WHAT IS YOUR THESIS QUESTION? 

  • How does an animistic consciousness counter anthropocentrism and expand our perception of the multispecies world? And how can such a consciousness be activated?
  • How can animism and indigenous relationality steer the development of future AI?
  • What mapping practices can present the multi-world networks that humans inhabit?

What is the significance of the question?

 It decenters the human to allow forefronting of relationality. It shifts the human out of the confines of geopolitics and physical/human reality into a fluid, other-than-human perception.

Why does it matter and to whom? 

Animist traditions offer inspiration and solutions that support a complex, respect-based multispecies community. My project aims to inspire participants to question existing anthropocentric structures and uncover relationships between animism, borders, migration, public/private spaces, and butoh. 

Is it something that you are genuinely interested in and curious about?

Yes. The themes of animism, borders, migration, public/private spaces, and butoh are already present in my past projects (ITP and others.) Exploration of eco-infrastructure is part of my daily “fieldwork.” It consists of observations often accompanied by visual documentation. 

Is it narrow enough that it can be answered/addressed given the available time and resources?  

Not yet as experimentation and making/testing are needed to narrow the project. The form may present a challenge as I am a novice when it comes to coding. I plan to discuss form-related questions this week and define an acceptable MVP that conveys the concept. 

WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO MAKE?

I want to create a playful experience that alters ideas about borders (human vs. nonhuman, seen vs. unseen), provokes animistic sensibilities, and promotes indigenous relationality as a framework for approaching technology. I am considering two projects or a combinations (1&3 or 2&3).

  1. CYBORGIAN ROCK v2

CR v1 was a rule-based Rive script chatbot, and CRv2 would be a generative AI chatbot. It would train on texts describing indigenous, animist perspectives, and geological descriptions. The goal would be to test if/how the AI could represent a rock entity and its “magical characteristics” by engaging users in longer conversations. The MVP version would represent the CR via a live stream of a rock entity with the chat alongside. Its optimum version requires securing a physical rock in a public non-art context. 

How does what you plan to make address your Thesis Question?

The Rock can be a source of magic in a consumerist wasteland. Rocks are occupied by Shinto kami (spirits). Lakota ontologies recognize and prioritize the nonhuman interiorities of rocks. Klamath shaman sees rock formations as transformed beings. Indigenous ontologies present the more-than-human world as “alive.” This contrasts with how consumerism makes nonhuman entities come alive (e.g. imbuing devices with personality such as Alexa or through commodity fetishism). The CR juxtaposes these qualities with the common ways in which users experience technology.  

  1. MAGIC MAPPING & HOLES FOR SALE

Stirred by wonderings through cities (dérives) and eco-infrastructure fieldwork for my Hole Society project, I propose the idea for the Magic Mapping installation. This is an exploration of topographies and portals that employs the layering of images, sounds, and videos. The concept of “holes” is at its center. Holes are ontological parasites (an absence of soil is what defines them). This project would include the sale of holes identified on the maps, using non-fungible tokens (another ontological parasite) for payment. This project is an iteration of Hole Society. 

How does what you plan to make address your Thesis Question?

The Magic Mapping presents layers of multispecies environments. Butoh dancing creatures move across space. Land formations uncover magical connections through holes into layers from an unknown time. Yet danger looms as google map components (removed from original settings) are lost in the magic spaces, and consumerism has its eye on the holes.  

  1. MULTI-WORLD TELEPHONE: this idea would supplement either 1 or 2 (thanks for this title Christina:)

Two live stream listening stations are installed on opposing pieces of land divided by water. Listening stations allow the listener to select from the land sounds or the hydrophone underwater. I would connect their output to speakers at each of the two stations and build an interface that allows participants to select/switch sources. 

The listening devices could be incorporated into 1 or 2, as the Cyborgian Rock can hear land and water everywhere. In terms of holes, they can be listened to from inside and outside (which I tested in Civic Ecologies with good results.)

 

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO YOU? 

These ideas are close to my heart and reflect the way I relate to the world. I learned to see differently from indigenous ontologies, Griot storyteller in Guinea, ethnobotanist elders in French Polynesia, Navajo and Shinnecock friends, and from my grandmother who knew the forest like the back of her hand. As an immigrant and educator working with refugees, I am deeply aware of borders as artificial and oppressive, and see animism as an opposing/ rebellious force that aligns with fluidity. 

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS WITH THIS PROJECT?

The optimum context is for the Cyborgian Rock to be next to a bodega or on a street’s median/ island. It is “kiosk-like,” making it appear akin to an ATM or a soda machine. Thus it would invite people to approach it as a “service,” but the conversations’ substance would subvert these expectations. Users would be confronted by a somewhat alien personality with no regard for human comings and goings. Ideally, speaking with the CR would instill a stronger awareness of back-end operations hidden from the user. 

 The Magic Mapping counters fixed borders and allows exploration by deconstructing and overlaying nonlinear narratives and connections.  It exposes infrastructures and spirit realms presenting fluid, ever-becoming intermingling of worlds that must work together to survive.

With the Multi-World Telephone, switching/listening elicits the collapse of space, being here but not, crossing water bodies, interconnectedness, going into the unknown. 

INFLUENCES OR INSPIRATION 

research 

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

Based on his ethnographic experiences, David Abrams provides insights from various disciplines while pointing out misunderstandings. Abram addresses “animist” relationality that is central to my topic. 

Making Kin with the Machines

These inspiring indigenous perspectives include voices from Hawaii, Lakota Nation, and a Plains Cree member. They discuss AI as a new nonhuman entity treated respectfully, not a slave of creators. 

Reclaiming Animism 

Isabelle Stengers rejects any authority that would allow Stengers to define animism. This approach echoes Donna Haraway’s situated knowledge and positional perspectives. Stengers warns that, by defining animism, one submits to the entangled colonialist associations and/or power structures.  She quotes Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, ‘anthropology demands a process of the “permanent decolonization of thought.” This resonates with my own questioning of narratives that shape our relationship to the environment, and how I participate in these “assemblages.”

We Have Always Been Animists | Center for the Study of World Religions

Graham Harvey lectures and writes about animism as restoring relations with other species and halting environmental catastrophes. He links works of philosophers, indigenous authors, and ecologists. 

Allison Parrish who said “the only thing computers can write is poetry.” Allison does amazing work with text, AI, creative programming. I can learn a great deal by looking at how she builds text adventures.

Shannow Mattern‘s writing addressing “how the forms and materialities of media are related to the spaces (architectural, urban, and conceptual) they create and inhabit. Her writing investigates hidden infrastructures and inspires my mapping ideas.

art projects

Atsushi Takenouchi

Atsushi is a butoh master and I studied with him. At the core of butoh is the embodiment of spirits and entities of different species. One can be a stone in a landscape, a dying flower, or a shrimp in a vast ocean. Time and space are shifted in butoh. Besides it being an inspiration, I thought of incorporating butoh and using PoseNet to capture movements.

RRH Trio Interview: No Borders For the Soul

In the moving paintings of Rokni Haerizadeh, news footage is painted frame by frame, and migrants are turned into forces of nature, human-animal hybrids. The Western portrayal of caravans of the miserable is subverted and reframed as mythological. To me, migrants are cyborgian creatures, in a state of being somewhere without being physically present. 

Bahareh Khoshooee 

A a wonderful mix of Trecartin and Tony Oursler, Bahareh addresses surveillance capitalism with humor and presents friendly alternatives. 

Nobuo Sekine/ Phase—Mother Earth 1968

Sekine was part of the Mom-Ha group. I made a smaller-sized piece like this one last semester (showing the hole next to its insides) and a coinciding logo for the Hole Society. I did not know of this work and found it by accident after Andrew gave me a link to Lee Ulfan, who was also part of Mono-Ha. I love this as it symbolizes both extraction/violence towards the earth as well as continuum and unity. Anything that is removed still remains.

Meoto Iwa

This is a powerful place near the Okitama Shrine, with Mt Fuji nearby. It symbolizes the union of Shinto kami (deities/spirits). The location itself is magical but the human intervention in the form of the rope is what expresses reverence and underlines the rocks as powerful entities. 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Mediation on reincarnation and co-existence of many beings, some live, others who passed on.

julijonasurbonas.lt/a-planet-of-people

Sci-fi, humor-laden, performative, and critical design ease one into difficult discussions. I hope to achieve such balance.

Digital Fossil transforms a ritual known in pagan cultures into a contemporary setting where visitor can sacrifice personal data from their smartphones and other bluetooth-capable devices onto the rune-marked sacrificial rock. Carries brought this project to my attention which is…. very close to CRv2 . There is also a version in nature.

 

Links to any projects you have already done yourself that you intend to leverage and/or build upon:

 

 

HOW DO YOU ENVISION REALIZING THIS PROJECT? (max 150 words)

What are the key steps necessary to make this project a reality?

    • Fill the holes in this proposal by getting more specific/ settling on one idea.
      • Do I advance the CR experience or work with Mapping/Holes?
    • CR v2: assess skills and steps needed to create generative AI chatbot / what tests can be done? what storytelling chatbot experiments exist and how were they constructed?
      • Explore resources from Craig, and Ellen & Carrie (tools they used to make a bot)
      • If moving forward with CR, get in touch with Allison Parrish to discuss how the CR chatbot computational narrative can be structured
    • If the project includes  aspects of the multi-world telephone, how will I transmit the live stream from the hydrophone and land mics?

Are there key benchmarks you will need to meet?

What techniques, tools, materials are you planning to use and why?

    • if the project is Magic Mapping/ Holes, it will result in an installation/website version and a live performance that includes a tour of Holes

Is there a community, space, or audience you will need to access?

What further research and/or skill-building will you need to do?

    • coding — this should be part of my 50 days
    • prevent scope sprawl that generates too many new ideas/ options