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 \u2014 and it matters which ones get made and unmade. \u2013Donna Haraway<\/p>\n
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, \u201cOnly he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.\u201d Visionaries\u2014the 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 \u201cweird\u201d or \u201ccrazy\u201d at the time. But he was right, an oracle of our connected future, when he said, \u201cEverything is deeply intertwingled\u201d (Nelson). Hypertext grew from there alongside postmodern literature, and experimental installation art, all places on the fringe, ripe for innovative thought and radical expression.<\/p>\n
This presentation will look at some of these \u201cweird\u201d 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 \u201ca creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction\u201d (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 \u201cweird\u201d media and \u201cweird\u201d 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Haraway, Donna J. \u201cA Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,\u201d in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149-181.<\/p>\n
Nelson, Ted. Computer Lib\/Dream Machines. Rev. ed. Richmond, WA: Tempus Books ofMicrosoft Press, 1987.<\/p>\n
In William Gibson\u2019s Bridge Trilogy, (Virtual Light, All Tomorrow\u2019s Parties, Idoru), he coins the term about a situation \u201cgoing lateral\u201d, 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\u2019s The World in 24 Hours, John Craig Freeman\u2019s Border Crossing, Electronic Disturbance Theatre\u2019s Transborder Immigrant Tool and Ehtesabian and Lichty\u2019s 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.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 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\u00a0 creates new models for relational intervention.<\/p>\n
The song and music video for \u201cGodmother\u201d (2018) features three artists: Holly Herndon, a composer and sound artist; Jlin, an electronic musician; and Spawn, an \u201cartificial intelligence baby\u201d and \u201csinging neural network\u201d who uses Herndon\u2019s voice model to perform an interpretation of Jlin\u2019s instrumentals (Friedlander; Herndon and Beta; Herndon; Gotrich). Though listeners hear \u201cSpawn\u201d in \u201cGodmother,\u201d Herndon and Jlin retain author credits, with Spawn \u201cfeatured\u201d as a performer.<\/p>\n
The issue of authorship extends beyond this single work to the existence of AI art broadly. In this talk, I\u2019ll discuss how Herndon both establishes and calls into question her \u201cownership\u201d of her voice with \u201cGodmother\u201d and Holly+, a \u201ccustom voice instrument and website\u201d that \u201callows for anyone to upload polyphonic audio and receive a download of that music sung back in [her] distinctive processed voice\u201d (Herndon). While Herndon asserts, \u201cMy voice is precious to me! It is is 1 of 1 ????,\u201d with Holly+ she relies on DAO governance to \u201cdecentralize access, decision making and profits made from [her] digital twin\u201d (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\u2019s weird media reflects contemporary questions about the self, especially in terms of \u201ctechnogenesis,\u201d or the \u201ccoordinated transformation\u201d of technology and identity (Hayles).<\/p>\n
Friedlander, Emily. 2019. \u201cHow Holly Herndon and Her AI Baby Spawned a New Kind of Folk Music.\u201d The Fader, May 21, 2019. https:\/\/www.thefader.com\/2019\/05\/21\/holly-herndon-proto-ai-spawn-interview.<\/p>\n
Gotrich, Lars. 2018. \u201cHolly Herndon\u2019s AI Baby Sings to Her \u2018Godmother.\u2019\u201d NPR Music, Dec. 4, 2018. https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/allsongs\/2018\/12\/04\/672758884\/holly-herndons-ai-baby-sings-to-her-godmother.<\/p>\n
Hayles, N. Katherine. 2012. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012.<\/p>\n
Herndon, Holly. 2021. \u201cHolly+.\u201d Holly Herndon. Jul. 13, 2021. https:\/\/holly.mirror.xyz\/54ds2IiOnvthjGFkokFCoaI4EabytH9xjAYy1irHy94.<\/p>\n
Herndon, Holly, and Andy Beta. 2019. \u201cInside the World\u2019s First Mainstream Album Made with AI.\u201d Vulture, Nov. 13, 2019. https:\/\/www.vulture.com\/2019\/11\/holly-herndon-on-proto-an-album-made-with-ai.html.<\/p>\n
Herndon, Holly, and Jlin (featuring Spawn). 2018. \u201cGodmother.\u201d Directed by Daniel Costa Neves. Dec. 4, 2018. Music video, 2:49. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sc9OjL6Mjqo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 \u2014 and it matters which ones get made and unmade. \u2013Donna Haraway Technology is inside of us, and cyborg artists and authors are … Continue reading Abstracts E<\/span>