Sam Hains

Final Reflections

2018-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

slides for my final presentation are here.

What did you learn?

I built a theoretical foundation for creating within my newfound medium - video simulations. At the start of the semester I knew that I was seduced by this technology. However, I could not explain why - it seemed impulsive and aesthetic; perhaps even fetishistic. After engaging in my research across art and the digital humanities, I have developed a framework for problematizing and thinking about simulations as part of a growing network of cybernetic control systems. I experimented with a process around ‘digital ethnography’ - entering corporate simulated spaces, appropriating assets.

I have also done much work to ground the medium in its techno-military-scientific roots. There are fascinating connected histories of amusement technologies and industrial modernity.

I couldn’t say I have a mastery of the history, or the theory. Although, I have mapped out a terrain for exploration that I am passionate about. I am excited to keep going with this for thesis.

What would you do differently?

I would start making earlier. This was the first time that I had attempted to consciously and systematically incorporate theory and research into my practice. For a while, I was looking too much to the theory for answers about what to make. When I started making the video (forced by timelines), what I was trying to say fell out into the software.

I also got a little lost in the notion of the ‘simulation’ - it is a very elusive and slippery subject to try and pin down. Baudrillard went mad during his ‘Simulation-Era’, after all. I could have benefited from thinking about a specific kind of simulation - perhaps that of climate simulations; or simulations that create racist (or sexist) cybernetic feedback loops.

What feedback did you receive?
I received generally positive feedback for this project. A couple of people after watching it told me that they had ‘nothing to say’ and that it was ‘weird’. Some others seemed to draw connections from the imagery that I had not anticipated. The positive reviews seemed to suggest that the expression of corporate and military intensities were communicated through the video. It seems that the video was more effective than my paper at communicating my ideas.

Someone said that my work was lacking in representation of ‘Coloured Bodies’. I see where this is coming from. The simulation that I was working with - ‘FlexSim’ demonstrates its software through an entirely white male cast. It is these white male (virtual) bodies that are responsible for ‘crash testing’ corporate spaces for everyone else, and I wanted to tell a story of their dystopic, homogenous existence. I think this contributes to the ‘disturbing’ aspect of the video. The decision is made with intention.

What was inspiring? What parts?

The focusing of attention toward critical concerns has expanded my thinking. I think differently about technology and the systems it is entangled within. I have found all these connections between my area of interest and various other systems.

How did you balance research and experimentation?

This was a big challenge for me. My practice suffered somewhat during the semester as I became lost in the labyrinth of theory and readings. It can be difficult to juggle art practice and technological tools; adding research into the mix brought another level of left-brain complexity. At times I was tentative to create as I was burdened by it all.

What will you take with you going forward?

A more critically engaged art practice. Many new connections to systems and histories. A better understanding of my strengths and weaknesses. A better understanding of cybernetic control systems. I’d like to engage further with ‘digital ethnography’ to inform the creation of digital spaces that comment and critique digital spaces.

Next year I’d like to draw a connection between the rising of sea levels and of cybernetic control systems. I hope to create video works that contribute to a more critical discourse around technology and its influence on peoples lives.

Some References

Artists
Ian Cheng
Hito Steyerl
Jakob Kudsk Steensen
Laurence Lek
Nate Boyce

Readings
“Simulated Subjects: Glass Bead in Conversation with Ian Cheng and Hito Steyerl.”
Stefan Helmreich - Silicon Second Nature
Deleuze - Postscript for control societies
Galloway - Deleuze and computers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBZPJNoJWHk)
Crogan - Gameplay Mode: War, Simulation, and Technoculture
Bratton- The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty.
Wendy Chun - On persistence of visual knowledge
Baudrillard - Simulations.
Yuk Hui - On the Existence of Digital Objects
Galison - “Computer Simulations and the Tradig Zone.”
Galloway - “Computers and the Superfold.”
Alexander R. Galloway - Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization
Alexander R. Galloway - The Interface Effect

QUESTION WORLD

2018-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

Continuing my pre-thesis explorations of simulations as the site of contact between machine and human worlds - I created a typographic experiment based on Dwarf Fortress.

I wrote a python script that allowed me to deconstruct and reconstruct bitmaps into new arrangements. The code for that is here.

This computational approach allowed me to experiment with different typographical representations to feed to the Dwarf Fortress simulation, which would otherwise be a very time consuming photoshop task of lining up pixels.

Here is a sample of some of the bitmap fonts that I created:

My favourite font I created was the “?” font, which makes explicit the already confusing nature of the Dwarf Fortress simulation.

Here is a 10 minute video, following a ? through a simulated world of ?’s.

Drawing with TTF

2018-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

This week I did some pure experimentation and play with p5.js and the examples sketches that Allison provided.

I’m not exactly proud of the outcome, but there were some interesting moments. It ended up in a very chaotic place. The simpler moments that I had earlier on in experimentation were more interesting and I regret not creating a save file at that point in the progress! If I was to proceed with this approach, I think I’d just export out a new font and do the layout manually.

p5 sketch here

Concrete Poetry

2018-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

This week I began the experiment in Unity in the hope that I could integrate some of these computational typography experiments into another project that I’m working on. This was probably not the best move for productivity and output. I ran out of time to implement what I had in mind. Next assignment I will stick to the script.

The letters ‘s-i-m-u-l-a-t-i-o-n’ are spelled out by a group of simulated agents in unity. However, it is not such a successful experiment as this is not clear, nor is the ‘logic of the simulation’ that might be in dialogue with the letters.

Vimeo Link

Asemic Text

2018-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

This was a really fun task. I experimented with Houdini, a procedural node-based language to do this task. It felt very suitable. I was just experimenting blindly, but this process of creating typography computationally is exciting. I think I would use this technique for creating languages in imagined worlds. I’d also love to return to this and start by trying and recreate some of my favourite graphic designers work.

This is what my houdini network looks like:

(The barcode language is a rendering of a version of the network but only about half way through)

Worlding and Simulations

2018-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

This week I continued my pursuit of worlding and found myself hit a ‘dead end’ so have done a research pivot.

The Dead End

The “No Likes Zone” transformed into “The Ark” which is a technology that exists on the oceans of a broken antipodean ecology.

A rough description of the future scenario here:

Peter Thiels heirs operate like ‘gods of myth’ in an archipelagos of man-made islands surrounding New Zealand. Any attempt to contact ‘The Heirs’ directly leads one on a labyrinthine journey through the harsh environment of the volcanic mainland. None of the workers have ever visited the Sacred Thielian Compound. Meanwhile, The Heirs prepare an Immersive KeyNote Address(IMA) for the release of a masterpiece. “The Immersive Solution… A voluntary prison.. A fun palace” ….The Ark.

Pursing this would likely end up with me writing another RPG game/zine as I did for the midterm. Except rather than drawing on nuclear folklore papers, I would be drawing from techno-utopian culture to build a world that functions as an ironic critique. I’m not sure this is the direction I wish to go in.

Why Worlding?

I feel the need to remind myself. The formal process of collaborative world building, whether through role playing games or improvisation, feels like a deeply powerful and underappreciated tool for personal or social change. I want to see the practice of ‘critical world building’- critical theory and future scenarios thinking meets Dungeons and Dragons. But I’m also concerned about losing sight of my existing, nascent practice which is more centred around digital imaging and software.

Is it possible that this fascination with worlding is separate from my fascination in computer graphics and simulated spaces? I’m not sure.. I hope not. But I need to examine this concept of ‘simulation’ more closely, as I’m not sure I know what I’m talking about..

Pivot To Simulation

VR Chat

Perhaps a thesis that complements my existing practice better would be: An examination of the contemporary simulated image - with its complex relation to human and machine vision, bodies, algorithms and virtual spaces.

US Troops prepare to move a simulated casualty onto a litter in Djibouti City, Djibouti

Examples of simulations taken from Simulation, Exercise, Operations:

data avatars that we deposit into systems that feed off information for virtual planning and execution of everyday life
military training simulations – virtual environments, augmented reality tech
media spectacle of war which takes on properties of a game- mythic narratives, easy victories, few bodies
state prowess in self-representation and entertainment seduction
hyper realistic video games evolved from military technology
domestic intelligence crowdsourced from social media

Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony

How do we address the artefacts of simulations? The ‘hybrid objects’ that are both real and simulated? How can we assess the ways in which they serve, or can disrupt established power?

I am reading both Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulations and DeLanda’s Philosophy and Simulation hoping for answers.

Both philosophers approach the idea of simulation from different angles.

For Baudrillard, the simulation is the models of reality, and symbols ‘pointing to’ that consume the real. A quote from the book:

“the age of the model or simulation, as a simulacra that precedes and compels the real, ultimately rendering the distinction between real and simulation untenable. This era heralds ‘the generation by models of a real without origin or reality […] henceforth, it is the map that engenders the territory […] no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance […] it is nothing more than operational.”

Delanda is more interested in the practical uses for simulations in the context of doing philosophy. The computer simulation is capable of employing a kind of ‘synthetic reason’ that is capable of mapping the possibility space for a particular thing far beyond the capabilities of the human mind. He says his philosophical goal in this book is to unfold an “emergent materialist world view that finally does justice to the creative powers of matter and energy”.

I would like to engage Delanda’s framework in exploring the aesthetic space of the ‘synthetic reason’ of computer simulations. But unlike Delanda, who is content to describe a new philosophical reality created by computer simulations, I’d like to account for this reality. To consider the transforming power that simulations have on reality. As was done by Baudrillard, and also in more recent work by Simondon who provides another relevant approach for the understanding the ‘technical objects’ created by simulations.

ANSI Solaris

2018-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

To get inspiration I did some natural language processing on the English translated script for the 1972 science fiction film ‘Solaris’ by Tarkovsky. I watched it recently in fever-state and I can’t stop thinking about.

Time is barely mentioned. Very little variation in place and persons mentioned. Lots of X-rays and oceans.

The oceans being those of the alien planet Solaris. The X-rays being the preferred ‘solution’ to Solaris’ reality distortion field by more cosmic-horror averse characters.

I made an ANSI simulation of an ocean under siege from X-rays. While this was very much just a ‘sketch’, it has opened up the idea of further experimentation with non-playable, simulated, ANSI environments (Dwarf Fortress).

fullscreen version is here

code is here.

7 days of The Zone

2018-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

Each day I tried to create another feature of an imaginary world I am building with an illustration and a description.

7 ZONES OF THE NO LIKES ZONE

Day 1 - Inverted Foxconn Inverted Foxconn is a political framework, and a ubiquitous long-term residency (ULTR) program in the No Likes Zone, frequently holding majority ‘parliament’

Day 2 - Losers Church Extract from Losers Church core video informational: The Fatigue of Winning.

Day 3 - Empty Homes ‘Home Selection’ screen for Empty Homes. Empty Homes is an automated interiors show featuring slow, panning shots of virtual housing*.

*Cannot purchased, consumed or inhabited.

Day 4 - The Baths The Baths is a software for creating, recycling and trading fantasies. It is a testing ground for introducing new forms of behaviour into the No Likes Zone.

Day 5 - Welcome Screen No Likes Zone, Welcome Screen. After crossing the Wall, an inmate is received by an attentive receptionist who assists in customizing the initiation program for each person.

The tropical atmospherics of the Welcome Screen soothe the fatigued inmate before the initiation rituals. Inmates are always undernourished. Senses will be adjusted, and desires will be relinquished before proceeding to the Central Interface.

Day 6 - The Firewall The Firewall (‘The Wall’) that surrounds the Zone is the mechanism through which prisoners achieve both voluntary imprisonment and freedom. It creates an enclosure, a sanctuary in which the Zone can provide its cohesive, controlled experience. It offers a retreat from visibility. Total security and protection. Many prisoners develop bonds with ‘The Wall’. It is a ‘Heartbreakingly Beautiful’ technology of sacred importance.

Day 7 - The Communal Computer

The Communal Computer is a community space and a town hall. It is a humane, dynamic medium for computation. Prisoners who visit the computer will be gently lead down a path from playing, to crafting, to remixing and programming. No screens, no devices - just pure multisensory experience brought to life by the technology in the center.

Heterotopias & Megastructures

2018-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

This week was a deep dive on heterotopias, utopias, dystopias and megastructures as ideological art.

All illustrations are taken from Rem Koolhaas’ Exodus, or the voluntary prisoners of architecture

Pinterest and visual research here

The biggest breakthrough came in the discovery of Rem Koohaas’ graduate thesis - The Exodus, or the voluntary prisoners of architecture. The Exodus is an ideological city – a counter cultural, speculative place that is at odds with the globalising, standardising forces of the ‘outside’. It is a voluntary prison that resists the emergent culture of its time. By inverting the role of a prison, he created a site for an upheaval of normative society where the wretched is glorified and norms are inverted. The prison becomes the ‘free zone’. A melting of existential space with ideology.

This project, in the words of Koolhaas, is a proposition that requires ‘a fundamental belief in cities as the incubators of social desires, the synthetic materialization of all dreams’.

However, I propose that this has shifted towards networks and cybernetic systems as the incubators of desire. Which brings me to the question - what would a software architecture against the capitalist surveillance economy look like?

A No Like Zone

A piece of software disconnected from the newly forming global megastructure. A means of revealing, satirically the current state of affairs. A digital space in opposition to the singularity of individualism but also the fatigue of it. In opposition to innovation culture, creative rule breaking and relativism. In opposition to the corporatized rhizome of literalized 1960s postmodernism and its content sharing tools and networks. In opposition to the development of unique ‘subjectivity’ only to mine these subjects for data points. In oppositions to hashtags and corporate green washing. In opposition to efficiency. In opposition to quality content. This is a No Like Zone. This software architecture has no concept of the surveillance mechanisms, no drag nets, no google play areas and no apple stores or innovation hubs.

The structure of Exodus may be instructive here. Koolhaas describes 10 square zones – all of them are programmed spaces where people exist in a narrative beyond the capitalist apparatus. Each zone carries some kind of character in opposition to symbolic connotations of globalising forces which are the ‘outside’ to this inverted ‘inside’.

Since Koolhaas, the meaning of an ‘outside’ of a capitalism has shifted. The digital labyrinth cultivated by platform economies has its own totalizing character. It feeds off specificity of subjects, and encourages us to share thoughts, feelings and desires for its functioning. It needs ‘rich’ datasets from its citizens. It will create interfaces for this expression where people don’t feel inhibited. It will offer an increasingly hyper-individualized, irresistible content vortex for us to inside. Irreverence, rule-breaking, resistance and organizational practice are all recorded, documented and amalgamated. The political reality is being eroded.

Interview with Martin Scherzinger

MCC professor Martin Scherzinger on his piece ‘Executing Machines’. This excerpt follows from a conversation about how digital technologies weaponize human desire in the service of creating rich datasets.

Martin: Cultures of computing and consumption enjoin new sublimated energies in the service of data capture and harvest. The capitalist surveillance economy requires richly data-fied subjects for its efficient function… This points to the limits of Foucauldian take on the problematics of the state of surveillance and panopticon. We are now in a state of addictive habituation. The externalisation of personalised desire.

Sam: Before you were talking about the excess of data. Are you talking from perspective of capturer or creator of data?

Martin: By both perspectives actually. The creator of the data, the adopter, the person behind the screen (“Like a skin to be touched” as Alex Galloway nicely put it). Every paranoid fantasy gets play – just enter it into interlocutor. The rank of statistically organized stories that will not only confirm your paranoid fantasy but will educate you in it. From a psychoanalytic point of view its interesting, not just the externalization of the Id but the education of it. This is a new way of interfacing with the world.

And from the perspective of Experian, Oracle, Axiom – the big data brokers. I’m less interested in the argument that data fails to capture the complete individual than I am in the new behaviours one is enjoined to from the excess of data. These are behaviour modification companies.

Sam: Where is the excess being driven from? The desires within ourselves.. The weaponized experience design?

Martin: To have data that ‘works’.. something that is richly informed you don’t want to have people presenting themselves in a socialized way. You want to see something behind the scenes. Something that would be relevant. You want to know if they promise by the word of God.

You need to create interfaces where people don’t feel restricted. To enrich the dataset. The data becomes weirder. People are watching the market, bubbles and bursts, seemingly external data that have nothing directly to do with financial information, to get ahead on that is the name of the game. There is an entire set of problems that comes with that. The point for the externalization of desire is that you require a richer dataset. You don’t want them to feel restricted, cautious, compromised anything like that.”

References An ideological city: Koolhaas’ exodus in the Second Ecumene by Teismann and Matthew (2017) Exodus, or the voluntary prisoners of architecture by Koolhaas (1972) Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias by Foucault (1967)

Paradise Town

2018-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

Simulation seems to me like the ‘holy grail’ of computational narrative. A system with well designed rules could conceivably provide an infinite, highly-flexible basis for a narrative world. Once a simulation has been designed it could become the basis for any number of real-time content driven systems. My interest, in particular, is to use simulation as a basis for ‘generative video’ systems through visualization of the simulation in video or game engines.

Paradise Town is a reality television show that follows the lives of simulated people as they attempt to pursue a particular activity, but are constantly interrupted by their exhausting social life. I wanted to materialize the weirdness of ‘simulated peoples’ and build this uncanny aesthetic into the experience.

My goal was to learn the basics of how narrative simulations work and what they can do. Seaduck provided me with the conceptual foundation and lead me to working with an already fairly mature simulation framework - James Ryan’s ‘Talk of the Town’. This simulation framework provides the relationships, histories and interactions between characters in the form of a python object in memory.

I initially tried to use the simulation events to write a story for different kind of world (“entertainment machines in a paradise hotel”) by writing a python/tracery script that acted as a ‘world filter’. Once I understood more about how it worked, I realized this didn’t make sense. The simulation would need a considerable rewriting or reskinning to give me the kind of ‘lore’ that I was interested in- a considerable project, in and of itself.

SO I decided to work with the simulation, and create a narrative from interpretation and parsing of its generated events. Talk Of The Town gives you a lot of things for free that would be useful to many simulations: Romance system, company histories, family trees etc. There is a lot of potential in working with this framework, however it is still very labour intensive. My approach of using tracery grammars to articulate the events is also slow and manual. I would spend more time organizing a more spacy/word-to-vec/corpus driven approach to flesh out grammars in the future.

This is a ‘visualization’ of an output from the Paradise Town script using Touch Designer. A rough draft to give myself a picture of a more complete video pipeline.

PARADISE TOWN - JUDY EGGERTON - S02E02
The script

Here is my ugly code.

Overall, I found this to be an educational task. I’ve somewhat demystified the narrative simulation (‘bucket list’ item crossed off?!?). Simulations require a tremendous amount more planning, research and coding than I expected. But, I am not deterred.

I plan to continue working with this medium. I believe in its potential to offer a novel approach to creating video worlds. But I must return to books and research papers in this brief reprieve from homework overload to build a better idea of the kind of world and experience that I am wanting to simulate.