Panel 2: Machine Futurisms
Mariana Marangoni Hijacking Computation: Esoteric Programming Languages as tools for technocapitalism resistance (presentation, 20 mins)
Esoteric programming languages, also known as 'esolangs', have the potential to challenge conventional notions of high-performance, Westernized and English-based computational rules. By pushing the boundaries of symbolic representation and logic systems, they offer glimpses of radically different systems that disrupt normative conventions of software and the prevalent technocapitalist ideologies of efficiency, scalability, and usability.
In fact, computers have a long history of engineered exclusion intertwined in its architecture. At the advent of personal computers, engineers prioritized the encoding of the Latin alphabet for English usage with 8-bit character encodings, keeping non-Latin languages like Arabic or Chinese virtually impossible to be handled by the limited motherboard memory of the time. To this day, most programming languages widely used in industry still feature English-like syntax.
It was only in the 70s that deliberately weird programming languages made their first appearance with INTERCAL, which laid the foundations of a small but prolific community that introduced new possibilities of computing otherwise. However, it could be argued that other radical forms of programming predate the advent of digital technologies by many centuries, as they were developed and performed in the most diverse of geographical locations, materials, and cultures – such as Quipus used by Andean peoples, Lukasa Memory Boards by Luba people, and Micronesian stick charts.
The paper further examines past and current epistemological implications of niche programming languages beyond the use of English as the lingua franca of computation, revealing how Western Imperialism, with its inherent bias and politics, have shaped Computer Sciences in a way that hindered the contribution of many non-Latin languages and non-Western cultures in the field. Recent work by Jon Corbett, Ramsey Nasser, and many others demonstrate how esolangs are currently being explored, emphasizing how important these practices and thought experiments are as techno-disobedient tools of resistance.
Biography
Mariana Marangoni is a Brazilian interdisciplinary artist and researcher based in London. She critically explores media materiality and the aesthetics of decay through installations, web-based experiments, and visual poetry. Recent work focuses on the socio-ecological impact of Internet-related infrastructures and the possibilities of unconventional computing beyond the prevalent digital paradigms. She holds a MA in Interaction Design from the London College of Communication and is currently an Associate Lecturer for BA FA Computational Arts at Camberwell College of Arts and MA Interaction Design at LCC. Amongst others, she has performed and exhibited internationally at the Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), National Poetry Library (UK) and Gaîté Lyrique’s NØ LAB (FR).
Jane Topping, When We Were a Child, We Were Hypnotised By Our Dentist, (presentation 20 mins)
In 1982, the child Jane Topping was hypnotised by her dentist, Dr George W. Fairfull Smith. Simultaneously – and unbeknownst to everyone in the dental surgery - the alien nou left her home planet on a mission, was drawn off course and became trapped beneath a filling in one of the child
Jane’s rotten pre-molars. And so, the alien/human hybrid nouJane came into being. Though the whole thing was recorded for the BBC and broadcast as the documentary Hypnosis and Healing (dir. Michael Barnes, 1982), it is not until today that we hear nouJane speak…
This performative reading develops the idea of alien invasion as an alternative mode of reproduction while giving voice to a new kind of being, by drawing on my film nou (2018), my online artwork www.rabbitcottontoothcottonrabbit.com (2018-ongoing) and the correspondence of Scottish writer Naomi Mitchison, unearthed from the archives of The National Library of Scotland. As mentioned above, this session is performed by the alien/human hybrid nouJane.
Biography
Jane Topping (she/her) is a Scottish artist and academic, currently Lecturer on the MLitt Fine Art Practice programme at Glasgow School of Art. Her interdisciplinary practice meddles with science fiction and horror, the archive and the screen, sometimes meandering towards autofiction or delving into the literature and lives of writers, including Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999). Recent outings for her practice and research include Feminist Histories of the Future (Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2023), Murky Waters (Edinburgh, 2022), The Immaterial Salon (Marseilles, 2022), Gothic Nature Journal III: Haunted Shores (https://gothicnaturejournal.com/) and The Influencing Machine (nGbK, Berlin, 2018).
In 2022 curator Francesca Zappia wrote The Hypnotised Machine as a response to Topping’s online work www.rabbitcottontoothcottonrabbit.com.
https://www.gsa.ac.uk/about-gsa/our-people/our-staff/t/topping,-jane/
David Musgrave, Some Lambda Functions (presentation, 20 mins)
My novel Lambda, published in 2022 by Europa Editions, is a speculative fiction set in an alternative 2019. Certain technologies, such as quantum computing, large language models, and protein engineering, have developed significantly, and tiny, semi-aquatic humans called lambdas have been arriving on the south coast of England and settling in the capital for decades. A major terrorist incident is blamed, improbably, on the lambdas, and a fragile social cohesion deteriorates. Much of the novel is narrated by an app, EyeNarrator Pro, to which the main protagonist, anarchist-turned-surveillance officer Cara Gray, subscribes — it aggregates her data and generates a novel from it, within parameters she controls.
Drawing on the content of Lambda, I will talk about artificial consciousness and surveillance capitalism. The novel’s spectrum of synthetic experience ranges from Mr Hello, a nearly-human government operative made of slime mould protein whose story Cara’s is interleaved with, to the wholly abstract PARSON, an entity which might be an effect of a quantum processor, or could be sheer fiction. I will offer reflections on David Chalmer’s classic essay The Hard Problem of Consciousness, and the expanded view of the social politics of technology offered by Kate Crawford in her book Atlas of AI. In the process I will make (and break) a distinction between anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic understandings of consciousness, and imagine how this might play out in society and art.
Biography
David Musgrave is an artist, novelist and lecturer based in London. He has exhibited extensively in the UK and globally, including solo shows at Tate Britain; greengrassi, London; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; Luhring Augustine, New York; and Marc Foxx, Los Angeles. His work appears in the collections of Tate, MoMA and Arts Council England, amongst others. Prior to Lambda, he published an artist’s book which is also a long work of fiction, Unit, a first-person account of the life of an artificial being. His non-fiction writing includes articles and reviews in frieze and Art Monthly, and an essay on Kobe Abe’s early novel Inter Ice Age 4 for the Whitechapel Documents of Art anthology Science Fiction. Earlier this year he co-organised (with John Douglas Millar) The Exploded Map: Gravity’s Rainbow @50, a colloquium at a.p. bookstore, Berlin, to mark the anniversary of the publication of Thomas Pynchon’s magnum opus, featuring contributions from Tom McCarthy and Sung Tieu. In 2014, he was a co-organiser of Plastic Words, a series of talks and events on the relations between contemporary art and literature, hosted by Raven Row, London, which included Chris Kraus, McKenzie Wark and Peter Osborne. He has taught widely, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art.
Ada Hao and Professor Joan Gavaler, asathoughtfallsthroughthegapstranslation (2023) (video, 11 mins & introduction)
https://www.paprika.org.uk/collaborationwithjoangavalerauracuriatlas
asathoughtfallsthroughthegapsoftranslation (2023) is the first experimental interdisciplinary work created by Joan Gavaler (Virginia, USA) and Ada Hao (London, UK) in their ongoing collaboration. This evolving work has been developed using Zoom, telematics technology, the GPT-3 AI language model, and wearable body sonification along with exchanges of creative material that unfold like a game of Telephone with text, sound, movement, and video influencing each other in multiple iterations. The work was first premiered at Ampersand International Arts Festival on March 5, 2023.
Ada Xiaoyu Hao
Dr. Ada Xiaoyu Hao is an artist, researcher, educator, community activist and curator of PAPRIKA Collective. Embracing collaboration and cross-pollination of various media and genres, including performance, moving image, text, sound, and embodied interaction with technology, her work relates to a practice-based and process-oriented methodology that frequently explores the idea of body as an archive, the multiplicity of the self, and the fabulation of the Other. Her artistic exercises respond to the unknown and uncertainty through performative improvisations, fictioning as method, and relational encounter with people, sound, space, and place. Website: https://www.adahao.org/
PAPRIKA Collective: https://www.paprika.org.uk/ Joan Gavaler
Joan Gavaler, Professor of Dance, William & Mary college and Artistic Director, Aura CuriAtlas Physical Theatre. Research includes choreography, direction, and collaborative methods for making work. She has created 70 original works and presented performances and workshops for 75 organizations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia including Alexander Technique workshops in Lugano, dance residency at Beijing Normal University, performances with American Dance Guild in New York City, and movement coaching for Virginia Shakespeare Festival. She founded Aura CuriAtlas in 2013 to explore collaborative creativity and has received 25 grants to create and present four evening length shows and two digital works.
Aura CuriAtlas: https://www.acphysicaltheatre.com/
Video on the monitor
Benesek Monk, Strangers are better than data (runtime 1:43)
A poetic exploration of the innate creative potentiality contained within emergent technology, and an attempt to de-centre the primacy of the human as creative agent and author. The film is a speculative assemblage of algorithmic outputs sourced from current human/non-human interfaces. Creative authorship is outsourced and the artist becomes a bridge between these outputs - the toolmaker becomes the tool.
The prose is generated by a GPT-2 interface. The initial line “Strangers are better than data” was taken from the output of an online ‘random’ meme generator. The face was generated by an online Generative Adversarial Network, and then algorithmically animated. The background images are recorded from a website that broadcasts unsecured CCTV cameras from around the world. The music is produced from free stock audio loops. The only part of the film that could be said to be performed directly by a human would be the vocal recording, which was itself guided by the prosody of the generated text.
Biography:
Based in Swansea, Benesek Monk is a practising artist, constituent part of the critical artistic entity Cancer, and Wolf and the UK field researcher for CADENCE (The Centre for Applied Dogma, Esoteric Navigation and Chronopoetic Experience). Working across photography, video, music and text, his practice questions established notions of authorship, creativity and control.
Recent group shows include: Dream Termination, Fringe Arts Bath; Axe Head to Everything: Return, Volcano Theatre Swansea, A Destructive Act, GAZE Art Space Shrewsbury and Silent Society, Tokyo Institute of TezosARTs, Tokyo/Online. He also co- curated the recent Myles Mansfield exhibition, #iNHUMAN at Elysium Gallery, Swansea.
He is currently a doctoral candidate in Art & Media at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David working on a thesis concerning the role of non-human intelligence in the production and diversification of culture. Current research interests include post-anthropocentrism, the contingencies between narrative, document and canon, and developing metrics of othering.