All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace: Part 3 "The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey"

In the late 20th Century we have seen the political dreams of changing the world begin to collapse. Ideologies have become unpalatable and have been replaced by machine-fantasies that suggest that we have no control over our actions.

Adam Curtis in this episode suggests that the ideas that underpin this shift in thinking are connected to the studies of human behaviour and the human genome. Scientists like Bill Hamilton, the evolutionary biologist argued that it was the codes, our DNA that determined our behaviour. The scientist George R. Price is also a key influence in this shift in ‘our’ thinking. These ideas have been recently popularised by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Human then are merely vessels for DNA code and that it is the code that determines our choices and our behaviour. Human beings are merely there to propagate that code.

This episode interweaves the story of scientific discoveries with the tragedy of colonialism and civil war in the Congo (Zaire) and Rwanda.  The Congo has since the 19th Century been exploited for its natural resources, first by the Belgians until the 1960s and then by the rest of us. . Today its minerals are vital for the continuing digital revolution.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace: Part 2, "The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts".

This episode continues to explore the idea that humans are being colonised by machines. Our modern idea of nature as a self-regulating ecosystem is a machine fantasy. It has very little to do with the realities of nature.  This cybernetic idea of nature emerged in the 1950s. Human beings, the rest of life and everything else on the planet are mere components of that eco-system.

These ideas of a self-regulating ecosystem have it is argued become the model for utopian ideas of human ‘self organising networks’. These networks would bypass the traditional needs of government or leaders of a society. The Facebook and Twitter revolutions, the Arab Spring in Syria and Egypt among a number of Middle Eastern countries and the protests for change in Iran gives proof to the idea of global vision of connectivity that would bring about social and political change. Global visions of connectivity fuse with Gaia Theory. One also thinks of Ted Nelson’s description of computers as “liberation machines”.

Buckminster Fuller Witchita House, Kansas 1946

In an earlier blog or two I spoke of the counter culture as an influencing factor in cyber evangelism. This model for connectivity and freedom was developed in the 1960s communes of America. Buckminster Fuller’s designs provided this fantasy with its architecture. Such communes include Drop City in Arizona in 1966. It was the counterculture scientists that would go on to help formulate the global computer networks.

Drop City, Arizona 1966.

As we began to believe in an idea of an ecosystem, ecologists were quietly proving that a self regulating ecosystem did not exist. Nature constantly changed and was rather unstable. However this idea of a self-organizing network had captured our imagination and it had offered us an alternative to political ideologies. 

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace: Part 1, "Love and Power".

A story about the rise of the machines and fusion of ideologies: Ayn Rand's objectivism and "virtue of selfishness", free market capitalism and the Californian sun drenched individualism and utopian dreams that seem to be the basis of so much that came out of the sixties. These ideas came to influence many in Silicon Valley with some citing Rands Atlas Shrugged (1957) as a key influence on their lives.

This film proposes that humans have been colonised by the machines they have built and shows us how we have let this happen. Since this has happened technology has dangerously started to shape how we view the world.

This series tells the story of the dream of the information revolution that was going to create a stable world and bring about a new kind of global capitalism and democracy. It meant the abolishment of hierarchies as represented in computer networks such as the World Wide Web. We are, it proposes, just mechanisms in a larger cybernetic system.

A small group of disciples gathered around Ayn Rand in the 1950s. They imagined a future society where everyone could follow their own selfish desires. The idea of a global utopia was also being developed in Silicon Valley. Many of these entrepreneurs were disciples of Rand and her philosophy. They saw the new computer as their salvation and the computer networks would create a new society where it would be possible to follow one’s own desires. Alan Greenspan was one of Rand’s disciples became convinced in the 1990s that computers were creating a new kind of capitalism that would move us away from decades of boom and bust economies. Yet, it was human desires for love and for power that would tear apart this dream of stability.

The Fathers of Computer Graphics

James Whitney Lapis 1966


The Whitney Brother's John (1917-95) and James (1921-82) were key pioneers of independent American animation. They were important “for laying the groundwork for the whole field of computer animation and digital special effects” (Beck, 2004 p. 216).

John Whitney studied 12-tone music and animation of abstract design in Paris in 1937-38. On returning to the United States he joined his brother James who was a painter and produced their first film, Twenty-Four Variations (1940) an 8mm abstract film that used circles and triangles. For the production John Whitney built his own optical printer. From 1940-45 they produced five abstract film exercises. John Whitney significantly created sound directly onto film, a technique later developed by Norman McLaren (Beck, 2004 p. 216).

John Whitney went on to found Motion Graphics, Inc in 1952 to produce commercial films. Then he moved to the UPA to become a director in 1955 and then worked at the Charles and Ray Eames Studio and designed the title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo with  Saul Bass (I assume) in 1958 (Beck, 2004 p. 216).


In 1959 John Whitney began to use a World War II gun sight (designed by Norbert Wiener?) which essentially was a simple analogue computer, to help produce simple visual effects (Beck, 2004 p. 216)..


The film Lapis, “is named after the philosophers stone in practice of alchemy and encourages notions of contemplation and a fuller understanding of the place of humankind with the cosmos” (Wells, 1998 pp. 30-31).






Sources:


Beck, J., (2004) Animation Art: From Pencil to Pixel, The History of Cartoon, Anime and CGI London: Flame Tree Publishing.

Wells, P., (1998) Understanding Animation London and New York: Routledge


Further reading:


LeGrice, M. (1977) Abstract Film and Beyond, Cambridge, Mass and London: MIT Press.

Russett, R., and Star, C., (1976) Experimental Animation: An illustrated Anthology New York: Van Nostrum Reinhold.


John Whitney Sr. Homepage: http://www.siggraph.org/artdesign/profile/whitney/whitney.html

William Latham Interview

This is an interview from a documentary series called Secret Passions, from Channel 4 in the early nineties.

William Latham

Hopefully in the course of writing this blog I have shown the relevance of abstraction to my own practice. Michael Rush in his book New Media in art shows us that "abstraction is still very much alive in computer art" (2005, p. 209). William Latham's Evolution of Form is a "computer sculpture" that draws its inspiration from complex natural forms like seashells and the work of "Surrealist painters Salvador Dali and Yves Tanguy in his quest for forms that can be manipulated, reshaped (or 'carved', in virtual sculpture within the computer (2005, p. 211).

Rush claims that "Latham was amongst the first to create genetically alive forms that resemble living organisms, though there mutations only occur inside the computer (2005, p. 210)

Clip from The Evolution of Form, by William Latham and Stephen Todd, from 1989; work done at IBM UK Research Labs. Details of sotware can be found in the book: Evolutionary Art and Computers, Academic Press, 1992.

Latham and Todd have now joined Frederic Fol Leymarie (since 2006) at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and created the Mutators Research Group: http://www.mrg-gold.com

Was presented at SIGGRAPH'94 and Imagina'93 (funded by the British Arts Council and Channel 4). The sound track is from Michel Redolfi (www.audionaute.com) famous for his underwater music.

Biogenesis shows the evolution of artificial life forms in a synthetic universe where 'survival of the fittest' is replaced by 'survival of the most aesthetic'. We see cellular evolution and the replication of mutations forming chain-like structures resembling coral. The artist is like a gardener, breeding, selecting, marrying and steering the course of evolution for creative ends. The film is a record of this evolutionary process. It can be viewed as a psychedelic experience or a more subtle parody of a man's relationship with the natural world through modern technology.

This line of work is being pursued by the MRG group at Goldsmiths College in London, led by Latham, Todd, Fol Leymarie et al. (www.mrg-gold.com).

Digital Culture 7: Fundamentals of Games

Before the first of Alex Wade's lectures: The Fundamentels of Games we were given Espen Aarseth's 'The Book and the Labyrinth' from Cybertext Perspectives on Ergodic literature.

Ergodic is derived from the words ergon meaning work and hodos meaning path.. It came to be applied to describe any structure with many confusing passages. The origin of the word labyrinth is not known, but it may be connected with the myths and religious symbolim of ancient Crete.

The text introduces me to a term that I have not really come across before: cybertext. Aarseth (above) describes the cybertext in ways that are familiar to me: "it centres attention on the consumer, or user , of the text, as a more integrated figure than even reader-response theorits would claim" (1997). Many these ideas seemed connected with hypertext theory and so-called media and web 2.0/3.0 approaches.


Aarseth statement that the "cybertext is a machine for the production of (a) variety of expression" is similar to Paul Valéry's "a book is a machine for reading" and critic A. Richards his 'Principles of Literacy Criticism' with 'a book is a machine to think with' (Jencks, C 1973, p. 32)



From Alex Wade's lecture:

"In Laws, Plato defines play as ‘That which has neither utility nor truth nor likeness, nor yet, in its effects, is harmful, can best be judged by the criterion of the charm it is in it, and by the pleasure it affords. Such pleasure, entailing as it does no appreciable good or ill is play’. Straight away we can see the influences that last to the present day."


Sources:

Aarseth , E (1997) Cybertext Perspectives on Ergodic literature Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press

Jencks, C (1973) Modern Movements in Architecture Penguin Harmondsworth and New York: Books.

Cyberwar and Peace

Communication technologies are not always the benign force or indeed a neutral medium that software companies would like us to believe. The word cyberwar describes the use of technology in conflicts and espionage. We have witnessed the use of technology in conflicts like the two Gulf Wars and in the Balkans. Government agencies have generally lost control of the development of such technologies and so the private sector has stepped into its role. Such loss of control is viewed as a serious threat to the security of the nation state, the financial centres and military institutions.

We may think of war as being physical and throughout history we see in battles the use of conventional weapons: swords, guns and bombs. The programme argues that the conventions of warfare had not really changed between the times of Julius Caesar and the Battle of Waterloo. Mechanization of the military revolutionised war in the 20th Century radically changed the nature of conflict, yet today, it is not just the nuclear deterrent or new missile weapons systems that protect us from attack, but also the computer and its protection software. The attack comes from a hacker whose aim is to disrupt communication and information systems. This may seem the stuff of science fiction and thrillers (one thinks of films like Hackers or The Net, both from 1995), but these attacks are a regular occurrence. During the late nineties the conflicts in Kosova and Bosnia, America’s military industrial complex and many universities (MIT was one victim) were hacked by the Serb secret service and Serbian students.

Recently, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech on how the internet can spread freedom around the world. It has been seen as a response to Google’s withdrawal from China due to alleged cyber attacks on human rights activists. Before Clinton made her speech, Robert Amsterdam, a lawyer specialising in cases against repressive governments, and Tom Watson MP, discussed how the internet is used by rogue governments on the Today programme, Radio 4. Tom Watson raised the problem in House of Commons.

Robert Amsterdam agreed with the idea of the web being used to “promote freedom” and supports Google’s position. He also proposes that “we” should monitor the ways in which oppressive governments use the web to stifle debate and free expression and also notes how Western companies and multi nationals are complicit in supplying regimes with technical support. Tom Watson noted that the “Internet is a neutral tool that can be used for good and bad”. Watson suggests that democracies should attempt to restrict China and other totalitarian regimes access to communication technologies. While Twitter and Face Book has been used in Iran as technologies of opposition and change, we have also seen repressive regimes use the Internet as a technology of control to monitor dissent.


Sources:

Davies, Simon Big Brother: Britain's web of surveillance and the new technological order London: Pan, 1997

Donk, Wim van de (ed.), foreword by Peter Dahlgren Cyberprotest: new media, citizens and social movements, London New York: Routledge, 2004

Lyon, David, Surveillance society: monitoring everyday life Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001

McCaughey, Martha & Ayers Michael D. (ed.) Cyberactivism: online activism in theory and practice, New York London: Routledge, 2003

Meikle, G Future active: media activism and the internet New York London: Routledge, 2002


Web resources:

Robert Amsterdam, a lawyer specialising in cases against repressive governments, and Tom Watson MP, a prominent blogger who has tabled an Early Day Motion on the Google-China issue, discuss how the internet is used by rogue governments. Today: Thursday 21st January 0835: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8471000/8471658.stm

BBC News: “China Blocking Google” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2231101.stm

“Google censors itself for China”: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4645596.stm

“Web inventor warns of 'dark' net” By Jonathan Fildes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5009250.stm

“Berners-Lee on the read/write web”: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4132752.stm
Listen to "Web inventor's future fears": 'The British developer of the world wide web says he is worried about the way it could be used to spread "misinformation".' Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee spoke to Pallab Ghosh on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 2 Nov 2006

“Defending online freedom” Guardian Online:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/jan/22/hillary-clinton-online-freedom#start-of-comments


Wired Online: “China Restores Google.com”: www.wired.com/news/politics/0,71121-0.html

Damn those Computers (and other things)!

At the end of The Falacies of Hope Kenneth Clark argues that we should be inspired to "defy all those forces that threaten to impair our humanity: lies, tanks, tear gas, ideologies, opinion polls, mechanisation, planners, computers - the whole lot." I bet he would include blogs if he had written it today!