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.