I also experimented with first solidifying the mouth object and then applying the wireframe modifier to create a more dense lattice structure. This gives a similar effect to before but there is more of a confrontation with a mass of skin rather than purely one layer of this. This perhaps more effectively communicates the notion of biological skin cells to evoke the layers in which the skin is made up.
Continuing on the experiments in expanding the formation of the synthetic human I wanted to explore shapes that can be malleable once printed. This led me to experiment with lattice structures, which in their basic form can be used as exoskeletons and in the creation of moveable garments. Initially I wanted to try this in considering the creation of synthetic lungs in a future experiment whereby they can expand and contract as if breathing. A lattice structure when given the texture of skin also has the quality of bio systems and somewhat mimics the biological construction of skin cells. Exposing this gives a very creepy quality and further works to show the synthetic nature of what I am trying to create. Also when used for the mouth section allows you to see the synthetic teeth in their entirety, giving the effect of a window in to the inner workings of the human.
Ultimately this could be extremely effective if printed with Filaflex 3D printing filament that has the properties of rubber and can be deformed, twisted and manipulated and return back to form.
As an expansion outwards from focusing on the mouth I have explored rendering other elements that form the human voice, initially I have kept this to the shoulders as taken from a Photoscan experiment to see how this may come together. This gives an interesting effect to form a more complete synthetic transformation of the human and ground the mouth in a wider context. The shoulders here from Photoscan while derived from the human actually appear to give the effect of a neck brace supporting the head, I find this further connection to prosthetics interesting. I also tried this with taking the shoulder section of the Photoscan head from Project 1, as this was produced in more controlled conditions to see if the overall effect is altered. I want to take this further to include more fully synthetic elements like the teeth, such as the creation of a windpipe from scratch in Blender. Then, as shown here with the teeth, these fully synthetic elements can be exposed as such in the material used to texture and later to create them physically. Playing on the vivid colours of plastic to communicate its man-made qualities I have textured the teeth in bright orange and applied a glossy surface to show it is a prosthetic addition.
Meeting with Graham Cooper 22/06/2016
“Plasticity contrasts, and is designed to replace, both infinite malleability and immutable substantiality. It is, at bottom, neither stability nor instability, but metastability. Remarking on current brain research, Catherine Malabou writes that ‘the word plasticity has two basic senses: it means at one the capacity to receive form (clay is called “plastic,” for example) and the capacity to give form (as in the plastic arts or in plastic surgery). Talking about the plasticity of the brain thus amounts to thinking of the brain as something modifiable, “formable,” and formative at the same time.’” (Sparrow, 2015, 191).
It is best to begin reflecting on Tom Sparrow’s writings on the notion of plasticity in Plastic Bodies: Rebuilding Sensation After Phenomenology (2015) by looking at the foreword After the Flesh by Catherine Malabou. Here Malabou first sets up the initial conceived distinction between the “Körper, the objective, anatomico-physicological body, and Leib, one’s own body… the living body, the place of sensations and emotions, the “flesh.”’ (Malabou, 2015, 13). Or to state this differently; between the structure of the body in the pure mechanics term of the building blocks or skeleton and the lived body, or the body that is modified through experiences and sensations, the flesh here is the object of direct experience. The flesh thus has the power to establish or give organised existence to something; the flesh gives existence to the body, the lived body. This notion of embodiment draws similarities with Steven Shaviro’s writings on consciousness and sentience in Discognition, Shaviro also drew upon the work of Malabou in her writings on the brain. Shaviro posits the mind if heuristic and embodied, operating within an intrinsic material context that can also be extended to expand into the environment to entangle with artificial prosthetics. The body is the outward presence of the subject’s mental life, for example touch and voice, the body acts as an extension into the world of the self, “the phenomenological body stands in the sphere of immanence… a sphere which, after the epoché, is reduced to the presence of the thing itself.” (Malabou, 2015, 13). The notion of plasticity is then brought in in further discussion around the lived body, we need to rethink and question the materiality of the body and the pre-conceived concept of the flesh as the future of the physical body. If we are to move beyond flash we meet plasticity as the future in a process of rematerialisation, links here can already be made to ideas around the synthetic body and the addition of synthetic components with a plastic materiality.
Tom Sparrow in the chapter On Aesthetic Plasticity is careful to not confuse plasticity with elasticity, as derived from Merleau-Ponty’s “reversible body” (Malabou, 2015, 16) that a plasticity denotes a malleability in the limits that separate a body from the world and from other bodies. Sparrow posits there have historically been two opposing points of view as to the body, 1. That the body has a rigid core that not open to be manipulated and transformed and 2. That there is no structural body; it is an anonymous field of desire and in constant flux. The plastic body is neither; it’s a somewhat in-between state of the rejection of the rigid but not the total anonymity of it either. He states however that Merleau-Ponty’s view of elasticity ‘does not deliver us a plastic body.’ (Sparrow, 2015, 190).
‘Elasticity can be understood by considering a rubber band. The rubber band is flexible and deformable, but in the absence of resistance or external force it tends toward a specific formal state. Accordingly, elasticity does not properly describe a structure open to permanent deformation.’ (Sparrow, 2015, 190).
Elasticity here is critiqued in that it doesn’t go far enough, whilst it has the properties to be deformed without an actant in order to do this it returns to a formal structure. A body under permanent deformation thus denotes a breakage in elasticity, resulting in death showing here that an elastic structure is not illustrative of the bodies’ historical formation. Plasticity in contrast does not seek to return to equilibrium, to a stable state. ‘If anything, their malleability is always seeking to return to the equilibrium point… Plasticity, on the other hand, pursues no such telos.’ (Sparrow, 2015, 191). If we are to revisit the initial quote, we see that plasticity is fundamentally the ability to receive form (to be modified and manipulated to alter its structural classifications) and to give form (to modify others and to alter their structural classifications). Plasticity therefore instils not just the role of the sculptor, or the one modifying its structure, but the role of formative developmental guide, or the one teaching the body experience. In this sense it would be interesting to experiment with plastic materials, in particular silicone that has the material properties that made it malleable even when cured, here using the physical material of plastic to communicate an idea of plasticity that is in fact not rooted in any physical realm. Here we can again draw parallels to Steven Shaviro’s Discognition and in particular the notion of a copy derived from an original only shares the same identity briefly before its own lived experience modifies it, copies have an intrinsic determinism of being an exact replica but this opens up space for improvisation, of potential to be transformed indefinitely. ‘Plasticity describes the simultaneous determinacy and indeterminacy of morphogenesis. In other words, it names the potential of the body to have its initial determination transformed indefinitely.’ (Sparrow, 2015, 192).
Much like Shaviro’s writings on sentience, the body has a capacity for learning and the formulation of intelligence through lived experience. The subject and object begin in a state of dependence and immaturity in need of growth, these states are fundamentally creative and productive as they pre-figure the formulation of intelligence in the modifying of the subject and object. This works to show a plasticity as an adaptability for growth, ‘the “power to modify actions on the basis of the results of prior experience, the power to develop dispositions.”’ (Sparrow, 2015, 203). However, Sparrows goes further to suggest that with age the body becomes unable to grow and its plasticity is paralyzed. It is at this stage that the demand for adaptation increases, we can link here to the notion of prostheses and artificial components that seek to prolong “life”, or seek to prolong plasticity in the sense of having the power to modify actions and break out of routine. ‘In other words, death is the extinction of growth, or the absolute slackening of plasticity.’ (Sparrow, 2015, 204). This merging on intimate terms with the machinic or synthetic I have spoken extensively about previously through Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto also links to Sparrow’s notion of metabolism. The metabolic process is the trading of a bodies matter with the matter of its surroundings, in a process of exchange to give rise to the living body whose matter is under constant modification. ‘“Metabolism thus is the constant becoming of the machine itself – and this becoming itself is a performance of the machine.’ (Sparrow, 2015, 209). We can also read here a feed forward approach of the modification or control of a process using its anticipated results and effects; this output/ input exchange puts the machine in a constant state of becoming. The inorganic can be taken in by the organic, metabolised not in the sense of physically consuming it, but in the sense of the organic responding to and being physically modified by the inorganic. Sparrow here, as read through Yukio Mishima, uses an example of a body builder’s body having its properties shaped by the steel weights it lifts. The organic body is now a machine insofar as the organic/ inorganic metabolism process demonstrates the machinic process.
On reading the ‘Introduction’, Chapter Two ‘Thinking Like a Computer’ and Chapter Three ‘Thinking Like an Avatar’ from Steven Shaviro’s Discognition you begin to question ideas on consciousness and, more widely, sentience. Both concepts were initially interesting to me in the scope of my project concerning the human and the synthetic, the differences between the pre-supposed consciousness of the human and the sentience of the non-human. But is consciousness the pinnacle we as humans consider it to be? Here Shaviro posits that a process ‘that operates through speculation and extrapolation, and that takes place… in the future tense… is a kind of thought experiment, a way of entertaining odd ideas, and of asking off-the-wall what if? questions.’ (Shaviro, 2016, 8). This process is similar to how I have approached my Masters Projects so far, as a way to extrapolate or to infer an unknown from something that is known where thought experiments act as explorations outwards to ask questions about consciousness and the synthetic other. Shaviro also goes on to state that sentience itself employs a process of speculation and extrapolation. The basic modes of sentience have an aspect of generating ‘fictions and fabulations’ (Shaviro, 2016, 10), or inventions outside of programmed thought that can be extended to all organisms and artificial entities. Here Shaviro sets up this theory of ‘discognition’ that works as a disruptive act to extend and exceed cognition, but also extend under so as to support and enfold it. As such fictions and fabulations can be seen as a process, a process of speculating the unknown and the consequences that follow.
‘There has recently been a… dramatic shift in perspectives from input/output to output/input… Output tends to come first. Organisms engage with their surroundings with spontaneous actions, rather than just waiting for and responding to sensory inputs.’ (Shaviro, 2016, 13-14).
This output/input approach is interesting to consider where there is an active engagement by an organism with their surroundings, to probe the environment with spontaneous actions and evaluate the sensory feedback. Later in Chapter Two ‘Thinking Like a Computer’ Shaviro relates this process to the machine in a different way, Shaviro posits that the machine is not aware of the world and it does not use things in order to sense it but senses the things themselves. Here because the machine is operating and remaining within itself, the system’s own experiences are introspective and as such feeds back on itself. ‘What does it mean for everything to be data? Can DMS escape its own self-reinforcing feedback loops, and encounter something Other, something outside itself?’ (Shaviro, 2016, 54). The machine is thus an autopoietic system, a system that produced itself and through interactions and transformations continually regenerates and realises the network of processes that produced them. This closure is however impossible and ‘meanings are always leaking and contextual, slipping away from the systems that generate them’ (Shaviro, 2016, 55), self-generated understanding are therefore misleading and incomplete. However Shaviro goes on to suggest, as derived from Whitehead, that the primary meaning of life is the novelty of appetition, or the notion of looking and seeking after something. The machine will thus push limits, changing and seeking novelty or the speculation of the unknown. Able to envision, experiment and explore to push out against the limits of its own codification. This concept is pushed further in Chapter Three ‘Thinking like an Avatar’ in the consideration of artificial intelligence, software minds are always expanding to explore the phase space (or network) they inhabit and this isn’t limited by an organic body that has a point and a plateau where maturity is reached and development either slows or stops all together. The inorganic embodiment that the software mind inhabits allows for evolution at the same rate for their full life span. Shaviro goes on to state that intelligence is embodied but not just located in the mind, ‘it also necessarily involves some degree of extension into the outer environment, in the form of… the “extended mind”.’ (Shaviro, 2016, 95). It is entangled with its artificial extensions and prosthetics, therefore I can potentially view the objects created through Project 1 and Project 2 as being a part of this extended mind, they may be copies from an original that are then modified by their own lived experience, but they are entangled with human intelligence extending outwards.
Perhaps even more fitting in relation to the ideas I have been considering so far, Shaviro discusses, in connection with Latour and Stengers, the scientific method of collaborating with non-human entities, to enter into an alliance with them (see also a union, an affinity, a state of being joined). These entities are not passive objects waiting to be dissected, they are active participants that need to be approached and incorporated holistically, equally systems function as wholes and their functioning cannot be viewed or understood solely in terms of their component parts. We can therefore suggest that science can never be purely human. This notion of collaborating with the non-human links with the notions of prosthesis and synthetic extension I explored through Project 2, perhaps there is scope to continue this line of enquiry to consider not just the physical but also the non-representation system in collaboration with the human. Including the notion of the system’s sentience interacting with human consciousness. If we consider sentience in the output/input approach previously discussed we can begin to see where we may be able to access these non-conscious forms, ‘fictions and fabulations can provide us with a sort of feed forward… of those mental processes that are not available for introspection’. (Shaviro, 2016, 16). Here Shaviro posits that non-conscious thinking is not available to us introspectively and we cannot examine this process, as it cannot be retained. Fictions and fabulations, or the process of reaching out to poke the environment, offer a feed forward approach to modify or control a process using anticipated results or affects. Thought and feeling are considered primordial affective phenomenon in the technical sense, ‘every entity becomes what it is by “appropriating” what is left behind by other entitles that precede it… an entity perpetuates itself by appropriating its own prior states of existence’. (Shaviro, 2016, 16). Here entities collect whatever they encounter to provide conditions for their own continued existence, this can be related to prosthesis and the additive notion of appropriating itself with the synthetic in order to continue its existence.
‘The code of a digient can easily be copied or cloned; similarly, in many science fiction works a brain state or mental state can be copied or transferred from one embodied entity to another, or even from an organic body to a dispersed computer network. But none of this obviates the necessity of generating the code or the brain state – by having the actual experiences – in the first place.’ (Shaviro, 2016, 78).
Shaviro is suggesting there is the requirement of an original in order to make a copy and to be able to transfer or disperse it to another or a network. This original requires the initial generating of a code or brain state, which then must learn and modify through lived experience, only then can a copy be made. This is at odds with Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, whereby she posits copies without originals due to the nature of the breakdown of the border between the organic and inorganic, here the original is an intrinsic part of making a copy. Morehshin Allahyari’s thinking as part of her project ‘Material Speculation’ also differs with the view of originals being an essential aspect, Allahyari suggests that it is an illusion that things seem to continue on once they’re multiplied, dispersed and made visible across the network. In the absence of an original, copies of texts and images swarm around and form the missing thing as an imaginary concept of itself. These digital representations form the lost object, or the illusion of a persistent copy that evokes the original in a scaleless, placeless version without material conditions. (Allahyari, 2016). The copy in Sharivo’s point of view can then go on to be modified, it only shares the same identity to its original for a brief moment before its own experiences modify it and transform its identity. The copy must have this learning process as in essence the sentience of software is based on empty thoughts and blind intuition. We have seen previously that the machine is not aware of the world, it has no foundational experiences to guide it and as such it is alone, blind and deaf to it. The machine’s consciousness has empty thoughts and blind intuitions and yet perceives actively by being unstable with no fixed boundary, it reaches outward in an affective encounter with its environment.
‘You can always copy the final that instantiates a digient, and thereby get a new entity that is absolutely identical to its original. You can also “suspend” a digient (turn it off for a while, so that no subjective time passes for it), or even obliterate some of its experiences altogether’. (Shaviro, 2016, 81).
Perhaps this timeline or set of experiments could be incorporated into the output of Project 3? The entities could have the potential for the organic/ synthetic entities to be copied, to modify through lived experience, to be suspended and, ultimately, to be obliterated.
Project 2 was the next stepping-stone on the way to Digital Media Practice 3 – Final Project, further developing on the foundations laid down in Project 1 and improving upon the experimental processes explored. The notion of the Synthetic Organic rather than Human < > Object has become the primary focus and this will continue into Project 3. For Project 3 I hope to culminate my research and experiments undertaken so far into a final output including a full realisation of my central idea, continuing to develop and refine both the physical and the digital choir in accordance with my reflections on Project 2. I hope to fully produce the physical choir in its entirety of twelve mouths each with a speaker attached pitch shifted to twelve different values, this will include an improved sonic output that should allow for the voice input to be looped on playback until another inputs over it. For the digital choir, I will further experiment with JavaScript in order for the mouths to react to different frequencies and also react directly with the physical output. I would ideally like to achieve a mirroring with a full twelve-piece digital choir, however this may not be realisable due to the technical limitations of loading twelve separate .obj files. The final output for Project 3 will be in the form of a final exhibition bringing together the work I have produced across all three projects, this will be held off campus and outside the traditional concepts of a gallery setting. Ideally the location will compliment the theoretical underpinning of my work and seek to question that which we know of the human, the machine, the organic and the synthetic. This could take the form of a house or disused shop, a place where the human feels comfortable and has pre-conceived notions of what to expect that can be subverted and turned on its head as a feature of the exhibition. One of the aspects I do want to experiment further with is the materiality of the combination of synthetic and organic in the physical and digital realm, in particular for the physical object to explore different plastic materials and how each affects the final object:
Silicone, any of a class of synthetic materials that are polymers with a chemical structure based on chains of alternate silicon and oxygen atoms, with organic groups attached to the silicon atoms. Such compounds are typically resistant to chemical attack and insensitive to temperature changes and are used to make rubber and plastics and in polishes and lubricants.
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) incorporates chlorine atoms. PVC is stiff, strong, heat and weather resistant, properties that recommend its use in devices for plumbing, gutters, house siding, enclosures for computers and other electronics gear. PVC can also be softened with chemical processing, and in this form it is now used for shrink-wrap, food packaging, and rain gear.
Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), also known as acrylic or acrylic glass, is a transparent thermoplastic often used in sheet form as a lightweight or shatter-resistant alternative to glass. The same material can be utilised as a casting resin, in inks and coatings, and has many other uses.
This will also force experimentation with different processes in order to create it, whilst 3D printing is effective in combining the digital in its production other processes such as vacuum forming, injection moulding and casting may produce an object that better communicates the collision between the organic and the synthetic. Alternatively the advanced technological aspect the 3D printer brings could be lost, the more effective solution may be a combination of several processes and taking inspiration from Xiao Li’s fashion collection Spring/Summer (2014) (Fig. 1) whereby she dipped the material objects in silicone to form an outer synthetic surface that either moulded to the knitted pattern underneath, or were debossed with such. Or Anouk Haegens’ Merging Worlds (2011) (Fig. 2) that explored when two worlds merge through the collision of the rugged with the refined, or construction (concrete, rubber) with soft furnishing (macramé, cotton). The stark boundary created in both of these projects is interesting to consider, especially when you make the realisation that the boundary doesn’t exist at all and instead the synthetic has adhered and combined with the natural to create a transformed surface. There is also a sculptural element here that was highlighted by the exhibition of Human < > Object at the LSFM Degree Show and not yet explored fully, the objects themselves evoke the classical marble sculptures on display in the V&A Sculpture Galleries and in particular the notion of the bust (Fig. 3), ‘Funerary monuments and portrait busts were the most common ways in which people were commemorated in sculpture… The likeness might be taken from life or a death mask, or from some other source, such as a painting.’ (V&A, 2016). I would like to take this element further, and while the physical objects of the mouths will be part of an interactive installation, I want them to also be able to exist on a sculptural level outside of this. This classical organicism often associated with sculpture when disassembled and reassembled through the digital links back to my central notions of blurring the boundary between the two.
‘Stringent paper yarns meet frivolous smooth viscose.
Cotton knots flow into concrete.
Rubber covering a soft surface.
Cast aluminium resembling knotted ropes.
A story of combining and merging materials, colour and patterns.’
(Anouk Haegens, 2011)
As a continuation of my theoretical research I will apply Steven Shaviro’s Discognition (2016) as a further perspective on the notions of consciousness, or really sentience, and asks us to think outside of pre-conceived notions of the mind from the view of science fiction narratives. ‘Most crucially, an entity perpetuates itself by appropriating its own prior states of existence. But an entity also appropriates other entities in its surroundings. It picks up whatever it encounters: whatever affects it, or provides conditions or resources for its own continued existence.’ (Shaviro, 2016, 17). Feeling, from Alfred North Whitehead’s theory of such, becomes the focus. Plants, animals, objects can be sentient without being conscious, they encounter the world but not necessarily in the way we have come to understand. This is interesting to consider in terms of human existence in combination with the machine and the re-working of this in the concept of the cyborg. If an object can pick up what it encounters, can the object feel, perceive or experience subjectively? This line of enquiry also throws up notions of artificial intelligence I have heretofore tried to avoid, as part of Project 3 it will be thought-provoking to consider these questions as part of the production stage.
Bibliography:
Haegens, A. (2011). Merging Worlds. [online] Anouk Haegens. Available from http://www.anoukhaegens.nl/MERGING-WORLDS [Accessed 9 May 2016].
Shaviro, S. (2016). Discognition. London: Repeater Books.
Victoria and Albert Museum. (2016). Room 24: Sculpture in Britain – Portraits & Memorial Sculpture. [online] V&A. Available from http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/galleries/level-1/room-24-sculpture-memorial/ [Accessed 9 May 2016].
List of Illustrations:
(Fig. 1) Xiao Li Spring/Summer (2014)
(Fig. 2) Anouk Haegens Merging Worlds (2011)
(Fig. 3) V&A Helen of Troy (ca. 1825-1830)
1 June 2016 marked the end of Project 2, the culmination of which was gathered together in a research portfolio. This featured my journey so far through my project ‘Synthetic Organic’, bringing together my experiments and the theories that have underpinned them. This will be continued in to Project 3: Final Project as part of the complete realisation of my research and experimentation produced so far in my Masters Degree.
The full research portfolio can be found here.
I did a prototype 3D print test of the 3D scanned mouths as part of my choir, these were done in three different experiments using white, gold and aluminium filaments. The main experiment consisted of printing four versions out of the twelve mouths using white filament and using a higher quality printer which created the structural supports in a different material white can be dissolved away. White was used as a way to show the synthetic quality and remove the textural traces of the human skin and to fully absorb it, through the process of printing, into the machine. This works well, but perhaps there is further to explore in terms of what colour or texture would effectively show the synthetic. I also printed out four sets of the teeth in the same material to test how they work when combined with the mouth, again these are very effective and provide the notion of prothesis as part of the cyborg theory.
To experiment with different materials in order to communicate the notion of the cyborg I printed out a version of the mouth in both gold and aluminium. The use of metallic filament gave a very interesting effect, with an essence of technicity not fully apparent with the white filament. Whilst these are interesting I feel it is a slightly obvious choice and takes the mouth away from the synthetic plastic that has created it.
Following on from the previous experiment in combining the JavaScript animation with audio to set up an interaction between the two, I decided to include the teeth in the .obj file as an extra element. This here brings in the purely synthetic addition to the human and ties in nicely with the physical choir.
