This is a prototype of my latest work in processing.
Concept
Machin-E’s concept is to apply two participants’ brainwaves to control the movements of machines, both visually and audibly. This installation is not only as a way to share consciousness and emotion, but also represents an analogous experience of ‘bodily disembodiment’ and ‘mechanical embodiment’ through split physicality. Cyborg bodies are not simply extended but also enhanced with implanted components (Bell and Kennedy, 2007, p560). Physical bodies and biological characteristics are transduced into phantom entities of machines capable of performing and interacting. Regarding physical or biological characteristics and normal functions of the human body, machines strengthen and expand them visually and acoustically. Therefore, the phantom bodies project and power the body and consciousness. Furthermore, it could liberal identity from the biological body through the connection of machines, which breaks the closed identity to transform the self and generate new identities.
Interaction Process
In her initial design now, the creator plans to set up a vertical flat panel installation. On one side of the plane will appear Chinese Xuan paper (thinner paper that could be easily dyed on the other side), with well-equipped strings on the other side. The two sides are installed with servo motors which are remotely controlled by the brainwaves of two participants to separately draw and play the string. Participants standing on either side of this installation seem to be across the mobile screen, which inspires them to reflect on their digital way of communication and to investigate the perceptual, emotional and cultural impact of the digital age. Moreover, through Arduino, people’s mind (brainwave) remote controls two spilt sense organs of machine, the visual and sound respectively. This means the machine possesses two different types of consciousness: coordinated or uncoordinated. This shows the integration and transcendence of machinery and living organisms. For further expansion, the machine can store human’s brainwaves to make an infinite loop of movement even though the visitor has already left. A participant could interact purely with the split consciousness. In this way, it is possible to project the sprit or consciousness presence of the cyber system. The human’s consciousness could be extended and relocated from the spiritual domain of the biological body to the cyber or the public realm of the interface and extension (Bell and Kennedy, 2007, p560).
For ‘Machin-E’, the ideal space in which to exhibit this work is Dennis Severs’ House in Spitalfields, which is famous as a time capsule that aims to provide participants with a rare moment of their own. In the participant’s own time, it gives rise to a kind of spiritual communication. This interactive installation would keep the visitors' consciousness in this 18th-century house. Therefore, this place would affirmatively add mystery and poetic charm to ‘Machin-E’.
Audience
As for the audience, the concept of ‘Machin-E’ aims to culturally explore the technical impacts on humanity, meaning that the project is aimed at a wider range of audiences using everyday technologies in the post-human era. Moreover, the interactive installation covers three modes of interactivity maintained by Claudia Gianetti: synaesthetic, synergetic and communicative or kinetic (Blum, 2007). From the designer’s point of view, the specific behaviours of participants are unpredictable. According to the installation and the interface offered, participants could receive visual, auditory and tactile information. The system of control and its rules are learned through trial and error. According to the synaesthetic mode, the users can apply their brainwaves to direct the movements of machines both visually and audibly. As for the synergetic mode, this project maps the interaction among the different parameters of brainwaves and the machine movement, which are independent to other factors respectively but are combined. With regard to the communicative or kinetic mode, because of the interaction between people and machines, this installation presents the evolving communicative relationship between humans and machines. At the same time, based on their curiosity on this new installation which is not common in everyday life, participants could also reflect on contemporary interpersonal interaction that is imperceptible in the ubiquitous era of media and technology. Furthermore, its social function promotes people to collaboratively manipulate the machine through brainwaves, which also strengthen the communication and interactivity in pleasure and deep consideration (Moggridge, 2006). The creator does this on purpose in order to cater to the opinion that the project develops a heightened sense of connection to the machine through an immersive and high-engagement experience. In the actual user experience test, the participant indicated in their feedback that wearing the brainwave headset was not comfortable.
Production Schedule
Proposal for ‘Machin-E’
In the post-human era, the mushrooming power of new technology and the growing human-machine intimacy have given birth to the ‘cyborg’. Technology is invading and being implanted into the human body and becoming an integral component. Donna Haraway (1985, p65) defines a cyborg as “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as creature of fiction.” Every person is a hybrid of a living creature and a machine. The fusion of technology and humans has given rise to the relationship between technology, the environment, the body and the self. This project proposed is an interaction installation named ‘Machin-E’, and involves using participants’ brainwaves to direct a machine’s movements, both visually and audibly. It culturally explores the complex interaction between humans and machines to discuss further changes to self-identity and the interpersonal relationship within the context of post-humanism and cyborgs.
In What is posthumanism?, Cary Wolfe (2011) gives a narrow definition of the post-humanism as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality. Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener (Hayles, 2006, p6) argue that information is a kind of bodiless fluid that could flow between different substrates without loss of meaning or form. Hans Moravec (Hayles, 2006, p6) suggests that human identity is essentially a form of information rather than a materialised body or an embodied enactment. It presents the split of bodily and human parameters so that a machine could also become a reservoir of human’s information, that is, a machine could possess human consciousness. While the disembodiment of human consciousness enhances body-inner dualism, it thoroughly blurs and renegotiates the binary boundary between machines and humans, which inevitably makes the subject into a ‘cyborg’ identity in which the human body cannot be separated from the technology.
The above discourse holds that the body is merely a secondary addition to life, and what matters is not the material body itself, but the informational pattern. Katherine Hayles (2006) is worried about the tendency towards dematerialisation and the obsolescence of human bodies. She believes that the critical discussion on post-humanism cannot overlook the body and material. This leads to further thinking on the ownership or agency of human bodies in life and in death, in the reality and in the virtual (Bell and Kennedy, 2007, p558). Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Matthews, 2014) puts forward the concept of "embodiment and subjectivity", which does not regard the consciousness- body as disembodiment but as a living and positive creature whose subjectivity occurs through the material interaction between the body and the world. Human cognition begins with "body-subjectivity", that is, a body that is present with the world so that humans can exist and interact with the world. In ‘Machin-E’, the virtual and invisible bio-information has infinite potential of materialisability. From the post-human perspective, the essence of technology is neither positive nor negative, but the possibility of contributing to post-human beings. The human body and technology are inevitably intertwined, transforming massive amounts of information into a fully personalised individual.
In transition from mind-body dualism to cyber system, the original human identity is entwined and mediated by the technology. Andy Clark (2010) in Natural-Born Cyborgs considers that the uniqueness of human cognition lies in its complex and deep interaction with the external environment, which is an indispensable element of the technologisation and reproduction of individual identity. Science and technology connects people’s inner with the environment. Therefore, people and machines are not purely the internal and external. In fact, tools or machines have become an intrinsic element of human intelligence and identity. Moreover, Donna Haraway considers that culture moves more slowly than technology (SFAI, 2017), which not only influences subtle changes in the construction of individual identity, but also in the way of interpersonal communication. In this way, ‘Machin-E’ aims to observe new modes of interpersonal communication and the construction of identity combined with machines (cyborg) brought about by the culture and technology at different development’s speeds.
Fig. 1 Re-Wired / Re-Mixed: Event for Dismembered Body (Drayton, 2015)
Stelarc devotes himself to human-machine co-evolution in a radical argument on the obsolescence of the human body with post-humanism. His works dramatically embrace and welcome new technologies into his body to enact cyborgisation in his performance art (Bell and Kennedy, 2007). His work ‘Re-wired / Re-mixed:Event for Dismembered Body’ explores “the physiological and aesthetic experience of a fragmented, de-synchronized, distracted and involuntary body” (Stelarc.org, 2018). It intuitively demonstrates isolated sense organs under globalization. Monitors and earphones worn by Stelarc in Australia make his vision arrive from New York while his hearing comes from London. Although the artist has "subjectivity", in fact, the visual and auditory functions are not at the same time and space as the brain. This is a further explanation of Donna Haraway's concept of the cyborg. Stelarc’s work has inspired the creator to combine the consciousness of participants at different times into the different ‘organs’ of a single mechanical installation, drawing and striking chords separately.
Fig. 2 Documentation of Christian Cummings with Michael Decker using his Ouija board, with Ryan Johnson as note taker, at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (Marshutz, 2005)
Since 2004, artists Christian Cummings and Michael Decker have collaborated in the unique art practice of using an Ouija board from the other side of souls. In ‘Spectral Psychography’ in the Creative Time’s ‘Strange Powers’ exhibition, two participants are blindfolded and asked to put their hands on the magic Ouija board. In the process of communication with the soul encountered, they could get a willing spirit to participate in the painting of a picture. It is not clear whether there is in fact some supernatural force involved or if the artists’ own sub-consciousness directing the drawing movements, or if, rather sceptically, this performance is a trick based on practice done in advance to draw an agreed-upon image (Creativetime.org, 2018). Regardless, the confounding intentionality involved in the performance produces memorable artworks, which transform the spirit messages into a form of materiality. Haraway (1985, p97) argues that “machines could be animated- given ghostly souls to make them move for their orderly development and mental capacities.” Thus, machines could become prosthetic devices, intimate sections, art inventors and friendly selves.
As for ‘Machin-E’, its concept is to apply two participants’ brainwaves to control the movements of machines, both visually and audibly. This installation is not only as a way to share consciousness and emotion, but also represents an analogous experience of ‘bodily disembodiment’ and ‘mechanical embodiment’ through split physicality. Cyborg bodies are not simply extended but also enhanced with implanted components (Bell and Kennedy, 2007, p560). Physical bodies and biological characteristics are transduced into phantom entities of machines capable of performing and interacting. Regarding physical or biological characteristics and normal functions of the human body, machines strengthen and expand them visually and acoustically. Therefore, the phantom bodies project and power the body and consciousness. Furthermore, it could liberal identity from the biological body through the connection of machines, which breaks the closed identity to transform the self and generate new identities.
In her initial design now, the creator plans to set up a vertical flat panel installation. On one side of the plane will appear Chinese Xuan paper (thinner paper that could be easily dyed on the other side), with well-equipped strings on the other side. The two sides are installed with servo motors which are remotely controlled by the brainwaves of two participants to separately draw and play the string. Participants standing on either side of this installation seem to be across the mobile screen, which inspires them to reflect on their digital way of communication and to investigate the perceptual, emotional and cultural impact of the digital age. Moreover, through Arduino, people’s mind (brainwave) remote controls two spilt sense organs of machine, the visual and sound respectively. This means the machine possesses two different types of consciousness: coordinated or uncoordinated. This shows the integration and transcendence of machinery and living organisms. For further expansion, the machine can store human’s brainwaves to make an infinite loop of movement even though the visitor has already left. A participant could interact purely with the split consciousness. In this way, it is possible to project the sprit or consciousness presence of the cyber system. The human’s consciousness could be extended and relocated from the spiritual domain of the biological body to the cyber or the public realm of the interface and extension (Bell and Kennedy, 2007, p560).
For ‘Machin-E’, the ideal space in which to exhibit this work is Dennis Severs’ House in Spitalfields, which is famous as a time capsule that aims to provide participants with a rare moment of their own. In the participant’s own time, it gives rise to a kind of spiritual communication. This interactive installation would keep the visitors' consciousness in this 18th-century house. Therefore, this place would affirmatively add mystery and poetic charm to ‘Machin-E’. As for the audience, the concept of ‘Machin-E’ aims to culturally explore the technical impacts on humanity, meaning that the project is aimed at a wider range of audiences using everyday technologies in the post-human era.
This project explores the digitalisation and materialisation of human consciousness and reconfigures in alternate hybridities of human-machine within the context of the cyborg which concerns “transgressed boundaries and potent fusions.” (Haraway, 1985, p71) High-tech culture challenges the dualisms between humans and machines, and time and space (Haraway, 1985). Technology eliminates the biological body as a boundary between the public space and psychological realm. ‘Machin-E’ enables the brainwave or consciousness fluidly to expand to the external machine and the public space. The relationship between humans and technology is not simply that of the subject and object or the manipulator and controlled object, but is fluid and unstable. For example, people could be instrumentalised and machines may also threaten the subjectivity and integrity of humans. By giving mechanical life-like properties or movement patterns to a machine, it creates an illusion of an autonomous mechanism. However, this project does not aim to portray the apocalyptic scenario in which artificial intelligence transcends human wisdom. Instead, it highlights the unity and opposition through a mechanical device with human sprits.
Bibliography
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Marshutz, R. (2005). Documentation of Christian Cummings with Michael Decker using his ouija board, with Ryan Johnson as note taker, at the Santa Monica Museum of Art.. [image] Available at: http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2006/strangepowers/site/cummings.html [Accessed 5 Jan. 2018].
Matthews, E. (2014). The philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
SFAI (2017). Donna Haraway: Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene - Visiting Artists and Scholars. [video] Available at: https://vimeo.com/214924486 [Accessed 5 Jan. 2018].
Stelarc.org. (2018). STELARC | RE-WIRED / RE-MIXED. [online] Available at: http://stelarc.org/?catID=20353 [Accessed 11 Jan. 2018].
Wolfe, C. (2011). What is posthumanism?. Minneapolis, Minn: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
