isea 2011 presentation
TRANSCRIPT
Seeking Syncretism in Post-biological Mixed Reality Real-time Data Transfer Systems
Julian StadonCurtin University of Technology
My Research offers a contribution to an emerging culturally orientated discourse regarding syncretic, hybridized agency, particularly in mixed reality data transfer systems. Recent developments in bridging autonomous relationships with digital representation through mixed reality interfacing, have brought about the need for further analysis of these new „post-biological‟, hybridized states of being that traverse traditional paradigms of time and space. Roy Ascott‟s concept of syncretism may facilitate further understanding of multi-layered world views, both material and metaphysical, that are emerging from our engagement with such pervasive computational technologies and post-biological systems. Syncretism has traditionally been regarded as an attempt to harmonise and analogise.
This particular conversation adopts a syncretic approach to the gathering of disparate beliefs and ideologies in order to expand on the topic of anthropomorphic representation in order to deconstruct our relationships with agents and the architecture of autonomy. Focusing on networked agency this investigation seeks to articulate the need for dialogue in anthropomorphic social robotics to include a more holistic approach, in order to fully understand the breadth of relationships, particularly their effect on consciousness and identity. In this paper I refer to the notion of agency rather than the field of robotics as I believe the notion of servitude applies even to the most advanced artificially intelligent autonomous robots.
“One of the crucial concerns of robotic art is the nature of a robot's behavior: Is it autonomous, semi-autonomous, responsive, interactive, adaptive, organic, adaptable, telepresential, or otherwise?. The behavior of other agents with which robots may interact is also key to robotic art. The interplay that occurs between all involved in a given piece (robots, humans, etc.) defines the specific qualities of that piece.”
Eduardo Kac and Marcel.li Antunez Roca Originally published on the Web in Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Vol. 5, N. 5, May 1997.
Steigler and Promethean Alchemy
The Fault of Epimetheus
In this age of contemporary technics, it might be thought that technological power risks sweeping the human away. This is one of the possible conclusions of this presentation. Work, family, and traditional forms of communities would be swept away by the deterritorialization (that is, bydestruction) of ethnic groups, and also of knowledge, nature, and politics (not only by the delegation of decision making but by the “marketization” of democracy [...]
The Fault of Epimetheus
[...] the economy (by the electronization of the financial activity that now completely dominates it), the alteration of space and time (not only inter-individual spaces and times, by the globalization of interactions through the deployment of telecommunication networks, the instantaneity of the processes, the “real time” and the “live”, but also the space and time of the “body proper” itself, by the tele-aesthesia or “tele-presence”, a neologism that bears as it stands the whole weight of the contradictions that we shall attempt to think through here). [...]
The Fault of Epimetheus
[…] For the moment, let us refrain from asking whether the nature of the human is threatened by alteration or even disappearance, for one would first have to know whether humanity ever had a nature.”
Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1. The Fault of Epimetheus
a call for a new definition due to networked consciousness
Second order cybernetics was very successful in its endeavor to explain our early relationships with robots in terms of interactivity and connectivity however the incorporation of more networked systems of autonomous/anthropomorphic based interactions have created a system of agency that is less anchored in a traditional bio-physical/electro-physical dichotomy
latency within agencyThe core relation to the structure of autonomy is latency
in open systems of engagement. All cybernetic feedback systems endure what is known as time-space inconsistency. This is the spatial difference between user and agent and occurs due to latency, bandwidth speed, the paths chosen for data transfer to occur to name a few examples.
It is a popular belief that we are now, through a media convergent, participatory culture (integrated socially through a subnet of platforms) creating a collective intelligence that exists in this global village of knowledge (data) transfer.
re/deterritorialisation
This creates a deterritorialised autonomy in that a potentially infinite number of users can participate with agents in this „gap‟. It is in this ambiguous space that robots can truly become autonomous as they are free within the network, emancipated of control and alleviated of the responsibility to respond. While computer scientists detest the effect this has on functionality, artists should embrace this in between space. It is a new millennium version of the gap between painting and viewer, representation and ideas, but it goes beyond dichotomies. It is forever expansive in it‟s invitation to be engaged with.
In Difference and Repetition Deleuze introduces the notion of deterritorialisation (through dispersion) as a “dark precursor” that “relates heterogeneous systems and even completely disparate things.” In order for deterritorialisation to occur there must be some form of agent that can remain constant and self-referent. Deleuze and Guatarri state that: “The alignment of the code or linearity of the nucleic sequence in fact marks a threshold of deterritorialisation of the “sign” that gives it a new ability to be copied and makes the organism more deterritorialised than a crystal: only something deterritorialised is capable of reproducing itself.”
In the same way that a digital device deterritorialises and reterritorialisesinformation through binary code, the augmentation of an autonomous agent into a shared space with the body, creates new opportunities for investigation into technology, the body and identity.
Digital MIXED reality‟s hybridization with physical and biological architectures is constructed by the methods used to connect the environments. The combination and cohesion of heterogeneous elements is generally problematic, particularly when a three dimensional space is primarily viewed on a two dimensional plane.
The integration of virtual elements and physical environments relies on bridging the two spaces with dynamic networked interfaces that are simultaneously accessible and able to be openly engaged with, edited and developed. To create integration systems that network physical and virtual data shared locations are required in order to represent the data in a meaningful way, that is inclusive of both environments.
The advent of nanobiology has called for a rethinking of Hayles and Harraways‟ post-human discourse through it shifting our perception of organisms from micro to nanoscale.
post-biological digital ID
Post-biological, in this sense, refers to a redefinition of the embodied subject which encompasses their location in virtual environments as well as in the physical. This involves the creation, through art practice, of what we might term autonomous agents that are born from data but which take on the appearance of bio-forms and thus become embodied. At the same time these agents are a differential embodiment of the „bodies‟, which first generated that data in their everyday activities.
The existence of „embodied information‟, linked to and yet not the same as embodied selves, creates an interface through which humans negotiate their identities across the boundaries of different reality states, more or less virtual, and yet always involving the mapping or writing of that identity onto „a body‟. By having bodies both material and virtual, humans have become post-biological even as their biology remains the primary point of reference for the data gathering, which enables this transition to occur.
moving beyond post-human
Hayles and Haraway deal within this paradigm of gender and traditional western philosophy. This concept of humanism is no longer valid due to biological progression in the field of neuroscience/consciousness. This calls for a discourse that is more inclusive of other organisms. This is further expressed by vision science, particularly atomic force microscopy, digital telescopes etc. The universe is now visible from the extremes of spatial distance.
Post-Biological Discourse Defined in Reference to Real Time Networked Data Transfer
Post-biological, in this sense, refers to a redefinition of the embodied subject which encompasses their location in virtual environments as well as in the physical. This involves the creation, through art practice, of what we might term autonomous agents that are born from data but which take on the appearance of bio-forms and thus become embodied. At the same time these agents are a differential embodiment of the „bodies‟, which first generated that data in their everyday activities.
CONTEXTUALISING SYNCRETIC POST-BIOLOGICAL DIGITAL
SYSTEMS AND IDENTITY
While they may lose their function without a user, agents do still exist as digital data/archives and often experiences with such entities are remembered independently of any knowledge of the viewer.
Brian Massumi states, “The body,sensorof change, is a transducer of the virtual.”
Through existing in these virtual representations, that are directly linked to living bio- systems, we effectively sense, feel and think in a way that hybridizes the virtual with scientific inquiry, and therefore we require a discourse that addresses how this does in fact make us post-biological.
IDENTITY
Avatars represent a transient, continually altered identity, usually that of its author and acts as an agent, through which users can engage with virtual platforms. This is particularly interesting when participants can physically interact with a virtual deterritorialised „self‟ in a networked environment and mediate it through physical engagement. The dispersion of multiple virtual agents via mixed reality constructs and expands deterritorialisation to include reterritorialisation, by facilitating a dispersive relationship between the body and its virtual
self-referent.
syncretism
It is a popular belief that we are now, through a media convergent, participatory culture (integrated socially through a subnet of platforms) creating a collective intelligence that exists in this global village of knowledge (data) transfer.1 This perspective evades mythological notions of anthropomorphic interaction. Networked robotic systems that use real time MRDT expand autonomous robotic interaction beyond traditional bio-physical/electro-physical relationships and are integral to understanding our relationship with autonomous agents.
syncretism
Adopting a syncretic approach to this discourse allows for the inclusion of social networks in dialogue concerning social robotics. Syncretism has traditionally been regarded as an attempt to harmonise and analogise disparate ideologies, socio-political views and fields of inquiry.
ROY ASCOTT‟S PARADIGM
In regards to real time digital participation this thinking interrogates the meaning and consequences of the possibility of the notion of „agents‟ and, in doing so, enables us to question the notion that information, once extracted from the embodied self and placed within a computer system, becomes „bodiless‟. In posing that question we discover that, contrary to what we might at first assume, data is also embodied.
“Just as cybernetics analogizes differences between systems, so syncretism finds likeness between unlike things. Syncretic thinking breaches boundaries and subverts protocols. Thinking out of the box, testing the limits of language, behaviour and thought puts the artist on the edge of social norms but at the centre of human development.”
-Ascott
This perspective evades mythological notions of anthropomorphic interaction. Networked robotic systems that use real time MRDT expand autonomous robotic interaction beyond traditional bio-physical/electro-physical relationships and are integral to understanding our relationship with autonomous agents. Adopting a syncretic approach to this discourse allows for the inclusion of social networks in dialogue concerning social robotics.
A new mythology for agency
As art is fundamentally an articulation of the human condition it can therefore be said that syncretism is also a valid method for analysing identity within the post-biological discourse. If we are indeed post-biological then we must exist in syncretic mixed reality state. The hybridisation of augmented reality and virtual environments with physical/biological systems calls for a rethinking of not only posthuman ideologies, but also the way that cybernetic systems function.
Final comments
