Introduction: Initial Ramblings
I 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.