Melinda White, “Multimodal Fringe: visionaries of e-lit and digital art”
Technology is not neutral. We’re inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us. We’re living in a world of connections — and it matters which ones get made and unmade. –Donna Haraway
Technology is inside of us, and cyborg artists and authors are inside of their creations, one with medium as they compose meaningful and imaginative work. Experimentation is vital to expanding creativity, and in turn creating technologies that make digital literature and art possible. Miguel de Unamuno is credited with writing, “Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.” Visionaries—the avant-garde, boundary-pushing geniuses, are often outliers, ahead of their time. Just look at the Dada, the beats, the postmodernists, the electronic literature pioneers. Where would we be without them? Ted Nelson was certainly ahead of his time when he coined the term hypertext in 1965 and many thought him “weird” or “crazy” at the time. But he was right, an oracle of our connected future, when he said, “Everything is deeply intertwingled” (Nelson). Hypertext grew from there alongside postmodern literature, and experimental installation art, all places on the fringe, ripe for innovative thought and radical expression.
This presentation will look at some of these “weird” digital pioneers, such as Donna Haraway, Deena Larsen, Judy Malloy, Shelley Jackson, William Gibson, Cardiff and Miller, Nam June Paik who paved the way for digital literature and art and further experimentation. They told us it was okay to think outside the box and venture forth into the technological unknown and showed us that diversity and humanity were important in these new expanding media. As Haraway said, a cyborg is “a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (Haraway). Perhaps this is the future these early cyborgs envisioned for us, complete with artists like Porpentine, Jason Nelson, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Amy Stacey Curtis, Caitlin & Misha, Winnie Soon, Illya Szilak, Samantha Gorman. Current e-lit authors, installation artists, and virtual reality pioneers, are creating art, on and off the screen, that prompt us to think more deeply about the world we live in and the future yet to come. Technological advancement allows for more ways to express creativity and social ideas, but the vision and motivation to create also begets the technology needed to produce the vision. I will highlight some of these contemporary author/aritsts, both their “weird” media and “weird” outcomes. Progression happens only with experimentation, and that certainly extends beyond the capabilities of our current technologies to ideas like empathy and equality. And it’s the weirdo visionaries that call on us to rethink what we know, reimagine what it means to be human, and push us forward into a better future.
Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149-181.
Nelson, Ted. Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Rev. ed. Richmond, WA: Tempus Books ofMicrosoft Press, 1987.
Patrick Lichty, “Not Really Like Being There: Veracity and the Image in the Age of Deepfakes”
In William Gibson’s Bridge Trilogy, (Virtual Light, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Idoru), he coins the term about a situation “going lateral”, referring to entering a state of chaos. In addition, in Idoru, the Japanese pop Idol Rei Toei, after being a solely virtual AI construct, materializes in a nanofax chamber in Lucky Dragon convenience stores to make numerous copies of herself. Both of these references hint at the uncontrollable nature of cyberspace, how it challenges the nation state, and how artists are trying to challenge the notion of borders while the near-obsolete nation-state is trying to align itself with notions of info-power by sectioning itself off from the world (Iran, Russia, China). This presentation will talk about four artworks and how they describe the flows of power in networked milieux (infopower) and its transgressions of the conventional notion of the border. This includes Robert Adrian X’s The World in 24 Hours, John Craig Freeman’s Border Crossing, Electronic Disturbance Theatre’s Transborder Immigrant Tool and Ehtesabian and Lichty’s American-Made Persian Carpets. The discontinuities between infopower and the traditional nation state, as shown by the contestational politics between WikiLeaks, the United Sates and Russia illustrate the tensions created by the discontinuities between informational and political control. In this presentation, I will discuss the different modes of contestational aesthetics presented by each work, such as questions of the free flow of aesthetic content (Adrian X), virtualization of the border (Freeman, EDT), and the Iran/US embargo vs. net.neutrality (Ehtesabian/Lichty). Through examination of these works in a broader set of political aesthetics, this presentation will map out the different political landscapes of the nation state and the informatic, and how artistic engagement creates new models for relational intervention.
Kristen Lillvis, “Identity, Collaboration, and Ownership in AI Art”
The song and music video for “Godmother” (2018) features three artists: Holly Herndon, a composer and sound artist; Jlin, an electronic musician; and Spawn, an “artificial intelligence baby” and “singing neural network” who uses Herndon’s voice model to perform an interpretation of Jlin’s instrumentals (Friedlander; Herndon and Beta; Herndon; Gotrich). Though listeners hear “Spawn” in “Godmother,” Herndon and Jlin retain author credits, with Spawn “featured” as a performer.
The issue of authorship extends beyond this single work to the existence of AI art broadly. In this talk, I’ll discuss how Herndon both establishes and calls into question her “ownership” of her voice with “Godmother” and Holly+, a “custom voice instrument and website” that “allows for anyone to upload polyphonic audio and receive a download of that music sung back in [her] distinctive processed voice” (Herndon). While Herndon asserts, “My voice is precious to me! It is is 1 of 1 ????,” with Holly+ she relies on DAO governance to “decentralize access, decision making and profits made from [her] digital twin” (Herndon). With her AI art collaborations, Herndon invites others into her voice but also draws distinctions between self and technological/biological other. This talk will explore how Herndon’s weird media reflects contemporary questions about the self, especially in terms of “technogenesis,” or the “coordinated transformation” of technology and identity (Hayles).
Friedlander, Emily. 2019. “How Holly Herndon and Her AI Baby Spawned a New Kind of Folk Music.” The Fader, May 21, 2019. https://www.thefader.com/2019/05/21/holly-herndon-proto-ai-spawn-interview.
Gotrich, Lars. 2018. “Holly Herndon’s AI Baby Sings to Her ‘Godmother.’” NPR Music, Dec. 4, 2018. https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2018/12/04/672758884/holly-herndons-ai-baby-sings-to-her-godmother.
Hayles, N. Katherine. 2012. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012.
Herndon, Holly. 2021. “Holly+.” Holly Herndon. Jul. 13, 2021. https://holly.mirror.xyz/54ds2IiOnvthjGFkokFCoaI4EabytH9xjAYy1irHy94.
Herndon, Holly, and Andy Beta. 2019. “Inside the World’s First Mainstream Album Made with AI.” Vulture, Nov. 13, 2019. https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/holly-herndon-on-proto-an-album-made-with-ai.html.
Herndon, Holly, and Jlin (featuring Spawn). 2018. “Godmother.” Directed by Daniel Costa Neves. Dec. 4, 2018. Music video, 2:49. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc9OjL6Mjqo.
