Theory – Anna Huff

Reading Response: What is Cybernetics?

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Cybernetics is about the essential relationship between humans and machines. Norbert Wiener makes the case for making smarter and more capable machines to free humans from being button pushers or mind numbing computer operators which is a waste of human intelligence. The advancement of machines is actually a humanist motivation and Wiener envisions it as craft movements that use social reform and integration as their central idea.

Feedback loops and AI is essential for machine and human communication and symbiosis. Machines act as a “pilot” or “guide” for humans; just look at phones and computers. These communication and researching machines already act as our external brains. Opening communication and integration between man and machine is important for creating sympathy. The more machines can be humanized, the more we can humanize the systems machines already control and influence like economy and social fabrics.

Cultural Aspects of Reflected Images

Narcissus is a greek myth about a young man who falls in love with his own reflection. When he realizes his love is only his own reflection, he becomes so heartbroken that he commits suicide. He discovers his illusion could never become real and his despair leads to his own death. The myth is supposed to be about the dangers of self-obsession but for me the allure and loss of illusion is poignant to me.

Another version of this story surfaces in pop culture in Harry Potter with The Mirror or Erised. When someone looks into the mirror, their reflection shows what they desire most in the world, and the longing for the things people see in the mirror but can never have in real life, drives people into madness or suicide. In storytelling, mirrors and reflections are used to portray character introspection or reveal a psychological state. Self-reflections reveal alter personalities like in Black Swan, hidden desires like the magical mirror in Harry Potter, alternate dimensions, and passage of time like in 2001: A Space Oddessy. In visual art, mirrors distort reality or displace space like Anish Kapoor’s Sky mirrors.

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Self-reflection started from distorted images in water to polished metal and then finally mirrors and photographs. Catoptomacy, which originates in ancient Greece, was a way to predict the future by interpreting reflections (originally in water) in polished metal disks to interpret patterns of moon beam reflections. This practice is most likely the origin of crystal ball fortune-telling. Mirrors are seen as portals or gateways into the spiritual realm, that the distorted images can give them glimpses into the other side.

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Breaking mirrors or destroying a portrait is bad luck or an omen of death. In myths, vampires or evil creatures do not have reflections or shadows because they do not have souls at all. What is it about the human image that makes it “spiritually tethered” to its original owner? Ironically, instead of being afraid that getting your photo taken will steal your soul, people now want their “souls stolen” by images because that is how immortality is achieved. There are piles of family albums in most homes, social media documenting selfies, and even the hope of one day uploading consciousness into the cloud.

The Fold

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The Fold by Gilles, Deleuze combines analysis of Baroque thought and Liebnitz to describe “the fold”. The fold is difficult to describe since it is applied to broad and specific things from describing the universe to the in-separation of the body and soul. This mirco/macro model is very similar to Liebnitz’s monads, which are the philosophers description of the building blocks of the universe. Within each monad, reflects the entire universe and therefore a single branch can reflect the cosmos. The fold is like the arrangement, construction or interaction of monads. The building blocks do not combine. They fold in unity or in arrangement to create forms and objects.

The soul is described as an evelope of folds. The soul contains infinite folds because it is only with the possesion of the soul, can people percieve other folds. There is no material for what is being folded but rather a process of how things, thoughts, matter, can interact and touch in infinite points. I still do not understand what the fold means or its allegorical purpose but what I can do is associate “the folds” to what I already know. For example, the shape of proteins on a molecular level are complex folds, and the shape and struture are what gives it function. Protiens are a literal interpretation but an example I can use to comprehend the philosophical applications. The fold can create strutures, envelope, increase or unfurl. I suppose the ability to create rigidity/ fluidity, clarify/obstructuct, and combine/divide faces is a useful picture to use to describe poetic truths about how things are.

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Holographic Imagery and Cultural Interpretations

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A hologram is a photographic capture of a light field using a laser and when lit properly will create a three-dimensional image. The first holograph was invented in 1962 by Yuri Denisyuk in the Soviet Union and by Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks at the University of Michigan. Often confused as a hologram, the Pepper’s Ghost trick is 2D projection reflected through glass. Even though it is not a hologram, I would categorize it as holographic imagery because the intended purpose is to recreate (or imitate) a projected 3D object to be interacted with. It is no surprise Pepper’s Ghost caught on in theatres since the stage is the original platform for manifesting fantasy. Unlike story-telling, theatre adds physical vehicles to guide the imagination and as stage tricks became more sophisticated, the more real the illusions became. What is special about live theatre is that it is taking place in real time and is grounded in that “truth” even if the story is fantasy unlike movies and television which are records of past happenings. “Movie magic” is accepted as common place or easy with film editing but a live performance is respected to be much more difficult. Cultural applications of holographic imagery are made for first hand

Hologram figure of virtual British group Gorillaz appears on stage during their performance at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2005 in Lisbon

interaction. For example, famous singers are resurrected from the dead to perform on stage and politicians can perform live rallies at multiple locations all over a country at once. The famous example is Tupac at Coachella where a life-like animation of the deceased rapper sang and danced with the real Snoop Dog using the Pepper’s Ghost trick. Other musicians and actors have been “raised from the dead” and some bands only perform live as projections like the Gorillaz. Holograms and projection tricks are meant to be seen in person and do not photograph well. They are always experienced live.

The latest development of hologram technology is sense of touch. Japanese researchers from University of Tokyo’s Department of Complexity Science and Engineering (DCSE) have invented the Haptoclone. The Haptoclone can make a hologram of an object, like a ball, and when that holographic ball is tapped, the real ball resting a foot away will roll off its platform. The sensation is very light and feels like a slight brush because the ultrasound waves responsible for the sense of touch must be used at a low power or else the radiation levels will become dangerous. So technically a virtual handshake, or a hug would cost you your life.

Starting from the popularity of the pepper ghost trick, the illusionary phenomena has been used to “resurrect the dead”. The transparent quality makes sense to use the mirage-like images for spirits but even now there is a company in South Florida that manufactures Pepper’s Ghost trick set ups to make a “hologram eulogies” so people can attend their own funerals (Link http://aimholographics.com/ ). What is it about these optical illusions that are used to fantasize about death and the afterlife? Is it that they appear to exist between reality and imagination? Or does it feel like a doppelganger has been created that will live on once you die?

220px-The_Invention_of_Morel_1940_Dust_Jacket The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Casares is a science fiction novel from the 1940s about a device that makes a holographic recording of an entire island for a one week span. When the main character is cast away on the island he is the first to witness the holographic video and believing that it was displaying real people, falls in love with one of the recorded women. The catch of the holographic invention is once you are recorded, you will only exist in the recording and will no longer exist in the real world. The goal of immortality was achieved by the inventor but the immortality is only realized through the perception of others watching the recording. I love seeing echoes of the age-old fears of mirrors, photographs, and even paintings having the ability to steal people’s souls by capturing a person’s likeness. Casares layers more metaphor and depth to his story but the sentiment is still there. The superstitious attitude has now turned to intentional obsession because now we want our “souls to be stolen” by images. There are so many fantasies of “immortality” from Black Mirror’s uploading consciousness to the cloud to Futurist inventions of cryonics and Bina 48.

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Sympathy of Things

Reading Response 1 p. 31-41

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In the reading Lars Spuybroek argues “Craft and Code” are really one in the same and describes code as something that “speaks the language matter speaks”. Using the example of someone writing the same letter over and over, each letter will never be identical just like code can make infinite variations of the same action. Mechanical machines are guilty of creating perfect copies where digital machines can express the nuances and interlacing structures done by craft work. The way this works is through continuous systems and using Lars’s steps/check list of Redundancy, Changefulness, Rigidity, Naturalism, Savageness, and sometimes Grotesqueness(p. 39-40).

What stood out to me was the proclamation that “as all craft moves towards design, all labor must move towards robotics”(p.39) In order for craft to survive in the protection of design, digital manipulation must replace labor from the artist to the machine, but not in the way industrial manufacturing has altered the labor of products. The “products” must be varied, like technologically induced evolution in the mutation of genes. I can grasp how digital machines can replace drafts of gothic cathedrals but it is something originally done by craftspeople and now copied by machine. We are still stuck trying to emulate hand work. It seems like digital machines are really the only hope to maintain a sensitivity to craft since human labor must eventually be replaced by machines. I do agree with Lars but it is still unsettling. Yet the idea of “technological abstinence” is even more damaging. Progress cannot be slowed, it is something you want to stay ahead of.

Question: is Spuybroek trying to sell digital machines to crafters or a warning to try to preserve craft?