Re: Writing Culture
Seaman:
Humankind has chosen differing metaphors in history to point at their
nature. At one time it was the pump, at another time it was clockwork, and
currently computers are a prevalent metaphor (amongst others). [see Hayles
below]
The question is, is the body a computer or machine-like in some capacity?
There is not a computer that currently has the complexity of the body -
far from it. Yet, one can glean operative principles from the body -
analogues, and work toward making an "intelligent" machine, or work toward
emulating some of the functional aspects of the body, by abstracting
knowledge of the body's functionality.
By attempting to study the body in this way , we often learn more about
its deep complexity- more about ourselves. It is in this light that I am
interested in working toward making "intelligent" systems.
In a sense this becomes a form of a "writing of analogues of the body," in
part through code - as well as through developing embodied systems that
enable a deep contextual knowledge, that learn, that employ "natural"
language, that come to have a strong intermingling with environment - that
are situated. The ability of a machine to achieve (or emulate) these
bodily attributes is on the horizon. So if we currently say the body is a
computer or sorts, then we have to say we haven't as yet manufactured one
(a computer) with near the complexity. It may be in the distant future
that computers that once emulated the complexity of the body will
transcend that complexity. [the name computer comes from people who
compute... Babbage/Lovelace were attempting to mechanize this activity in
terms of the attempted functionality of the first computers][[see also
Agree on the negative aspects of Babbage]]
So the study of the body informs the production of new computers, and new
computers often inform how we begin to look back at the body - they
illuminate bodily functions through their difference (and similarities)
from the body. We will never make an exact replica of a machinic body
through analogues. We may however enable the construction of devices which
in the long run have sentient-like, creative qualities. [See See
Bar-Cohen, Yoseph and Breazeal, Cynthia, Biologically Inspired Robots,
SPIE Press, Washington, 2003 for a state of the art look at bio-mimetic
systems]
So the project of seeking to "write the analogical body" via code
functioning with other physical mechanisms (and in particular the
abstraction of portions or fragments of these emulations back into more
traditional computing systems) will no doubt inform the nature of
electronic writing as it enables the writer to extend their cretive
potentials in new ways via code authorship.
----
The micro levels will become increasingly important, and the potential to
operate on the micro levels be it through code, nano-technology, new forms
of bio-technology, new studies of endophysics, automata theory etc. will
become a major branch of study. [This is not to say that there will not be
an ethics to such mechanisms, on the contrary we need to be socially and
critically aware that such "writerly' mechanisms that are already under
construction, often for non-humanitarian reasons...]
The challenge will be to develop new forms of digital creation that will
enable people to explore differing levels of authorship through
intelligent-object-based modular systems of construction. A second
challenge will be in developing language where people from different
disciplines can talk to each other about what the potentials of such
systems might be, and alternately incorporating these potentials into the
new object-based code construction environments. The third will be in
making intelligent systems that also become authors (exhibit creativity
through the emulation of human behavior) [this may enable very powerful
human/machine symbiotic-like inter-authorship modes] as well as illuminate
authorship via displacement; . The forth challenge will relate to being
socially/critically aware of how these systems affect our coming to know
the world.
b
ja said:
this realization of the intimate nature of language will have propogated
from the micro to the macro levels, so that there will be a notion of the
reality of writing without design at the macro levels of the universe.
writing in the sense that non-conscious processes like computers can both
be
governed by and give rise to language that, in turn, like solular inimita,
can generate higher levels of complex organization in things. but also
non-human made things can 'evolve' in this way.
Hayles Quote (see :
http://www2.humlab.umu.se/events/humlabseminariet_ht2005_hayles.htm
discussion by katherine hayles of macro intimata, ie, reality as virtual)
Mathematician Stephan Wolfram has recently proposed that many different
kinds of complex systems, including human thought and action, can be
modeled using cellular automata. These very simple computational systems
have demonstrated that they are capable of generating complex patterns
using simple rules. According to physicist Ed Fredkin, cellular automata
underlie physical reality on a subatomic level; in his view, nature
itself is software running on a Universal Computer. This presentation
will look critically at these claims, asking whether we should consider
them as physical models or as over-determined metaphors that would
inevitably emerge in a historical period when computation is pervasive.
This issue, and its proliferating implications, will be explored through
Greg Egan's print novel Permutation City, which imagines a world in which
it is possible to simulate a person's consciousness inside a computer,
creating a Copy that has all the personality and memories of the
original.
--
Professor Bill Seaman, Ph.D.
Department Head
Digital+ Media Department (Graduate Division)
Rhode Island School of Design
Two College St.
Providence, R.I. 02903-4956
401 277 4956
fax 401 277 4966
bseaman@risd.edu
http://billseaman.com
http://www.art.235media.de/index.php?show=2
http://digitalmedia.risd.edu
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