hmm…cybernetics and AI, lets talk.

I would like to discuss the art, the meaning and ideas behind cybernetics and most specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI). In class we have covered this topic many times before and each time the same ideas and concerns come to mind. AI is the study of how we learn and applying that knowledge to machines and technology. It is a cognitive science, a look at how humans learn and problem solve. But if our final goal is to one day share this with machines and AI what will set us apart? Or is that the real goal, to make humans and machines interchangeable and one day only the machines will be left? If we teach them, the AI, to think like we do then reproduction will be all that separates us and even that can already, today be done artificially and without much effort! The World will become one similar to the most cliche sci-fi movies and shows. The kind were the people are interacting and living with robots but they don’t know that they are robots etc. This is where I get lost, is all this really feasible? Could this one day be our future? If so, will the robots dictate how we humans live or vise a verse? What if they are in charge will they decide what we do, who we grow up to be and who we make a life with? Have you ever read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World ? Well in it they have master artificial reproduction and taken away all pain and suffering, basically a utopia. But even in this ‘perfect’ world there si a darker, hidden side. I fear that with societies eager acceptance of AI and bio-technologies such as Sommerer and Mignonnonea, A-Volve, 1997, Life Spacies, 1997 and Interactive Plant Growing, 1992. Also Ken Goldberg and Joseph Santarromana, Telegarden, 1995-present and Ken Goldberg’s Mori, 1999-present has lead to the welcoming of much more provocative pieces and even the arrest of a leading bio-techno artist! One such piece that strikes me as slightly alarming is Oron  Catts and  Ionat Zurr from the  Tissue Culture and Art Project and their Victimless Leather Jacket be alter, like the natural order could nthat is actually semi-living, a term that has been created in recent years for the new technological biomedical advances and states of being discovered as of late. Society just eats up this new, good-for-the-environment stuff that will one day have us all wearing shirts and pants we have to remember to feed and walk! I understand the need to always be moving forward and finding newer, better ways of doing the ’same old’. Some things should not be messed with such as naturally occurring organisms. I am ok with the interactive, web-based plant growth and the programs that stimulate life but cloning a creating life where it did not already exist with technology does not seem right. Should we really learn how to grow our own leather, other than cows of course? I know that eventually we will run out of cows and that maybe we shouldn’t use them for jackets anyway but making our own leather and growing it like a plant or something is just unsettling. Does anyone else think so, or I am just too close-minded for my own good!?! I know that technology will continue to advance into newer and stranger fields such clothing but I feel cautious, even now when we have barely stuck our toe in the tub, metaphorically speaking. W e are not that far in the grand scheme of things but I am fearful of where we will take it.

I do not want to get into a whole big thing about cloning and bio-technologies but I do want to say that we should probably just leave well enough alone when it come to human life. Let nature take its course and all that. I do not really have a problem with cloning animals and things of that nature but cloning people takes it too far. Then you enter a field of ethics and morals, would the clones think for themselves, would have have all the subconscious thoughts and activities that we do now, and off on a more personal wavelength, would they have a soul?

Ok, so I got into it a little, I can’t help but go there because for me it is all linked. It starts with cybernetics now and AI and then the AI’s become commonplace and then clones and then what? We are already growing jackets and cloning sheep, will it ever stop? Who will stop it, who would be in charge if we continued? We would need a leader in the field with high morale standards but if you are in that field to begin with do you have high moral standards? These are all questions I don’t have answers to, but I am curious…on some levels.

Loudspeaker Orchestras are just…loud…

One of the most interesting classes we had this semester in my opinion was when Steve Beck from the LSU school of music came and spoke to us. He told us all he could squeeze into the hour and a half class time about loudspeaker orchestras. If you are like me, you have no idea what I am talking about. Well, it is a large or sometimes relatively small number of speakers set up on stage in the form and specific positions of an orchestra. A large difference other than the lack of actual, living breathing musicians is that “traditional music” is not what is being playing, but rather noises or all ranges, loud to soft, high to low and fast to slow. This is a field known as electrostatic music and it is for the most part, done with intention of it not being heard live. Another huge difference between this “music” and music performed by musicians at a traditional concert. I I have a closer connection to this topic than most artists because I am a musician I play in LSU’s top musical performance group, The Wind Ensemble and I know that if I was to hear this “music” I would probably hate it compared to someones who has into been exposed to traditional, classical music on a daily basis for over 11 years now! I think the concept is a very interesting one and I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you some of my notes from Mr. Beck’s talk with us.

• this kind of music unburdens us from traditional music, takes away the boundaries etc.
• how is it performed?

1. live performer and fixed media
2. live performer and interactive media
3. laptop music-which is people on stage with computers making the music
4. static playback-he says its boring, I believe him!
5. diffusion- prerecorded sounds redistributed

He then went on to explain to us all the different ways you can set up the “performance” I thought it was interesting that the entire sound and relevance of the pieces can be altered by the placement of the speakers the same way the placement of instruments in a concert set up can enhance or damage the dynamic of a piece.

The fixed speaker arrangements vary from stereo which is two to eight channel set up and beyond.

All in all it was a very interesting lesson, not really from the view of an artist, because as critical and possibly close-minded as this may make me sound I do not view this type of performance as anything other than art, it is NOT music! I’m sorry to say something so main-stream but having played some the strongest and most influential pieces of music that are available for wind bands for throughout the majority of my life I can not view random sounds from speakers spread all over a stage as an equally valid or even interesting thing. I know there is a large portion of society that would strongly disagree with me on that note but that is what makes our communities so diverse. There is something for everyone and the same holds true for art, if not even more so because art is so very objective and personal.

A Manifesto for the resto…well, really only for the feminists!

One of our readings for class was Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto, which was if nothing else, an interesting look at feminism. She uses the ‘cyborg’ as a reference for women, society and the way things have changed; the role that women and technology play in it and even how they relate to one another. The ‘cyborg’ could be women in general or the idea of women or the social idea of women or even the social standard that women are held to. There are many ways to read into Haraway’s writing, she offers multiple examples of these roles and several different discussions on women in what she describes as the “integrated circuit”.

For example, first a definition of what exactly a cyborg is, in her voice “a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” and in regards to women “a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women’s experience in the late twentieth century. This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality [as] an optical illusion” (1). In Haraway’s writing the cyborg stands for all the different roles women play and all a larger level all the multiple views and definitions any organism or even machine can have. For instance, electronic pets for children; they serve simply as toys but they are computers within themselves and they offer a look at the technologies of today. If society can build a completely electronic creature, one that barks and plays and begs for attention then what lies ahead for mankind, will it become an entirely technological world in which real animals and pets are replaced with cold, metal ones that need to be charged!

Discussing the computerized pooch of today brings into question the idea of intelligence, can it be programmed? If so, will the world one day become like the sci-fi worlds of so many movies? Consider the resent movie I Robot starring Will Smith (2), science has advanced so that real robots not only exist but live as near equals to humans and the humans depend on them on a daily basis. Is that a plausible future, will society allow the earth to be over run but electronic beings, will we ever really possess the technology to even think this possible? This idea of artificial intelligence is one for another discussion, Haraway’s essay emphasizes the “argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource” (1). Cyborgs can be seen as a breach between social boundaries in similar fashion to the robotic dog toy discussed earlier, it is both a dog and a robot, here too Internet applications such Second Life and even the computer game The Sims (3) could be a relevant topic for debate. Let the focus remain on Haraway’s definition of the cyborg and the boundaries they cross and breakdown. She defines them as dualism’s of ones mindset, animal and machine, idealism and materialism, symbolic formulations and physical artifacts. Her reasoning and purpose for the article rests in the ideal that “a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints. The political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (1). This statement, first published in Socialist Review 80: 65-108 in 1985 still hold true today in a society where thing one says and does ends up on the Internet for the world to see. Where our political leaders are simply the candidates who lie the best or have the cleanest backgrounds. People can argue all day that it needs to be about the issues but society has become so divided between democratic and republican that the issues matter very little and the loyalties of the candidates to their home parties is what sets them each apart. The presidential race this term is one for the history books, it is the first time that both a black man and a women have even been so seriously considered. Having a background in areas of society not involving politics, my views and ideas on the subject are easily dismissible but I feel very strongly that we, as a social body have begun to lose the importance of politics. The government is supposed to represent the people but in these later years that is not always the case, I believe Haraway said it best, “Single vision produces worse illusions than double vision or many headed monsters” (1) what is the point in having a government for the people, by the people if the people in question are not even voting for the ideas but rather the image and title of the parties?

Well, bringing the focus back to women and their role in the ‘integrated circuit’ of society I again turn to Haraway herself and the social impact of being a woman in modern times, “there is nothing about “female” that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as “being” female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices. Gender, race or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism” (1). Even today, twenty some-odd years after this essay was written women still struggle daily to prove their social worth in fields that have been historically male such as, engineering and corporate business. In the art world we see less of this because all artists struggle to make their work and views known to people outside the art world. Here too often situations arise where women have to defend themselves more than the average male might showing the same work. It is this constant gender struggle often encompasses artists entire bodies of work such as Hararway herself who believes in ‘cyber-feminism’ a field of many followers.

The woman’s role in technological advances often goes unnoticed or is easily forgotten. One of the first computer programmers, ever, was a woman by the name of Grace Hopper. If had not been for her and her brilliant mind we not have the technologies we now take forgranted on an hourly basis. Women should not be overlooked when it comes to technology or art, especially in this age of New Media and the digital art being created as we speak by strong and inspiring women all around the world. I may not feel as strongly about women’s role and though I personally would not compare us to cyborgs I respect many of the points Haraway’s stresses and her social interpretations of the feminine role in life and the workplace and true to modern life and hit home for many us female artists out there.

Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto, Socialist Review 80 1985 (the New Media Reader, The MIT Press Cambridge, Mass. London, England)

I, Robot, 2004, Starring Will Smith directed by Alex Proyas (Internet movie Database 2008 )

The Sims 2000, creator Will Wright (Maxis and Electronic Arts)

ok….here we go…

This is my little disclaimer I guess you would call it…

This blog is for my Digital Art History class and I have been compiling notes and thoughts and things of that nature throughout the semester and now it has come the time to post them.

Please bear with me as I am not a ‘blogger’ and it has taken me a while to do all this. As strange as it may seem I realized as I went through this course and tried to put my thoughts from paper to my blog online that I was NOT nearly ready to post. I know it may seem odd but I found it a little unsettling trying to post my thoughts directly so instead I have been putting them on paper and I will now attempt to post them coherently, lets hope it works!

Class in Second Life…yea we went there, literally!

I don’t know if any of you have ever heard of Second Life, because I know I hadn’t until we were assigned the task of creating an avatar (the virtual you) and figuring it all out. We had to do so because we had decided to hold class IN Second Life (SL). For someone who had never even heard of SL I was a little upset that we were being required to go there for a class, though intrigued at the same time. A lot of the irritation stems from the fact that I have always been a little wary of Internet activities such as SL were people literally waste their lives away in a world that doesn’t really exist! I think that our society has become so dependent on the Internet and all the new and different things that are available now that people have become obsessed.

Speaking as someone who constantly texts rather calls, I completely understand that these new technologies are convenient and often easier. We have to ask ourselves what will happen to our society and even in a broader, more extreme sense, us as human beings if we start to limit our personal and physical contact with other human beings the way we have already begun to do so. For the few short minutes that we were online in class I saw how easy it can be to lose yourself in the ‘game’ (or whatever SL is). For example I fell off the
island gallery we were touring, (an interesting idea to be discussed in a little bit) and I fell into a pool behind someones house, I guess you could say I was ‘lost’ in the game(I know that was awful!). Well, the ‘owner’, if you believe you can really own anything in SL (in the literal and figurative meanings of ownership) came out and greeted me and asked if they could help me out. I guess since I fell from the sky into their pool they figured I didn’t know what I was doing which was an accurate description of my time in SL! I don’t know how many different times I fell off the silly islands and couldn’t get back…but I digress…

Anyway, the house’s ‘owner’ gave me tips and hints and was very friendly, we had an actual conversation and at its close I realized that I had no idea who this person was or where they were from. Even though their avatar was a women, were they? Was it an old, creepy guy named Russel who secretly wanted to be the woman named Kathy whom he played in SL? Or was it really just a young woman named Kathy who owned property in an unreal world? There are so many variables when dealing with artificial environments and unrestricted registration, it makes you question what is real and who you can trust. I know that seems really dramatic and is unnecessarily so but you have to keep in mind that some people who get involved in things like that have no filter, and no limit to the time they spend there and thus become fully dependent on it as a form of interaction. This is unhealthy, we as human beings need to interact with one another on a daily basis to be healthy, happy human beings! Its a proven fact that kids who interact with other children grow up to lead more productive lives.

I am climbing off my soap box now, I promise, I just have concerns about man-made environments and the way we, as a society except them without question or second glance. Don’t get me wrong, there are many things I enjoy about SL and the newest technologies created alongside it, such as the art galleries I mentioned already. It is not only possible to create works in SL, which blows my mind if I really think about it, but you can actually feature your works in your own gallery, which for us artists is a very special thing. In the real world, realistically you may never be featured in a gallery but online you can have your own, be your own curator and sell your own art. Well, not really ’sell’ to real people in the real world but sell to other avatars in SL, its weird to think that though money, online money at that, is exchanged but not really exchanged in the REAL world…so, does this really count as a monetary exchange? In that sense, does the art from SL really exist, is it really art even?

I know I just climbed right back on a nother soap box there so this will be the close.

There are a lot of things I could discuss here but it gives me a headache to think about all the different interpretations and I still have a lot of posts to make, good bye for now.

ps

If you want to check out SL just log on, its free and fun so you should try it!

www.secondlife.com