Case study: Remixing knowledge with layered intelligences

Solomon, Lucy HG; Baio, Cesar

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/112920 Copy

Description

Title

Case study: Remixing knowledge with layered intelligences

Author(s)

• Solomon, Lucy HG
• Baio, Cesar

Issue Date

2021-02

Keyword(s)

• Layering intelligences
• Microbiological logic
• Prehuman intelligence
• Posthuman thinking
• Ecosystemic technologies

Abstract

The case study of Degenerative Cultures explores how the layering of different forms of logic offers an opportunity for rethinking our human systems and hypothetically remixing the epistemological roots of society—through interventions into our technological systems. In Degenerative Cultures, the living organism Physarum polycephalum partners with an artificial intelligence that compiles and corrupts an archive of human texts. In the iterative art installation, which incorporates the growth cycles of microbiological organisms, protists as well as fungi cover up and effectively remix human texts. Human knowledge, contained within the philosophy books used in the project, becomes the substrate for organic growth. The living organisms grow over an actual book, and the AI, referred to as a “digital fungus,” corrupts texts on the Internet. The artists’ experiment, which links microbiological growth logic to artificial intelligence, is one step in rethinking how human knowledge may become layered and ultimately corrupted and rerouted—a forking of sorts—through integration with nonhuman logic systems, including microbiological and artificial intelligences. By orienting this work to remix theory, the article offers the hypothesis of a multispecies recombination that could, in utopian terms, reformulate the epistemological basis of modernity. In order to pursue this hypothesis, the art collective Cesar & Lois asks what role remix plays in the ongoing emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Series/Report Name or Number

Media-N, vol. 17, issue 1

Type of Resource

text

Language

eng

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/112920

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21900/j.median.v17i1.486

Copyright and License Information

• Copyright 2021 Lucy HG Solomon, Cesar Baio
• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

Owning Collections