Ryan/draft project proposal

What do you want to make?

Following the schematic set out in my thesis proposal, I will create a cycle of works that follow a non-human entity, "Cloud", as they unknowingly embark on a journey of apotheosis. Cloud acts as a mediator between nanobeings and this realm, and in doing so reveals a startling truth about the nature of all things. Developing the themes of my work of last year, the project investigates dislocation from the body, how symbolic systems interlace with biological systems, and how the human nervous system is co-extensive with information systems. These will take the form of video, installation, and VR. The narrative form will follow an abstraction of the hero quest, where the protagonist will go through the processes of a journey that fundamentally changes them. I am interested in exploring a non-linear narrative, where what the viewer sees each time can change.

The story will be structured following the methodology of the Oedipus story. Cloud encounters an oracle that gives them a strange message regarding the nature of their being. This encounter will always be the initiation of the cycle. From here, Cloud will encounter a series of nanospectres, each time revealing information related to the prophecy. Locale-wise, the narrative will take place as Cloud is descending through a labyrinth, again unknowingly, but related to the words of the oracle. Cloud is formed by the very nanospectres he takes to be agents of his destruction but which are actually agents of his formation. They imagine themself to be apart from them but he is co-extensive to them. They discovers that they exist only in relation to them. Cloud is the head and the tail of this feedback loop.

Abstracting characters, spaces, and interactions allow for speculation into how artificial intelligences could interact within the framework of body, ecology and network, investigating the tensions and paradoxes that exist between non-linear existence and the self.

My method focuses a level of abstraction removed from direct subjectivity. There are permeabilities that leak through from this stage that inform the emotional response of the characters of my work. I find this area rich for exploration and experimentation, as it allows for my work to address commonalities of human experience without resorting to personal subjectivity, while referencing notions that have emotional resonance.

The following texts represent the first forays into this project.

Text 1a - General Form of the Narrative
Text 1b - Spiritual Cyborg/Alchemical Fire
Text 2 - Metabolic Rift
Text 3 - Nodocentric Self

How do you plan to make it?

There will be a cycle of 4 parts. Each of the 4 parts will be presented in a media most appropriate for the content. This is an area still under development, however I envision a multi-channel video installation and a VR installation.

What is your timetable?

November - Finalise narrative

December - Build characters and world

January/February - Production (for eye, present a prototype?)

March - Engine Build

April - Finalise

Why do you want to make it?

I feel that the time in which we live is offering up thousands of answers, without any questions being asked that could aid in understanding the technological developments that are taking place. While there are legion possibilities of how technology can be beneficial to the development of society, currently it serves as yet another platform for competition and financial hegemony. I hope my project will be a counterforce to this, and confuse, delight, and confound the people who see it.

Who can help you and how?

I imagine I will do technical development mainly through internet research, as well as ask my peers for advice and opinions. I think it could be beneficial to solicit feedback from a few of the xpub tutors, as their work seems to overlap with my interests. Furthermore I will ask for assistance from Bridgit in the Interaction station, as well as the other instructors within the WDKA.

Relation to previous practice

In consistency with my work of last year (and in the spirit of Guattari’s idea thief) I will appropriate texts, concepts and works of others and build new ideas and connections within them. Throughout my work I have been analysing the relationships between the body, ecology and the network. Within this framework, I am interested in dissecting the aspects of human experience that define the significance of existence. As a narrative method, I take these aspects and abstract them onto speculative artificial beings as they attempt to navigate this terrain.

Relation to a larger context

In my work I aim to sabotage a future that totalises the image as nothing more than representation, and submits to the oppressive reign of the informational present through highlighting the paradox of the modern condition, that is, where we are given the illusion of absolute freedom, but only within the structured established framework prescribed by the control systems. There is an evident tension in this, where the network logic attempts to superimpose on top of ecology, itself a highly complex and interconnected system that self corrects against forces of control. Previously I addressed this concept by breaking down the concept of human emotion (as perhaps a machine intelligence would), then having the AI recompile it into a semblance of emotions, ultimately leaving an ambiguous question towards the viability of this. Also in the work I used the subjective experiences of dance and music that are much harder to quantify into a datafied system, which further pushed the tension towards facsimile vs. reality. And finally, by using visual tools that both confused gender norms as well as "the uncanny valley" this tension was deepened.

Looking forward to the next works I would like to create, pushing this unease of the experience of the nonhuman by imbuing it with deeply human traits that are ultimately unattainable due to its form will by my central narrative arc. In the work I will use my own subjective experience to "give life" to these creations, and then combine the scenarios with speculative aspects of network systems and how these extensional augmentations of experience can change significance. For example, by representing one individual as a multiplicity both highlights the dislocative aspect of network technology and an example of how experience can be wildly different for an AI.

References

Matthew Barney - Cremaster Cycle
Cecil B Evans - What does the Heart Want
Camile Henrot - Dogs are Days
Sascha Pohflepp - Various works
Monira al Qadiri - Various Works
Chris Salter - Haptic Field
Hilma af Klimt - Various

WORDSSS TO BE USED MAYBE LATERZZZ At any moment in time, an individual can be spread across multiple locations, both real and virtual. Information exchanges transplant a portion of the mind to another place, apart from the physical body. My project will investigate this phenomenon and explore the potential limits of sensory experience. I would like to create narrative spaces that tangibly manifest dislocation in a hallucinatory and dreamlike environment. Architectural forms, light and sound that folds into one another as the viewer’s sense of sight changes perspectives, ultimately questioning our perception of reality. The human psyche is constantly being threatened by a denial of service attack from the systems of information control, with the intent of creating the spectre of individual freedom. Individual’s consciousness are being spread across a vast virtual domain, this material forms a sort of de facto primordial soup for the ascent of artificial intelligences. Coupled with this, the physical spaces that contain our corporal being are irreversibly changing. Plastics and radioactive debris are becoming imbued into aspects of the planet that give us life. This has both a mutagenic and endocrinal disruptive effect on the body. These factors sum to the notion of what I would like to address within the concept of becoming posthuman.

I am interested in creating a chaotic system that exists in the threshold between the human and the non-human. What is it that defines our consciousness and physical body that can be permeated into the virtual to dissolve these boundaries. An intermodal (multi-sensory) experience that breaks into the source code of the perception systems and re-writes them. Taking inspiration from the works of Stan Douglas, The Otolith Group, Chris Salter and Italo Calvino — I would like to create a non-linear narrative that offers a variety of stories that address travelling through the conceptual space of the posthuman. I would like to create a system of places, humans, non-humans, and stories that can interchange reflexively, in effect creating a system that can create a narrative that could never end, or be different everytime it is generated. In this sense the system will become an oracle, where the viewer can take a prognosis of being where future and past collapse into each other. These stories will consist of lore of speculative fiction that talks to the coming time of our existence. Also, I am interested in exploring perspectives from non-human agents in a sort of hypothetical documentary/fiction, where “thoughts and things, exterior and interior, are captured in the same texture, in which the sensible and intelligible remain undistinguished – a transformation of the opposition between real and representation, between original and second-order copy”. Within this odd narrative there could be a sort-of hero journey, where an intelligence is seeking out the meaning behind its existence. Similar scenes could play out over and over with subtle changes that reflect getting closer or further away to the “goal” of the journey — or multiple varied descriptions are told eventually summing to be descriptions of the same place. Additionally, I would like to explore sensorial thresholds that form the perception of the body and its relationship to space — for the purpose of elaborating on the permeability of the boundaries of perception of the human body, akin to the ideas above regarding the dislocation of consciousness. “To encourage sensorial transience in the visitors, they also shake the stable self, remove the ability to hold onto something in the world, obscure easily defined borders between subject and object, visible and felt, perceived and imagined." A place where the confusion of utter darkness plunges one visitor into absolute nothingness, another seems almost liberated in experiencing a transitory burst of ephemerality. A long time between suns - the otolith group

Suspiria - Stan Douglas

Alien Agency, Experimental Encounters with the art of making - Chris Salter

Sans Soleil - Chris Marker