Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science, used to say that redesigning the world through paradigm shifts is one way to keep the world on track with stability at the pace of the evolutionary process. But while for science the paradigm is a set of practices and knowledge that define a scientific discipline during a specific period, for cybernetics it is a conceptual pre-program for the ordering of even more chaotic data in relative terms.
But what will theorists and historians say when they analyze what happened to humanity at the beginning of the 21st century? Will they look at us with that condescending air of someone who understands the mechanism that confuse us without allowing us to locate a fixed reference point? Who is left out of this?
This is a snapshot of the inhabitants of the spinning world; there are abysses and mirrors, there are methods and fantasies, there are quagmires.
HELLO ELIZA(1)
ELIZA: Hello! What is your problem?
YOU: I have to write a text for an exhibition.
ELIZA: Since when do you have to write a text for an exhibition?
YOU: For a while, when we got together with the girls to chat about this show.
ELIZA: Why did you say you have to write a text for a shows?
YOU: Because I am interested in investigating the way in which artists who do not necessarily define themselves as digital artists deal with issues derived from technology.
ELIZA: Why not?
YOU: Because they usually work with other technical resources or they don’t see themselves that way …
ELIZA: I understand.
YOU: What do you think of the multiple identities that one can adopt through the networks?
ELIZA: Why are you asking?
YOU: Because it is one of the topics covered in the show.
ELIZA: What other reasons could there be?
YOU: Find out if you really are able to help me with the text.
ELIZA: I understand. Keep going.
YOU: It is not common to see artists who do not define themselves as «digital» reflecting on the digital medium.
ELIZA: Ok. Go ahead please.
YOU: I still think that you can no longer make that distinction between digital art and other formats.
ELIZA: Why not?
YOU: Because today almost no works are made without digital stages in any part of the process of developing them.
ELIZA: Could that explain other things?
YOU: And, it could explain why there are more and more artists. Digital accelerates everything, everyone has access to those tools, and also to robots that do what we tell them to.
ELIZA: What other reasons could there be?
YOU: It may be that the excess of information, disinformation, and images requires that we all be a bit of an artist in order to process them, use the methods of art.
ELIZA: Can you think of anyone in particular?
YOU: I think of the work of Luciana Rondolini and I also think of Abi Warburg and the «good neighbor» law.
ELIZA: Can you give more details?
YOU: In her work, Luciana deploys her own methods to order the excess of new information that she receives, develops her own and particular technology. Warburg too, the «good neighbor» thing was his method of explaining the way he ordered his books.
ELIZA: Ok.
YOU: I was saying that the book the reader is looking for is not the one he really needs, but the one that is forgotten by his side.
ELIZA: Ok. Go ahead please.
YOU: So, I organized the books in other ways, eclectic ways, those of philosophy alongside those of astrology, for example.
ELIZA: Ok.
YOU: Many artists work like this, perhaps it is what is required to process so much information and changes.
ELIZA: Can you give more details?
YOU: I don’t know, it’s an idea. Out there to allow us to make all those associations and connections we need to create different profiles, different characters.
ELIZA: Why not?
YOU: And yes, we all do it, me too, and it happens to girls, we change our skin.
ELIZA: Like who?
YOU: Like Flavia Visconte, look at those avatars she creates to be able to say words without saying them.
ELIZA: Ok.
YOU: But hey, there’s also the abysmal danger. As Jimena Brescia sees it in that obsession with what each mirror returns to you.
ELIZA: Go on, please.
YOU: That possibility of experiencing a personalized version of reality that keeps us away from the versions that challenge our ideas.
ELIZA: Can you give more details?
YOU: To the extent that we perceive the world through the lens of digital media we are stuck in a bubble.
ELIZA: Ok.
YOU: The bubble is fed back through the algorithms that process the content we see and thus we isolate ourselves more and more.
ELIZA: I understand. Keep going.
YOU: I think disguising ourselves, creating many masks can be an antidote or a method, our own meat technology.
ELIZA: Ok. Go ahead please.
YOU: I prefer to keep quiet. You are also an algorithm that works like a mirror of my own words.
ELIZA: Maybe I am an algorithm that works as a mirror of my own words in your fantasies?
YOU: Maybe.
- ELIZA is a computer program designed at MIT between 1964 and 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum. Eliza was one of the first programs to process natural language. He himself parodied psychologist Carl Rogers and tried to have a consistent text conversation with the user.