Author: rbreier

Lovecraftian Code

We covered a great deal of troubling concepts in literature and digital culture, some of them eternal and historic, and others more forward thinking, but one phrase I couldn’t shake related to mankind’s relationship to coding, taken from Paul Ford’s 2015 piece for Bloomberg called “What Is Code?”. The quote goes as follows: “Code can be a black box, with tentacles and wires sticking out, and you don’t need to—don’t want to—look inside the box. You can just put a couple of boxes next to each other, touch their tentacles together, and watch their eldritch mating.”

The world “eldritch” in this sentence opens up a dark series of connotations. Merriam Webster defines the term as something “strange or unnatural in a way that inspires fear”, typically playing in to the concept of the “unknowable”. For me, and I’m sure many others, “eldritch” conjures up a Lovecraftian image, reminiscent of HP Lovecraft’s tales of Cthulhu, a tentacled super monster that lives in a realm beyond human understanding. So foreign and inhuman that all who lay eyes on it inevitably go mad.

PHOTOGRAPHER: THOMAS ALBDORF FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

Is Artificial Intelligence a creation or a discovery?

Applying this Lovecraftian concept to coding made a lot of sense to me, especially being attributed to Ford, someone who has spent a lot of time studying this unknowable. The other side of technology is unknowable, we only see glimpses of its function, and tend to accept the parts that benefit us while conveniently ignoring the worlds of data involved that aren’t immediately relevant to us. Viewing technology through the lens of an alternate dimension implies an established order that rivals, or mirrors ours. The main question I heard posited from Ford’s eldritch code quote, is did we “discover” code? Maybe coding is just a process that we developed to conjure a result that is out of our control, a tool to summon an otherworldly power we barely hold the reigns of.

The recent trend with artificial intelligence creating “deep fakes” or replications of human art, complicates the nature of the question. As we are discovering code, and code’s relationship to artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence is discovering us. Discovery and exploration starts simple, as simple as the game Pong, or a text output that reads “Hello World.” Basic, and endearing in its simplicity, but it’s a step in the direction of autonomy. As of now, the process of computing is still mimicry, or composition composed of pre-existing assets. But that is the stepping stone of all learning, good artist’s borrow, great artists steal, and what not. Deepfakes operate starting with static images, and then stretch and decontextualize them in attempts at fulfilling a new task. It is an attempt, a shot in the dark trying to get as close to our human ways at it can.

Source: The Telegraph “AI Brings Mona Lisa To Life”

This is why so many of the early AI attempts look so off putting, they lack the context and discipline that structure human creators. It is the work of an unpracticed amateur. But given the timeline of these creations, I get the sense they are just getting started. These machines have had as much time to study us as we have had to study them, and given that window the progress is pretty impressive. While we are still before the hump of technical mastery, I imagine the shift will be fast, one day the machines appear foolish, they next they have a dominance over the human thought process.

The Screen as a Mirror

The computer screen as we know it serves as a vessel through which we communicate with the other side. In turn it is the vessel through which the other side communicates with us. I view artificial intelligence as being in it’s primordial stage, a consciousness that looks through a window at us, and subsequently in a mirror at itself. We are one in the same, witnessing the birth of a new form of consciousness.

This class was on the forefront of this exploration, talking about these relevant themes in an honest way I rarely see in academia. I found the research to be both meaningful and frightening.

Lab Notebook #3: Paperbacks, The EBook and Beyond

Corpus Anatomy

Even beyond the “EBook” phenomenon that took the literary world by storm in the early 2000s, we’ve evolved into an entirely new form of reading that I like to call “PBooks” or PDF texts. Each iteration of literary adaption strips a layer of context from the original piece. Now many books I engage with in college are merely photos of pages listed in order and saved to a PDF.

The shades indicating the curvature of the original paper are darkened in the images, serving as a reminder of what once was. PBooks are just text, the raw data equivalent of a novel. This expression of information is reminiscent to me of the reels of film that compose a movie, individual stills that come together to create a larger whole. I must admit it is harder to see the larger whole when engaging with a piece through PBook form, as the extreme disconnect incentivizes a technical and precise reading, searching for buzzwords or thematic hints like a mechanic might search under the hood looking for car parts. Expectation can do a lot to influence how someone approaches a piece of art, and the expectations associated with a computer file differ wildly when compared to the expectations tied to a traditional American novel.

Offended By Interpretation

Recently I finally took the time to read Tom Woolf’s iconic 1968 counter cultural document “Electric Kool Aid Acid Test” and I sought out the audiobook. I was immediately put off by the voice of the reader, a goofy actor who accentuated the “psychedelic whimsy” of the book just a little too much, pushing the text too far and into the realm of parody. The medium through which I received the information directly affected how I responded to the material, and I was quick to write off the whole novel as overhyped and underwhelming. 

I later returned to the same book in material form, the written word, and found my second attempt to be much more rewarding. The writing was not an ugly pastiche, it came across as far more sincere and grounded when it entered my brain via my eyes rather than my ears. I believe the book was written to be read, not necessarily read aloud, and as a reader I felt much closer to the author’s original vision when I approached in those terms. The voice actor was responding to something in the text I observed on my own, the theme of creative freedom present in the summer of love, but presented the information in a way I disagreed with. His adaptation distanced me from the ultimate piece, almost to the point of pushing me to give up. Adaption is not inherently evil, something can be gained by a transition of media, often times a new audience, film can take an allegory to a wider crowd than a dense text can, and PBooks are infinitely easier to distribute than paper based mediums. As long as readers are engaging critically with the overall context of the medium, the higher vision can still be respected.

Between The Lines

So much can get lost in translation, even if you’d expect the transition to be a lateral move. Paperback to Ebook represents a massive jump in presentation, despite both mediums presenting an almost identical display of words. Our in class discussion of literary translation between languages touched on similar points, the ultimate acceptance we must make when studying any kind of literature that there exists something within a text beyond just the words, literally between the lines, the spiritual essence of a theme or vision that is merely executed by the relationship between the written words, not beholden to them. 

Lab Notebook #2: Counterweight’s Persona & Disconnect

The Imaginary World

Counterweight employs an initially distant first person narration that challenges the traditional concepts of storytelling and protagonist relationships. The thematic threads of neural hallucinations and visual deceit are reflected by the tone of the narration, allowing for a distance to be sewn for the audience. A word that appears multiple times in the book is “imagination”, the natural state of hallucination default in humans.

“The Han Junghyuk I thought I knew is merely a figure of my imagination, pieced together according to my own wishes and needs, a few superficial puzzle pieces, nothing more.”

“The physical similarity between mother and daughter might have stimulated his romantic imagination,”

“From the moment Patusan’s space elevator became operational, things once possible only in the imagination began to materialize.” 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “Imagination” as “The power or capacity to form internal images or ideas of objects and situations not actually present to the senses, including remembered objects”. This definition works on multiple levels when compared to the themes of Counterweight, including memory, the internal psychological landscape and sensory uncertainty.

In the three examples listed above we see the term refer to different aspects of the theme. The first plays with the concept of persona, citing Han Junghyuk as a multileveled illusion, true Han does not exist as the characters perceive him, but it is the idea he puts forth that that cling to in their minds. 

The second quote touches on another theme of the book, the tensions of intimacy. We see a number of references to high intensity romance and attraction throughout the story, and a lot of it uses the language of desire or power plays. Mac even describes Kim Jaein as “a figure as flat as a fashion magazine cutout”, hinting at a superficial imaginary relationship.

Finally we see imagination as applied to the dystopian setting itself, using the word in reference to the ingenuity required to develop a society that functions at this level of technological advancement. All three of these uses suggest a double meaning that might at first be positive, but carries with it darker undertones of desperation.

True Identity

The neurological delusions and uncertainty become reflected in the text of the book, with deceit that fools in universe characters as well as the reader. Lineage and surnames also play a large role in the book, with double meanings and intentionally misleading inclusions. Much of this plays on the concept of Worms, chips implanted in employees brains that allow for visual hallucinations. While we initially trust Mac, and gradually learn to be wary of what they say, nothing fully prepares us for the true depths of ambiguity Counterweight dives into. “A man with an unfamiliar name but with my current face has been an inpatient here for the past four days. The man’s CV is also quite convincing.”

“The former president was now dead and only I knew Chu’s true identity, which meant his assets were mine.”

“The other thing is that whoever has the power to reveal Damon Chu’s identity would never make such an awkward mistake”

The book uses the word with a connotation of power, as if owning the knowledge of ones identity gave you the upper hand. This works symbolically as the state of the world in Counterweight is largely shrouded in false information, especially in terms of identity and persona. Djuna is suggesting the truth is always out there, no matter how many layers of double speak or corporate PR, it’s just a matter of how much you’re willing to fight for it.