lettre no. 52

 

I want to make people cry even when they don't understand my words.

— Edith Piaf

Video: Edith Piaf - Non, je ne regrette rien (Officiel) [Live Version]

lettre no. 51

 

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You don’t have to burn a book to bury it. In 2000, Paulina Borsook published Cyberselfish, framed as “a critical romp through the terribly libertarian culture of high tech.” The text was about tech’s impact on people and planet earth, not about computers and markets, but it was entombed by a world focused on potential and profit, not reality and risk. Today, the volume on critique has been amplified. Not because we don’t want tech, but because we want it to do good, not harm. 

“Were I to write what I know," Ina Coolbirth once wrote, "the book would be too sensational to print; but were I to write what I think proper, it would be too dull to read.” In the noughties, Cyberselfish was evidently too sensational, but it has been reincarnated due to rising demand. A new generation of readers are now scrutinising how tech got big and how it can become better. To mark the moment, Paulina and I met to explore the subliminal cultural forces of Silicon Valley, and why it still takes courage to deviate from writing what we think is proper. 

read interview with paulina borsook
 

Image: 'A Sunday Afternoon' editorial by Oliver Hadlee Pearch for Middle Plane Magazine

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lettre no. 50

 

Little Red Riding Hood is the AI lesson you never expected. In the classic Brothers Grimm version, the wolf devours grandmother then puts on her clothes, masquerading as the matriarch to bait Little Red-Cap before gobbling her up also. Strictly symbolically speaking, this is how some AI agents operate.

Large language models (LLMs) can't dress like grandmothers. But AI agents and the fairy tale wolf both strive to act as humans do, relying on people as fuel for their performance. The wolf consuming gran and donning her bonnet is more macabre than a machine learning model scraping data, but each act exposes humans to varying degrees of peril.

Advocates of AI agents believe their benefits merit the expansive extraction of data; critics feel the privacy risks are far too high. Wherever you are on your journey, there may be value to treating AI agents like the wolf dressed in grandmother's clothing.

 
 
 

lettre no. 49

 

Images by © Mark Borthwick via Self Service Magazine

 
 
PRESS HERE TO MAKE POETRY
 

“Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.”

— Paul Valéry | PIÈCES SUR L’ART “Le Conquete de l’ubiquité,” Paris

 

lettre no. 48

 

L is for lycra and lemon and loop

 
 

We don’t carry clouds in our heads. Imaginations are not made of silicon either. We can't map creativity, and even with a cartographic visual, we could not say “I am here” assuredly. No one is an X marking a spot or a dataset awaiting vectorisation. And artificial intelligence systems—electric brains, as Italo Calvino once described them¹—are not conscious nor made of flesh and blood. Amid amplifications of these differences, deepening entanglements between mortals and machines demand our attention, and deserve our curiosity. 

“I would therefore say that it is still an entirely lyrical instrument, serving a typical human need: the production of disorder,” Calvino once wrote of mechanical entities producing creative outputs. “The true literature machine will be one … that will produce avant-garde work to free its circuits when they are choked by too long a production of classicism.” No one aligns on the needs AI serves today; we likely never will. But Italian artist Francesco D’Isa has expanded his practice with emerging technologies, untangling the beastliness of ideologies that taint tools one experiment at a time. 

 
read 'Human inside the loop'
 

lettre no. 47

 
 

I live in solitude. I have need of solitude to do the next day's work. I can't be to parties where the noise tires me. I can't speak on the telephone. I must have complete calm.

— Yves Saint Laurent

 

Video source: Yves Saint Laurent interview for the French television program Dim Dam Dom (ORTF), 1968, via FORM.

 

lettre no. 46

 
 

Was Clippy the omen in our interface?

 

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.” These words by Simone Weil could almost describe narratives told on artificial intelligence (AI). After her note on evil, the French philosopher adds: “Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” 

Comparisons between manufactured and authentic evils and goodnesses help us to cut through the AI hype. We’ve been philosophising on technical invention for centuries, of course, but the current rhetoric of technology has turned the volume up. Voices increasingly sought out are now those who shake the status quo, indicative of a deep search for multidimensional perspectives. 

In support of such quests, author David Gerard and I recently discussed the psychosocial impacts of AI on those who don’t always get to hold the microphone. To unravel the current situation at grassroots level and to interrogate the omen of animated paper clips. 

 
HOW CLIPPY TRIED TO WARN US

lettre no. 45

 
 

Image courtesy Beeld & Geluid

 
 

Words by Cornelia Sollfrank. Translated by Valentine A. Pakis. From The Beautiful Warriors via transversal texts.

 
 
 

A code of conduct can thus be seen as a sort of invitation for diversity. The area of free software is closely attuned to the power and influence of language; codes and programs, after all, are nothing but behavioral instructions, and the step of reflecting and drafting a code for one’s own behavior can of course be taken in many other areas of life as well. Especially in the case of temporary events and short-term projects, there is much need for self-reflection and for the establishment of consistent codes of conduct in order to foster safe and inviting conditions. The potential of these types of guidelines is thus far from exhausted.

 
 
 

lettre no. 44

Seismologists don’t blame earthquakes on spirits, but some myths do attribute temblors to the movements of underground creatures. This historical anchor is arbitrary but also necessary. With tech continuing to touch the human experience with largely ungoverned abandon, we’re seeing a burgeoning of backlash from an array of collectives who all share subterraneity in common.

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lettre no. 41

 
 

If a person experiences boredom while walking and has no tolerance for this state, he will move restlessly in fits and starts or go this way and that.

However, someone with greater tolerance for boredom will recognize, after a while, that walking as such is what bores him. Consequently, he will be impelled to find a kind of movement that is entirely different. Running, or racing, does not yield a new gait. It is just accelerated walking. Dancing or gliding, however, represent entirely new forms of motion. Only human beings can dance. It may be that boredom seized him while walking, so that after—and through—this “attack” he would make the step from walking to dancing. Compared with linear walking, straight ahead, the convoluted movement of dancing represents a luxury; it escapes the achievement-principle entirely.

 

Words by Byung-Chul Han, taken from The Burnout Society (2010). Image: American model Renée Gunter modeling Haute Couture clothing on a fashion runway circa 1970s. Source.

 

lettre no. 40

 
 
 
 

“Laws were made by men, and men made mistakes.”

― Joan D. Vinge

 

Video source: The Big Byte 1994 Episode 9 Vintage Computer TV Show. Original air date on SBS TV Australia: Thursday, 19th May 1994

 

lettre no. 39

We don't work from lion dens. But digital worlds, like wild territories, electrify multiple senses synchronously. Adverse effects of constant stimulation are more prominent than ever, as whirlwind sensorial inputs continue to punctuate modern life.

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lettre no. 38

 

Artwork courtesy of fashgif

Our anti-destiny is the media universe. I don't see how to make this mental leap which would make it possible to reach the fractal or fatal zones where things would really be happening. Collectively, we are behind the radio-active screen of information. It is no more possible to go behind that curtain than it is to leap over your own shadow.

— Jean Baudrillard

 

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Text source: Lotringer, Sylvere, and Jean Baudrillard. “Forgetting Baudrillard.” Social Text, no. 15, 1986, pp. 140–44. via JSTOR

 

lettre no. 37

Interpersonal communication is imperilled by AI, but Elvis can help. His song 'Return to Sender' recounts the tale of him apologising to a woman, after a quarrel, via post. The letter keeps coming back, but our focus is that the words were his own. Sincerely Elvis, not AI.

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lettre no. 36

 
 

They say 21 million hula hoops were sold in 2023. That's a lot of hula-ing of hoops, by any standard. But you don't have to have hula hooped recently, or ever, to gain from today's tech lesson. You just have to trust me when I tell you: hula hoops help us think about AI.

Defined as a large hoop spun round the body by gyrating the hips—for play or exercise—the hula hoop requires you to combine concentration and coordination in equal measure. One does not simply hula hoop on a whim, it's an activity done with care and intention. That’s why we should think about the hula hoop—and hooping the hula—when we employ AI.

 
How hula hoops help us think about AI
 

lettre no. 35

“Popular art is characterised by vital expression, which is direct and collective,” Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys once wrote. Proliferated tech is (currently) typified by obscure objectives, infused into personal and professional domains by the digital oligarchy. But this is not the end; we’ve only just begun. Everyone will live in his own personal "cathedral," French philosopher Ivan Chtcheglov proposed. “There will be rooms more conducive to dreams than any drug, and houses where one cannot help but love.” Let’s look towards that horizon.

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