[NetBehaviour] The Uncanny Vibe

[Alan Sondheim]

Hi Eryk,

The illusions are coming from you, I think, not from the text. And I'm not
sure what you mean by "unraveled" - it would be easy enough, I think, to
find out the connections otherwise. (Not entirely true: I belonged to a
systems group at Brown University when I was a student there; they were
studying the state of a computer X(t) at a given time, when it was running
a complex program. By that they meant, given a particular component, what
would it be doing exactly at t? And they felt the problem was intractable.
So the connections in terms of *output* would be discernable, but,
fundamentally, not internally. That doesn't create consciousness or
conscience of course, just an indicator of complexity.)
I wonder, here might be where I'm coming from, it's old hat, if the
unconscious is not a luxury. Where I'm coming from, and I admit I'm a
pessimist, stems from my own reading, the usual litany of countries and
populations under terrible stress and the need to bear witness in relation
to them, Nauru for example, Syria, Myanmar, the Uyghur, but similar in our
own back yard. And how can, a serious question in return, how can the work
being done with AI (in relation to institutions, silos and so on)
contribute to healing or working with them? For the problem is increasing
violently across the planet...
You say "the 'generative' text must offer the same potential" - but must
it? Cinema and dreams are anchored in bodies and ostensible labor;
something is at stake. Cinema-image and dreamwork speak among bodies,
through bodies. AI has its own seduction, part of which I think might be
that of the hunter? Ferreting out meaning? At least when I've worked with
my own small programming in that direction. But it's a second-level, the
phenomenology and dreamwork, the unconscious of the hunter, the programmer,
not the unconscious of the prey (in a sense, I know I'm exaggerating)...
A question possibly - how might the work through AI help solve the problems
above? (For me this is a real issue, keeping me awake at night: what are
all of us doing, what are the solutions to the increasing hells animals,
plants, everyone and everything are going through? What is the conceivable?
Or that old absurd question, What is to be done?)

Best, Alan, wondering what a sick AI would be, an AI with cancer or Covid...

On Tue, Jul 13, 2021 at 1:34 PM Eryk Salvaggio via NetBehaviour <
netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:

> Sorry Alan, to be clear I don’t think machines have an unconscious either.
> I should have been more precise: I’m talking about the tools of
> interpretation for the machine’s output, especially if one approaches
> generated text in a psychoanalytic framework (Freudian / Lacanian). There
> are illusions of an unconscious there, and so my question is: what are we
> interpreting when we do that? What connections in the neural net can be
> unraveled through that process?
>
> Freud used to say that dream analysis worked to give meaning to dreams
> from the process of describing them. Cinema can work in the same way. The
> “generative” text must offer the same potential, because the act of
> interpreting it is human, and unconscious. Do cinema and dreams bring
> things out in different ways? If so, what might generative text bring that
> is unique to itself as a medium?
>
> I want to dive deeper into your article here, it looks great. Thank you
> for sharing!
>
> -e.
>
> On 13 Jul 2021, at 12:58 pm, Edward Picot via NetBehaviour <
> netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:
>
> 
> I'm listening to it now and loving it!
>
> Edward
>
> On 12/07/2021 00:53, Anthony Stephenson via NetBehaviour wrote:
>
>
>
>> Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2021 10:33:26 -0400
>> From: Eryk Salvaggio <eryk.salvaggio at gmail.com>
>> Subject: [NetBehaviour] The Uncanny Vibe
>>
>> Here's an experimental text. For a while now, I have been creating pop
>> music in collaboration with machine learning systems in a project called
>> The
>> Organizing Committee <https://www.cyberneticforests.com/music>.
>>  ...  What do you all think?
>>
>
>
> ░░░░░░░░░░░░▄▄░░░░░░░░░
> ░░░░░░░░░░░█░░█░░░░░░░░
> ░░░░░░░░░░░█░░█░░░░░░░░
> ░░░░░░░░░░█░░░█░░░░░░░░
> ░░░░░░░░░█░░░░█░░░░░░░░
> ███████▄▄█░░░░░██████▄░░
> ▓▓▓▓▓▓█░░░░░░░░░░░░░░█░
> ▓▓▓▓▓▓█░░░░░░░░░░░░░░█░
> ▓▓▓▓▓▓█░░░░░░░░░░░░░░█░
> ▓▓▓▓▓▓█░░░░░░░░░░░░░░█░
> ▓▓▓▓▓▓█░░░░░░░░░░░░░░█░
> ▓▓▓▓▓▓█████░░░░░░░░░█░░
> ██████▀░░░░▀▀██████▀░░░░
>
> --
>
> - *Anthony Stephenson*
>
>
>
> *http://anthonystephenson.org/ <http://anthonystephenson.org/> *
>
>
>
>
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