— Symbiogenic Experience

Research Into the Emergent Arts
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Dissertation Outline

July 18, 2012
Research

1. Introduction
Chapter 1 introduces the main concepts address in this dissertation (symbiosis, emergence and human-machine co-evolution) and outlines the central research question addressed. It also discusses the role of interactive arts practice and introduces the reader to phenomenology and its use as a method for interactive arts research. Scope and limitation of the research and a structural overview of the dissertation are also provided.

Progress made: a provisional introduction has been completed. It will probably be modified somewhat as I finish the dissertation.

2. Conceptual Framework
The Literature Review. This chapter provides an overview of the key areas of inquiry that have emerged as a framework for the development and evaluation of my theory of symbiogenic experiences. The diagram in Figure 1 outlines the principal theoretical and critical perspectives and relevant technologies informing this inquiry and their relationships to one another. Beginning by defining co-evolution and symbiogenesis, which I use as a metaphor or point of departure, I sketch out an account of symbiogneic experiences via the interlocking frames of Interactive Arts, the existentialist phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Cybernetics and Autopoietic Theory, Posthumanism, and various techniques and technologies that I loosely categorize as “intelligent systems”. This framework emphasizes 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. Much like cybernetic concepts of feedback and circular causality, as well as my own hermeneutic method described in chapter one, each element in this framework may be read through or may otherwise influence the development of ideas from other elements. For example, the making of an interactive artwork may be influenced by cybernetic or autopoietic concepts, while the understanding of these concepts may be influenced by the making and experience of the artwork. In addition, reading the cybernetic concepts 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 the artwork. Collectively, the elements contained in this conceptual framework encompass the foundation of what I describe as a co-evolutionary ontology and serve in explicating an account of the embodied self and its intrinsic quality of embeddedness and intertwinement with in an increasingly complexified and technologically intelligent world and how aesthetic experience may serve a means to expand awareness so as to make this embeddedness and intertwinement perceptible to us on some level.
Conceptual Framework

The concept of symbiogenesis developed by biologist Lynn Margulis serves as a metaphor and point of departure from which to form my own artistic-phenomenological inquiry into the notion of human-machine coupling and co-evolution (and also as a way to steer clear of Darwinism). In addition, the idea of cooperation and association between organisms are for her an essential element of life and evolution. I am investigating how these concepts may be applied to aesthetic experiences related to technology. Thus the term symbiogenesis — redeployed as symbiogenic — is used as a shorthand term so as to better to discuss certain types of experiences and the issues they inaugurate.

Concepts such as Jack Burnham’s "symbiotic intelligence" and Roy Ascott’s cybernetic model of interactive arts, when combined with analyses of artworks using AI, A-life or cybernetic techniques, provide a framework for examining themes of human-machine coupling, co-emergence and co-evolution in the interactive arts. This conceptual framework involves a threading together of these perspectives, and I will argue that they occupy a domain of art experience and analysis that examines, bears witness to, and engages with the observation that humans are increasingly cooperating and merging with the intelligent technological systems of their environment. This will also be elaborated further in Chapter 3 when I discuss what I call the “emergent arts”.

Posthumanist theories provide an ontological context for examining human-technology relations, analyzing interactive artworks and for the symbiogenic framework more broadly. Posthumanist thinkers such as Katherine Hayles, Mark Hansen, Andy Clark and Cary Wolfe 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.

Existentialist phenomenology, particularly the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and those who have extended his work such as Shaun Gallagher and Don Ihde are employed as a framework for understanding and analyzing co-evolutionary experiences in interactive art. The ideas of these thinkers have come to influence many of the important philosophical components of this conceptual framework, which include examination of the technical dimensions of embodiment and how embodied phenomenology relates to the fields of artificial intelligence and cybernetics. These thinkers emphasize the crucial role of embodiment in the construction of experience, particularly with regard to technology. Existentialist phenomenology serves as the core method of philosophical analysis with interactive art projects serving a crucial role as reservoirs of experience that inform and function alongside scholarly writing and argumentation. The phenomenological method employed here combines accounts of direct experience, philosophical analysis and reflection, with relevant aspects from cybernetics and autopoietic theory in an artistic-theoretical inquiry into the nature of our relationship with intelligent systems and technologies.

Cybernetics and autopoietic theory 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. The concept of co-evolution offered in this dissertation draws significantly from autopoietic theory and neocybernetic theories of emergence. Autopoiesis outlines the ways in which living systems and their environments co-determine and mutually specify one another. Cybernetic ideas related to system boundaries, autonomy and adaptability are employed in this research as a framework for analyzing and understanding: (1) the design and behavior of “intelligent” interactive artworks, (2) how intelligent technological systems (and an intelligent technological environment more broadly) can couple with and effect change in the human and (3) through the lens of existential phenomenology, analyze the recursive art production process itself and how it may lead to new ideas and new understandings.

This research includes the production of interactive artworks as an important aspect of the research process. Certain computational and biomedical methods from research areas such as machine learning and sensory substitution have been employed in the development of these artworks. These provide the relevant scientific and technological background, and artistic inspiration, from which to build these works. At the broadest level, they represent an interest in exploring the coupling of human and machine, sometimes with the goal of providing some sort of “enhancement” to the human. Entire research fields are not covered here but rather, a specific set of references concerning the most important and relevant technological aspects of the research and art-making contained in this dissertation.

Progress made: a rough draft has been completed and submitted to Diane. I am currently working on an updated draft.

3. The Emergent Arts
This chapter contains a taxonomy outlining a number of 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 symbiogenic. 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 this 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 and form the basis for understanding symbiogenic experiences. I refer to this range of works collectively as the “emergent arts”. These works will be analyzed through the lens of cybernetics and neocybernetic theory in conjunction with Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology. I will of course go deeper into these concepts in Chapter 4. The taxonomy I am developing is currently made up of five general characteristics which the works explored here can be analyzed across:

  1. Intertwining/direct coupling: Some artworks that feature a directly physical or embodied form of interaction. These works necessitate direct physical human interaction with some kind of intelligent technological system.
  2. Disturbance/Perturbation: Other works feature 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).
  3. Inter-corporeal/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 what are called “mirror neurons”).
  4. 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 still take a “systems approach to creation” but instead of a direct focus on systems as such these works feature relations grounded on the unique complexity of the material employed in the artwork/system. The material substrate(s) that a work is built upon functions as the driver and locus point of experience rather than the system itself, although the two are directly related. Here the very material form of the works adds a certain novel dimension of tactility and sensuous presence, sometimes even exhibiting a certain kind of agency.
  5. 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). There is a sense of intertwining between human and intelligent system as being “in the air” or functioning as a background context, 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. While the effects may often be longitudinal, they lack any distinct physical location.

It should be noted that any given artwork can have aspects of each of these characteristics (they are not mutually exclusive) and each characteristic can be read across a continuum.

Progress made: a rough draft is currently being worked on and will be completed by the end of September as I am presenting a paper based upon it at the SLSA conference.

4. Exploration and Analysis of Symbiogenic Experiences
This chapter will serve as the core chapter where I sketch out the key characteristics and operative principles that comprise a symbiogenic art experience. I will do this in a two-fold fashion. First, I will identify some key concepts that form the theoretical foundation of the symbiogenic framework. This constitutes the theoretical lens through which I am viewing co-evolutionary experience and will be devoted to a close analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s existentialist phenomenology and its relevance to intelligent systems, cybernetics and the emergent arts. This will be followed by identifying the four key aspects of the symbiogenic experience itself. Provisionally they are as follows:

  1. Distributed: the manner and extent to which a symbiogenic experience motivates a sense of our cognitive process and overall sense of being (particularly our intentionality) as being expanded beyond our biological “skinbags” (as philosopher Andy Clark would say); not locatable within one body or entity at any one time.
  2. Enactive: the manner and extent to which our reality is enacted (in the Varelian sense) through embodied interactions with an intelligent technological life-world. This aspect concerns how symbiogenic experience relates to how we “bring forth a world” for ourselves.
  3. Visceral-Biological: this relates to deeply embodied inward feelings and sensations rather than abstract reasoning as well as experiences that confront us with our biological natures.
  4. Social-Cultural: the social and cultural milieu and intersubjective dialogues of our life-world and how a symbiogenic experience influences and is influenced by ones participation in it.

Much like the characteristics listed in Chapter 3, these aspects of symbiogenic experience are not mutually exclusive and can be read across one another (with each individual characteristic also being read across a continuum). An experience can have more than one aspect of each.

Progress made: a rough draft is currently being worked on but is in its early stages

5. The Projects
This chapter details the development of the three interactive artworks that comprise the tangible/practical component of this dissertation. I describe the development of the conceptual, aesthetic and technical structures that have informed each work, as well as the context within which each work was developed. It includes phenomenological descriptions and analyses of my own experiences with the works and analysis of the deeper conceptual connections to the symbiogenic framework. Three projects are discussed: Protocol (2009-2012), Biopoiesis (2011-2012) and Proof-of-Process (2012). Each of the projects are presented according to the following general structure:

  • General overview of the work, including it’s conceptual underpinnings and developmental context
  • Design and Implementation: details of the project’s design and technical implementation, including hardware, software and materials used, data mapping strategies, etc
  • Exhibition and Evaluation: details of the work’s exhibition and evaluation of the work overall
  • Analysis of the work’s conceptual connections and relationship to the symbiogenic framework

Progress made: All projects have been completed. One exhibition has been completed (at Gallery Gachet in Vancouver) for all the projects. Two more exhibitions for Biopoiesis remain (SIGGRAPH in August and ISEA in September). A third exhibition is also possible at the Re-New Festival in Copenhagen, but I currently lack the funds to attend.

6. Conclusions and Future Directions
This chapter will detail some conclusions and future directions for this research

Progress made: This chapter is in its earliest stages

Chapter Outline

Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 The Role of Artistic Practice

1.2 Method: Phenomenology as a Method for Interactive Arts Research

1.3 What is Meant by “Intelligent Systems”

1.4 Scope and Limitations

1.5 Structural Overview

Chapter 2: Conceptual Framework
2.1 Symbiogenesis and Co-evolution
2.1.1 Symbiogenesis as Metaphor
2.1.2 Defining Co-evolution
2.1.3 A Note on Technological Determinism

2.2 “Symbiotic Intelligence” and “Technogenesis” in the Interactive Arts
2.2.1 Aesthetics of Intelligent Systems
2.2.2 Technogenesis
2.2.3 Summary and Implications

2.3 Posthumanist Theories on Embodiment and Human-Technology Relations
2.3.1 Historical Context
2.3.2 Overview of Posthumanist Thought
2.3.3 Summary and Implications

2.4 Phenomenology and Human-Technology Relations
2.4.1 Overview of Phenomenology
2.4.2 Merleau-Ponty
2.4.3 Human-Technology Relations after Merleau-Ponty
2.4.4 Phenomenological Methods of Analysis of Interactive Art
2.4.5 Summary and Implications

2.5 Cybernetics and Autopoietic Theory
2.5.1 Autopoiesis and Enaction
2.5.2 Autonomy and Neocybernetic Emergence
2.5.3 System-Environment Hybrids
2.5.4 The Cybernetic Ontology
2.5.5 Summary and Implications

2.6 Embodiment, Computation and Intelligent Systems
2.6.1 Cyborgs and Human-Computer Coupling: Historical Context
2.6.2 Intelligent Systems
2.6.3 Organic Alternatives to Digitally-based Intelligent Systems (“Organic Analogues”)
2.6.4 Electric Body Stimulation and Sensory Substitution
2.6.5 Biofeedback and Physiological Monitoring
2.6.6 Summary and Implications

Chapter 3: The Emergent Arts
3.1 Intertwining/Direct Coupling

3.2 Disturbance/Perturbation

3.3 Inter-corporeality/Performative

3.4 Material/Organic Complexity

3.5 Distributed/Apparitional

3.6 Summary

Chapter 4: Exploration and Analysis of Symbiogenic Experiences
4.1 Deeper into Co-evolution

4.2 Emergence and Autonomy

4.3 Boundary Questions

4.4 Ambiguity and Unknowability

4.5 The Problem of Intelligence

4.6 Symbiogenic Framework
4.6.1 Distributed (Distributed Intentionality)
4.6.2 Enactive
4.6.3 Visceral-Biological
4.6.4 Social-Cultural

4.7 Summary

Chapter 5: The Projects
5.1 Precursors
5.1.1 BodyDaemon
5.1.2 Naos

5.2 Protocol
5.2.1 Overview
5.2.2 Conceptual Foundations
5.2.3 Developmental Context
5.2.4 System Design and Implementation
5.2.5 Exhibition and Evaluation
5.2.6 Analysis

5.3 Biopoiesis
5.3.1 Overview
5.3.2 Conceptual Foundations
5.3.3 Developmental Context
5.3.4 System Design
5.3.5 Implementation Strategies
5.3.5.1 Emergent Relations
5.3.5.2 Optimal/Sub-optimal
5.3.5.3 Organic Learning
5.3.5.4 Evolving Dimensionalities
5.3.6 Exhibition and Evaluation
5.3.7 Analysis

5.4 Proof-of-Process
5.4.1 Overview
5.4.2 Conceptual Foundations
5.4.3 Developmental Context
5.4.4 The Process
5.4.5 Exhibition and Evaluation
5.4.6 Analysis

5.5 Summary

Chapter 6: Conclusions and Future Directions
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Notes on Cybernetics, Merleau-Ponty and the Emergent Arts

May 12, 2012
Research

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?

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First Draft of Literature Review

May 11, 2012
Research

A 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.

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The Emergent Arts (Pt. 2)

May 9, 2012
Research

Continuing 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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The Emergent Arts

May 8, 2012
Research

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.

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Introduction: Initial Ramblings

May 7, 2012
Research

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.

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