physical human interaction with some kind of intelligent technological system. Participants are directly active in the work (whether voluntarily or involuntarily via like monitoring of their heart rate for example). I refer to this as an intertwining or direct coupling of human and system. Here, participants directly perceive (though not necessarily control) the interaction. These often produce mirror like transformations of participant’s actions and choices. The machines also exhibit some perceived agency of their own, whether or not they are “intelligent” in a technical/computational sense. This agency may or not be a major driver of the interaction but it is nevertheless a part of the experience of the work. These may be considered as the most apparently “interactive” as they engage a participant’s sensorium in direct physical ways whether via responsive sound, vision and tactility, and also direct inner body responses (e.g. biofeedback). What is stressed here is a direct physical interaction with a technological system with some agency; a sort of embodied alterity. This is perhaps the largest group, encompassing what we often take to be interactive art and is best exemplified by works such as David Rokeby (especially Very Nervous System), Diane Gromala’s Biofeedback VR works and Stahl Stenslie’s “psychoplastic” wearable computing works.
Disturbance/Perturbation. Other works display looser or altogether non-existent physical couplings with the interactive system, with artworks perhaps demonstrating greater agency of their own.These works feature systems that operate and respond to environmental perturbations or disturbances and are often in some kind of cybernetic feedback loop with that environment (and often with itself). Here, direct conscious human input is typically not vital (or as vital when compared to intertwining/coupling). Relations often happen outside of human input although human presence or action often acts as some kind of trigger for the systems and is thus important (from a human point of view) for the piece to be considered “activated”. The interaction here begs for reconsideration of what exactly constitutes interactivity (e.g. does one need to know that they are interacting for the piece to be considered interactive?). Nevertheless these works feature relations where humans often enter into some kind of existing set of emergent relations and influence those relations in the process in some way so that there is some discernible effect on the piece that is attributable to human presence and actions, although it may take some time for this to become apparent and may not even be perceived. In doing so these works instill in the human interlocutors a sense of being connected to a larger system or set of systems, whose complex interactions effect and are effected by human behavior. The effect may be considered longitudinal as system and participants may flow in and out of emergent relations whose full impact may not be fully appreciated for some time and may be require numerous interactions. These works are perhaps most closely resemble cybernetic or autopoietic models of interactions between system and environment. Environmental perturbations function as triggers or indirect forms of interaction and foster a general sense of embeddedness and complexity of interacting systems. These characteristics are best exemplified by works such as Usman Haque’s Evolving Sonic Environment, Simon Penny’s Sympathetic Sentience and Ken Rinaldo’s The Flock.
Inter-corporeality/Performative. Some works stage performances of human-technology symbiosis and co-evolution. “Performance” in this case is not limited to stage performance but is simply meant to describe works where we experience at things to some extent from the “outside” or from a distance. Nevertheless we feel it ourselves on some level. These works function by engendering a sense of what Merleau-Ponty refereed to as intercorporeality (i.e empathically “feeling” the same thing as someone else; what modern neuroscience explains though the function of hat are called “mirror neurons”). In a sense a way of collapsing that distance. Some works may be interactive or collaborative while others are not what is normally considered interactive. There is however some form of at least implied technological agency and some form of coupling with human. This is often not experienced directly but through sort of staged performances. This is best exemplified by Stelarc’s Internet controlled body performances and telepresent installations and performances such as Paul Sermon’s Telematic Dreaming.
Material/Organic Complexity. Sometimes the material itself becomes an important aspect of the work and even a context for the experience of it. Like all the works here these works take a “systems approach to creation” but instead of a direct focus on systems as such these works feature relations grounded in the unique complexity of the materials employed in the artwork/system. The material substrate(s) that a work is built upon functions as the driver and locus point of experience. The participant is drawn to the strange and unusual material instantiation or substrate of the work (e.g. chemical solutions, biological systems, etc), which sometimes combine with digital and/or intelligent technologies (or sometimes constituting that very technology). These practices are loosely related to “bio-art” they are still primarily cybernetic systems – just non-traditional ones. They not only stage similarities but like certain cybernetic practices, begin to blur the lines that western culture has erected between the technological and the biological; the living and non-living; organic and inorganic; and ultimately between people and things. In blurring these lines they may be said to engender a sense of co-determination and mutual embeddedness between all systems in the environment. In other words a world where its constituent system are constantly co-evolving with one another. These approaches are best exemplified by projects such as SymbioticA’s MEART – which features cultured rat neurons communicating over the Internet in order to “learn” how to draw – and some of Andy Gracie’s work connecting technological and biological systems. Other work from the cybernetics and contemporary science would also fit in here, such as Gordon Pask’s electrochemical experiments and contemporary versions of the his cybernetic model such as slime-mold-controlled robots or rat brains learning to fly airplanes.
Distributed/Apparitional. Some works feature processes that are outside any direct human perceived effect (at least immediate effect) but give a sense of longitudinal intertwining (play out over time). These are experiences where the sense of intelligent technology is “in the air”, monitoring us, performing tasks for us or otherwise linked to us in some way. Here the work engages us beyond the physical presence and experience of the gallery space. It bleeds into our daily lives and functions as a sort of distributed or networked version of ourselves, a sort of “data other”. This experience is best exemplified by works such Victoria Vesna’s NoTime and Datamining Bodies as well as mundane non-art practices such as online credit card transactions, e-mail, online calendars, etc. This is a more cognitive than active or physical aspect of symbiogenic experience and also has a strong longitudinal component. In some ways it is the opposite end of intertwining as it often occurs at various indistinct times and locations, has no direct physical connection to the body and the experience is continuous and longitudinal, especially if it is part of mundane everyday processes.
Notes
1. Many of the works discussed here could simply be labeled as AI, a-life, generative art works. However, I maintain that it is more appropriate to rely on cybernetic and neocybernetic models and concepts as they are broader and encompass ideas closer to those explored by the artists reviewed here, while not being tied to particular techniques, technologies or approaches. In fact cybernetics foresaw much work in artificial intelligence and artificial life and in fact is seen as having a crucial influence on these fields and numerous others. Many concepts central to these fields, such as
complexity, self-organization, and autonomy, were first explored by cyberneticists during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Furthermore, with its focus on goal-directed and purposive behavior, cybernetic concepts are well-suited for the analysis of what are essentially cybernetic art systems whose emergent relations unfold in complex patterns of purposive action and behavior. Nevertheless, for expediency and simplicity I will often use the term “intelligent systems” or “autonomous systems” to describe these works, though perhaps a better term would be “goal-directed systems”.
Works Cited
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One of my dissertation chapters will be a taxonomy of interactive artworks and art practices that thematize reciprocal interplay (and even co-evolution) of humans and machines and give an intuitive sense of connection or enmeshment with intelligent technological systems. Generally speaking this taxonomy focus on artists and art projects that contain aspects — such as particular technologies, approaches or general themes — that I consider relevant to human-machine co-evolution and symbiogenic experience in the interactive arts.
As if have researched and thought about this I believe that I am beginning to get a sense of what these artworks are and how they relate to my conceptual framework. What I would like to do here is continue this development by proposing a connection between cybernetics and Merleau-Ponty’s ontology by reading these works through the lens of each. While the bulk of the phenomenological and cybernetic analysis will be done in another chapter of the dissertation, I think it is important to lay out the parameters, or the lens through which the taxonomy has taken shape thus far. Allow me to make some of these links briefly and then present a rough sketch of my taxonomy.
A common thread running through Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is the concept of ambiguity. This refers to anything that is undergoing development or is continuously open to determination. Experience has this quality, as it is composed of things that have dynamic and flexible, rather than fixed, essences. Since our perceiving bodies are not completely present to consciousness, we are incapable of detached, disembodied reflection upon our lived relations, thus engendering a certain sense of indeterminacy. Similarly, Andrew Pickering notes how cybernetics showcases an “ontology of unknowability”, a vision of the world as full of emergent systems always in dynamic interplay with one another. Both Pickering and Merleau-Ponty valorize reciprocal couplings, rather than a dualist split, between people and things. They present us with a world of co-emergent, co-evolving systems too complex to fully apprehended or objectively explained. A world that is in a perpetual state of becoming, characterized and brought via emergent relations of complexity.
This complexity is brought into high relief via the direct experience of certain interactive or “new media” artworks. In my dissertation, I expand upon Merleau-Ponty’s concept of ambiguity and argue for its ontological resonance with cybernetics through a consideration of various interactive arts practices, including recent work of my own. There is an inherent strangeness and unpredictability in these works and the material practices employed in their construction that I believe has not been fully appreciated. These works, which utilize nonhuman entities such as artificial life agents, living systems and quasi-organic materials, can be said to thematize a certain dynamic of co-evolutionary interaction with an increasingly technologized environment. The emergent relations that unfold in these works may serve as avenues of exploration of Merleau-Ponty’s ideas and may also be useful as ontological grounding for (re)establishing a discourse between systems theory and the arts. In addition, reading neocybernetic emergence and the material practices of cybernetics through the lens of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, may guide our understanding of both the making and experiencing of what might be called the emergent arts.
In my next post, I will start to develope my taxonomy by laying out the key characteristics of what I call the emergent arts.
More soon.
Read More | Leave a CommentI probably should have started this sooner, but what I have here are the beginnings of a weaving together of all the ideas that have constituted my research to this point. Though my research is focused and directed overall, the dissertation writing is currently at an early stage and lacking cohesion. Although a draft literature review has been completed most of what I have to this point is fragmented and disorganized. This blog represents an attempt to get myself better organized. So let me start from the top.
My dissertation will be part of the emerging and diverse art research field and in many ways parallels a philosophic dissertation. It involves technology-based artmaking coupled with phenomenological analysis and reflection. I am exploring what I refer to as co-evolutionary experiences in interactive art, with existentialist phenomenology (a la Merleau-Ponty, Don Ihde and Shaun Gallagher) serving as the core method of philosophical analysis and with interactive art projects serving a crucial role as reservoirs of experience that inform and function alongside scholarly writing and argumentation. The central question I am addressing is:
If and how certain forms of interactive art facilitate subjective experiences that elicit an embodied, felt sense and awareness of co-evolution with intelligent systems and technologies?
As an interactive artist and researcher, I am interested in exploring these concepts
from within an artistic context. I believe the field of interactive arts is uniquely suited to this type of inquiry, as it features a myriad of unusual forms of physical interaction and experiences. What has attracted me to the field are the types of works whose forms of interaction not only posses abilities to expand human consciousness but also to transform our experience of the world and of our being within it by encouraging us to enter into states of mutual influence with them. In doing so these works — to paraphrase artist and theorist Jack Burnham (1970) — posses the ability to alter human perception so as to enable us to see ourselves as inextricably linked to our (increasingly technologized) environment while also sensitizing us to aspects of this environment that would otherwise be ignored; a form of “symbiotic intelligence” between humans and technology. We are not separate from our technologies but like the environment, are continuous with it. I characterize this as a co-evolutionary dynamic between humans and technology. Fully appreciating this transformation of experience, which I am calling “symbiogenic”, and the role of interactive arts in it, necessitates a navigation of various theories of ontology. While a detailed account of Western ontological perspectives is beyond the scope of this dissertation, I can briefly introduce four theoretical perspectives that have come to form the conceptual framework I utilize in my research:
(1) What can broadly be characterized as Posthumanist Philosophy and theories of ontology, such as the work of Katherine Hayles, Andy Clark, Cary Wolfe and Mark Hansen. These thinkers explore the nature of our relationship to technology and its role in reconfiguring the human as a heterogenous de-centered subject, thus lessening its controlling position. They question the ontological divide that supposedly exists between humans and their technological creations.
(2) Phenomenology, specifically the existentialist phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and those who have extended his work such as Shaun Gallagher, Hubert Dreyfus and Don Ihde. These thinkers emphasize the crucial role of embodiment in the construction of experience, particularly with regard to technology.
(3) Cybernetics and Neocybernetic Theory. These perspectives emphasize the notion of reciprocal interplay and open-ended emergent interactions between system and environment as well as the notion that the environment and the organism are intertwined and cannot be understood except in relation to one another. In essence, it blurs the division between people and things that has been so common in Western thinking. Autopoiesis (an aspect of neocybernetic theory) outlines the ways in which living systems and their environments co-determine and mutually specify one another. The cybernetic ontology, as described by Andrew Pickering (Pickering, 2007, 2010), is one that showcases a vision of the world as a “lively place of performatively interacting and endlessly emergent systems (of which we humans are just one sort)”.
(4) Interactive Arts practices that enable states of mutual influence with participants and encourage a “symbiotic intelligence” with the technological environment. These works thematize reciprocal interplay with technology and engender a sense of embeddedness in the larger environment.
Broadly speaking, I can say that all of these ideas all emphasize the complex interdependent ways in which humans interrelate with technology and with their world, the importance of human embodied subjectivity and the embodied and situated nature of intelligence. Collectively, they encompass what I describe as a co-evolutionary ontology.
The goal of this research is not to provide a technical framework for something like interactive co-evolutionary systems, nor is it primarily concerned with outlining specific methods or techniques for changing one’s artistic practice (at least not directly). Rather, it is concerned with meanings of co-evolution of humans and technology and how they may be constructed through the development and first-person experience of interactive art systems. I will investigate multiple meanings and perspectives of human-technology co-evolution by using a common practice in philosophy and cultural studies of “unpacking” terms in order to use them more precisely. As a result of this research, a model of symbiogenic experiences will be articulated that fuses theoretical and experiential modes of inquiry to provide insights to both interactive artists and humanities scholars, particular those who have an interest in AI (and technology more broadly). The ultimate goal of the research lies in providing a new framework from which to understand and approach interactive art practice and from which to study and analyze it. My dissertation will begin to fill a gap between themes and concepts of co-evolution that are often either purely discursive or objective (as in the humanities and sciences respectively) and experiences of co-evolution (and the meaning applied to them) in an
interactive arts context.
More soon.
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