The complexity and variety of nonhuman intelligence, the subject hood and agency of every being, the potentiality and politics of technology, and the wealth of knowledge and ideas we have to gain by opening ourselves to the more than human world with which we are in inextricably and gloriously entangled. James Bridle: Ways of Being: p307
Still from the forthcoming artwork Analog Intelligence, 2023, 4k video loop, (Image Keith Armstrong)
During FAI’s R&D to date I’ve been often influenced by James Bridle’s thinking in his book ‘ Ways of Being’ (2022) – notably his assertions that in order to act ecologically in the world we should strive to design our ecological (computing) creations accordingly. He speaks in his prior book (New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future) about the ‘new dark age’ of incomprehension we are experiencing of the digital systems that control our worlds (e.g. we can’t as easily explain how email works vs. the more comprehensible old school post office) – and highlights the immense violence that digital/sampled models of the world have been integral in contributing to the extractive mindset (think corporate AI). Bridle asks that we instead should seek to move our thinking and creations away from this predominant ‘model’ and ‘mastery’ ethos.
“The world is not like a computer; computers are like the world”
Bridle cites developments from history, or from the edges of today’s thinking (e.g. unconventional computing and alternate engineering) that give him hope of a kind of computing that is more analog (i.e. as is the world) and that works within, and for it, rather than as an tool to master it. Computers, he reminds us, are natural: – they are part of nature: they are our creations.
Consistent with this thinking, FAI must therefore itself, at each level, be envisaged as an ecological creation – one that invokes care and justice across both human and more than human contexts. This is consistent with Barad’s thinking discussed in my prior post – which suggests engaging/energising ‘wave-like’ motions through the work rather than working with individual sampled data points – an analogy that presents analog complex change in the site (intra-actions) over time through an analog mediums, as opposed to a focus upon individual ‘particles’ or binary states. This intention to create an artwork invoking a connective, wave-like, analog, computational structures across the reforestation site, raises the possibility that the creation might be better able to resonate with the mystery and unknowability of the site’s innumerable intelligences.
FAI should hence resonate with, rather than seek to directly model or represent the natural intelligences at the site. Bridle gives an example: complex actions of systems fed via electrically powered agitators to create complex, multiple ripples in a bucket of water – which, he says, is a form of ‘pre-processing’ that allows complexity to become somehow readable to us.
Consistent with Bridle’s thinking therefore, FAI’s (analog) works should embody three tendencies: ‘non-binary’, ‘decentralised’ and ‘unknowing’.
‘non-binary’ Just as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ don’t reflect the full diversity of human experience, neither can 1’s and 0’s, or digital samplings of the ecological richness of the biological (analog) world. To act with justice and care towards humans, and more than humans, it’s critical to eschew the binaries that foreground contemporary computing/thinking/creation and allow our ideas/machines/artworks, through their design, to do likewise.
‘decentralized’ We are not the most important species or the focus for everything else, but simply a specialised, equal part of a vast more than human world – within which everything is equally evolved (Ref Lyn Margulis). We should ask how can we design our actions and the constituent tools/artworks we create to become contributions to, and mediations with everything else – as opposed to considering what we do as “unique, and uniquely, powerful, artefacts of human superiority”. Decentralisation acknowledges the power of communal, cooperative undertakings, intra-actions/becoming- togethers that foster outcomes greater than their parts. In this way of thinking, actual power must also be transparently shared rather than centralised.
‘unknowing’ This requires us to comfortably acknowledge limitations of that which we are able to know, and respect rather than ignore or erase that which is beyond our understanding. Rather than considering unknowing as a form of helplessness we should rather trust our ability to navigate a complex, ever-shifting landscape that we cannot control. (e.g. traditional cosmologies used ritual and respect for non-human beings to enable their survival.
(Note to self) The pre-used term ecological niche in the original description of the work may therefore not be the right terminology – as it is often thought of as a “job” or “role” in an ecosystem. The idea that just as individuals have specific roles in society (e.g., doctors, teachers, farmers), species have specific roles in their environment now seems inconsistent with the design.
An Initial Punt at Artwork Components
These are the potential components of the artwork on site: 4-5 ART Intelligence installations + scientific instrumentation equivalent to that used elsewhere at SERF, at the following locations.
Proposed Sites for Artwork and Sci Instrumentation, May 2023, (Image Keith Armstrong)
Site 1 An emerging, self-seeded tree site on the regeneration bank, within easy reach of the central access path on the sloping bank. (Surface emergence):
Site 2: The current forest edge – suggesting old and new integration (Relational emergence)
Site 3: The ephemeral pond in the wet gulley (Temporal emergence)
Site 4: Single transect at the Southern/road side end (Subsoil emergence)
Site 5: Multiple transects along the wet gulley (Subsoil emergence)
Fungal Transects (A/Prof Caroline Hauxwell’s project) For each 50 m transects, 0.25×0.25m plots were sampled along the site: First sample point was on the outside of the now recovering area. The next three consecutively within the previously burnt area and the 5th sample outside on other side of the burnt area.
Ideally these artwork sites should
playfully uncover the rich intelligence of the site – in terms of its complex intra-actions locally, and beyond
Somehow attune to/benefit their sites
Somehow bring this natural intelligence to human attention
Exhibit co-creative, playful devolution of part of the ‘processing’/ ‘thinking’, to nonhuman actors: (e.g. c.f. bucket of pre-processing water/slime moulds). At the heart of the system there is something ‘doing its own thing’ (Ref. Turing’s Oracle (not a machine)/ decentralised)
Audiences should sense the site’s intelligence without needing to understand the ‘intra-actions’ of each site (i.e. retain unknowability) – such an atmosphere of unknowing requires a kind of tryst, or solidarity with non human others.
Scientific Instrumentation
Phenocam 1: – Top of grassy bank looking down Phenocam 2: Bottom of Grass Bank looking up Phenocam 2 – Wet Gulley RHS Phenocam 3 – Wet Gulley LHS
BAR Acoustic Recorder 1/100m range: (consistent with David Tucker’s ‘Acoustic Observatory’ project), at the intersection of the wet gully and bank
TERN runs a phenocam network across Australia – monitoring vegetation. Image courtesy TERN
The preliminary idea is to use an interpretation of the analog complexity of each site – and its local outcomes as drivers for a further ‘analog computational art work’ – available either online or in a physical space (e.g. gallery). Data from Sites 1-4 will therefore be somehow ‘pre-processed’ locally (analog/analogous) – and collected ‘offline or remotely’, (local data cards, images, observations + other Arduino remote sensing) and subsequently assembled to ‘drive/activate/direct’ a further analog/analogous installation speaking to the site’s intelligent complexity, non-representationally. This summative work is accompanied by site images of ‘intelligences’ (aerial, terrestrial and sub-terrestrial), point clouds and other artefacts driven from the collected experience).
The Analog Intelligence Artwork
The first outcome of the project will be a single channel animation work of the site (called ‘Analog Intelligence’ for ISEA 2024), + 1-3 iPad auxiliary screens? Will serve as an introduction to the expansive aims of the project and the site and will be presented for two days during ISEA 2024 (June 21-30) – and potentially during the SERF Engaging Science Trail Launch – and Showcase on June 4th, 2024> the artwork will be used to promote the FAI project and add to the ongoing documentation.
This work will:
Be built using the SERF point cloud model
Indicate the artwork sites (as animated points of interest) – and potentially suggest forms of connection
Exploit capacity for subsoil animation (fungal transects) – and added scanned/point cloud items
