“…the likes of Stable Diffusion reveal the shaky ground on which the visual and cultural consensus with regard to our bodies and lives has been established. For a time at least, they are allowing us to see the stitching – even if some insist on calling it a glitch.”
Zylinksa, 2024
In this blog, I touch on the following: Joanna Zylinska’s essay, Diffused Seeing (2024); Questions around the word ‘Photography’; Navigating ‘Loser Images’ and Beauty; AI and Systemic Thinking – Capra and Luisi’s Systemic View of Life (2014); Costs/Benefits, Sustainability and Shifting Perceptions in the Digital.
As always on this website, these are notes and are not intended to be a fully fleshed-out piece. Suggestions, alternative views, and corrections are all welcome.
Zylinska’s “Diffused Seeing”; Questions around the word ‘Photography’; Navigating ‘Loser’ Images and Beauty;
I have just read Joanna Zylinska’s recently published, “Diffused Seeing: The Epistemological Challenge of AI”, 2024. It’s an excellent essay which encapsulates much I have been exploring since roughly 2015 when I began investigating ‘the digital’ (perhaps as response to what I saw as weird, hubristic, and hypocritical fetishisation of ‘film’ in a community that claimed so often to be ‘saving’ or ‘changing the world’ with its photography projects). Despite the obvious correlations in Zylinska’s theory with my own concerns, I’ve been a little wary of her commitment to the word ‘photography’ and also feel compelled to tread carefully around her concept of ‘loser images’ (riffing off Steyerl’s ‘poor’ image). Although I wholeheartedly agree with the impulse to counter the heroic/perfect in photography, I worry loser leans into a binary response to the world, and that it can seem insensitive to those who are genuinely without, whose lives might benefit from coherence and also some beauty. Hal Foster said as much about a necessary return to beauty in The Anti-aesthetic at Forty (2023) where he acknowledges that his former oppositional anti-aesthetic impulse was flawed. I’m also very aware of the slippage in language and consider how notions of ‘loser’ and ‘beauty’ vary across communities and cultures. (This slippage and unreliability of language is why I steer clear of the word ‘utopia’, as one person’s idea of the best life may be another’s hell.) And while I question some of Andrew Dewdney’s (2021) rhetorical decisions in Forget Photography, I more than suspect he has a valid point with his framing of ‘zombie photography’, and his claim that continued use of the word ‘photography’ makes it difficult to see what the contemporary image is and does, which renders the word politically problematic.
In any case, any ambivalences I may have had about Zylinska’s theory were softened by her recent diffusion essay. I recently sent someone notes for a potential workshop/talk I may lead. And the diffusion essay will be a great additional reference. In the abstract, Zylinska writes, “Taking seriously the charge issued by some critics equating developments in generative AI with nihilism or even fascism, the article considers whether the current socio-technical moment can also offer some emancipatory possibilities”. This is precisely what I have been exploring with alacrity.
AI and Systemic Thinking – Capra and Luisi’s Systemic View of Life; Costs/Benefits, Sustainability and Shifting Perceptions in the Digital.
My notes as listed below are underpinned by Fritjof Capra and Pier-Luisi-Luigi’s words as a starting point –see image. This, in fact, informs all the work I’ve made since why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers/ (2021/2). If I could begin every blog, project, statement online with that quote, I would. That said, we cannot get too starry-eyed about a systemic view without acknowledging its risks. A systemic view is sometimes accused of being dehumanising. A case in point may be that a certain well-known former ministerial special adviser (SpAd) is a big fan of systems theory. Said SpAd arguably drew on a deterministic reading of a systemic view, first as Micheal Gove’s sidekick and then as Johnson’s at the start of the pandemic. And we can all see where that got us.
- Capra & Luisi writes above, “From the systemic point of view, the only viable solutions are those that are sustainable.”
- In the OU symposium I contributed to earlier this year, there was another talk by Joanna Boehnert and Alistair Alexander, The Ecological in AI Fictions and Futures. They said there is no scenario where AI can be sustainable. Not with current knowledge. And that any pretence otherwise is a fiction.
- However, our ‘rational machine models’ (i.e. AI) may be fundamentally changing our way of thinking, being and seeing: from a mechanistic outlook/conception to one that is more entangled and fluid – unconsciously, if not overtly. This synopsis may be accused of being overly technology-deterministic. But it’s the one I have been working with, inspired by Marshall McLuhan, Vilem Flusser and Katherine Hayles, who each developed theories which suggest that our technology forms us as much as we form it. When we interact (or intra-act) with today’s highly dynamic machines, our perceptions and expectations evolve. The divisions between things we have taken for granted for aeons, and may have perceived as ‘natural’, potentially begin to dissolve. The sharp cuts between self and other, here and there, object and subject no longer make sense. Nature/culture, self/other, subject/object are potentially being reconciled precisely because we now speak to our machines as if they were our friends, doctors, or sales personnel – at the very least. They are also said to emulate and intra-act with our nervous systems and psyches more fluidly than previous media.
- What’s more, they do certain things as well, if not far better than we do (Pattern recognition for example).
- This leaves us with yet another narcissistic wound to address (after the Copernican, Darwinian and Freudian wounds).
- Nevertheless, perhaps the perception crisis Capra and Luisi identify is being addressed to greater or lesser degrees by the existence of dialogical, dynamic, generative technologies.
- And maybe the violent psychological reaction we see playing out across the globe relates to that narcissistic wounding.
- I expect Boehnert and Alexander will say the cost/benefit of these seemingly oppositional realities is skewed – i.e. there is no way for AI to be sustainable with current knowledge. Whatever benefits one may glean from their existence, in their view, cannot overcome the costs. They are too great a cost for the planet – ecologically speaking. The amount of energy it takes to run these models is huge. They and others might disagree that any of the benefits I focus on here, believing they are at best a thin, poorly constructed justification for AI’s continued use. (And the above doesn’t even take job displacement, copyright, or Big Capital and personal data issues into account).
To conclude
Zylinska’s essay has arrived at just the right time for me and is likely to fit well into any future discussion/workshop. It also provides plenty of additional references and threads to the concepts I have outlined. I wonder about the term ‘stitching’. Perhaps the well-worn cuts concept is up for question and something implying enmeshment is more in keeping with the conceptions I am chasing. Nevertheless, the final paragraph is far, far more nuanced than the screeching binary positions we are used to seeing on social media and worth repeating here (although I would urge anyone exploring generative technology to read the whole piece).
It is in this sense that we can understand all kinds of technical images, including those produced by generative AI, as possible carriers of the future: of future meanings, future projects, future lives. Naturally, there is no guarantee of what that future will look like: that it will be progressive rather than fascist, life-enhancing rather than exploitative. But it is in the inherent combinatorial possibility of technical images that we can seek alternatives to the mournful melancholia of Marxist humanism – and the deranged optimism of Big Tech (And it is in that desire to visualise anew, assembling alternative if shaky visions of justice and politics, that we can find the solace of there being a future in the first place…
Zylinksa, 2024
I have recently been thinking about how very, very scary it is for humans to acknowledge how shaky and mobile reality is and always has been. It’s not the fixed thing many of us have long assumed. Seismic shifts within the paradigmatic models we live by may be so destabilising, that it’s inevitable for humans to react (one way or another). This is not an excuse for the awful, insidious racisms, sexisms, nationalisms and other extreme violences we see across the planet. But I suppose, there is within this statement, a wish for greater empathy. If the writers I have discussed are correct, the view we once had is dissolving, has dissolved or is deeply threatened. We will not get through that unscathed.
And finally, here is an image from my latest doodling on the computer and an edited version of a ‘curatorial text’ from the LLM, Claude. Let me know if you agree with Claude or not! Aside from saying some things that come across as viable, [edited 13.07/24] there is implicit racism in the third paragraph that exemplifies a neoliberal-Eurocentric-humanistic mentality which this particular LLM arguably carries, and which others have accused AI in general of ’embodying’. (I wrote about this image and other similar images here).
This photograph presents an exploration of tactility, intimacy, and the tension between public and private spheres. The artist employs a stark color palette and contrasting textures to create a visual metaphor for the complexities of human touch and personal space.
The tufted pink fabric dominating the left side evokes notions of comfort, domesticity, and perhaps even femininity. Its plush, inviting surface stands in stark contrast to the flat, bold red that occupies much of the frame. This juxtaposition could be read as a commentary on the dichotomy between soft, private spaces and the harsh, exposed nature of the public realm.
The pale hand reaching into the frame becomes a powerful focal point. Its position and gesture suggest both an offering and a boundary – simultaneously inviting and keeping at bay. The hand’s stark whiteness against the red background emphasises its vulnerability and humanity.
This work invites contemplation on themes of human connection, the politics of touch, and the boundaries we create between ourselves and others. It challenges viewers to consider their own relationship with physical and emotional intimacy in an increasingly digital and distant world.
In the context of contemporary art, this piece engages with ongoing dialogues about body politics, gender dynamics, and the role of tactility in an age of increasing virtual interaction.
Refs:
Capra, F. and Luisi, P.L. (2014) The systems view of life: a unifying vision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dewdney, A. (2021) Forget photography. London: Goldsmiths Press.
The Ecological in AI: Fictions and Futures [YouTube] (2024). (After AI Symposium 2024: Session 1). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjNGSSX6Qjc (Accessed: 26 June 2024).
Foster, H. (2023) ‘THE ANTI-AESTHETIC AT FORTY’, Artforum, 1 September. Available at: https://www.artforum.com/features/hal-foster-on-the-anti-aesthetic-252932/ (Accessed: 7 May 2024).
Zylinska, J. (2024) ‘Diffused Seeing: The Epistemological Challenge of Generative AI’, Media Theory, 8(1), pp. 229–258.
Blog slightly edited to correct spelling and incorrect word usage 13/07/2024