Stream of consciousness again, apologies if things aren't coherent:

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“In the future, it’ll be much harder to tell where the human stops and the machine begins”

 

Both Show-A-Thing and Mentor meetings were enormously helpful for me. By forcing myself to communicate my project concept to multiple different people from multiple different backgrounds, I was able to hone in on the parts of my project that felt solid and consistent. Currently, I’ve landed on the following concept:

 

I am trying to understand the philosophical theory behind “The Sublime” and focus on connecting those ideas to the state of modern technology. Specifically, exploring ideas of infinity through Machine Learning and Large Language Modeling.

 

The Sublime is traditionally defined as “the exalted”, a feeling of beauty that is grand and dangerous¹. There are many philosophers who attempted to define the sublime (Kant, Schiller, …) but there are two distinctions that define early Romantic perspectives on the feeling:

• The Mathematical Sublime – An understanding of the universe’s scale and our insignificance
• The Dynamic Sublime – Our understanding of the universe’s power, and our awe and fear

As technology has progressed, we have come to shift our source of the sublime from nature to technology. It is still possible to feel close to the sublime in specific parts of the world (Grand Canyon, Niagra Falls), but as our control over the environment increases we find our control over technological systems to weaken and weaken. This feeling will increase exponentially as time continues, as our built environment multiplies in complexity.

 

Here are some slides of the visual and conceptual thinking I shared during the sessions this week:

 

I know I want to try and tap into the sublime using machine learning and generative media, so I’m prototyping the following concept:

 

Voicemails from the Sublime: Machine Learning as a compass to navigate collective infinities

I want to explore Large Language Models (LLMs) as material for simulation, to bring attention to the size and scale of the technology’s possibilities as well as be a reflection of the scale of the human collective.

 

With this project, I’ll use LLMs (GPT-3/4), Text-To-Speech, and Physical Computing to explore simulated realities. These simulated realities aim to:

1. Explore early Romantic concepts of the mathematical and dynamic sublime
2. Talk to ideas on consciousness, intelligence, and embodiment through simulation
3. Question how AI and ML will redefine what it means to be human
4. Draw attention to the scale and complexity of modern technological infrastructure

 

Prototyping Summary:

Testing prompt generation of the following script:

 

Prompt:

const voicemailPrompt = 
`Generate a voicemail a grandmother would leave on her grandson's phone.
The grandson has a generic male name.
The grandmother hasn't heard from him in a long time and wants to see him for easter."
`

 

Example Generations:

 

 

 

Testing Text Generation –> Audio Generation

 

 

This is with the first generic voice, and you can easily change/train your own models to customize it. I’ve also written code to run this generation pipeline on my own, so I can easily type in a name/topic, and have the model generate a voicemail and accompanying audio recording:

 

 

Doesn’t feel too “S U B L I M E” yet but at least the pipeline is working to go from Text to Voice output.

Also I’ve been using GPT-4 to write everything and it’s been amazing for productivity. Will continue hacking this weekend and make another post. I want to do some prompt engineering to get more interesting output from the model, and see if I can generate a bunch of text/audio pairs.

 

References:

1. https://www.nextnature.net/story/2011/the-technological-sublime
2. Figma Slides: https://www.figma.com/file/ruwB0T8Nx6TagewOJGwl6A/Sublime-Technology—Talk-Overview?node-id=6%3A94&t=nvByZ5tLXhW39zn1-1
3. TTS API: elevenlabs.io
4. LLM: GPT-3.5 

 

It was fun! And really great practice introducing my project and thesis idea to people with different backgrounds and expertise.

I purposely (partly also due to lack of time) didn’t make a PowerPoint presentation for my show-a-thing. However, I did read through the sample slides many times to try to structure the presentation in my head. I chose not to do it because my brain tend to stop functioning if I know there are slides there for me to refer to, and I often end up just start monologuing on and on, following the slides without actively thinking. I thought it would work best if I tried to practice actively revising on the spot how to introduce my project to strangers.

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Heidi Brant

Heidi was my first audience early in the morning, and she was energetic and fun to talk to! Just when I was about to sharescreen (not to slideshow but the thesis proposal and other stuff), Heidi stopped me and asked me to practice telling her what my thesis is about completely verbally instead. This reminded me of our second (or third?) thesis class with Sarah, where we all had to talk about our thesis proposal in 1 min. I was pretty nervous, but I somehow made it!

The feedback from Heidi about the project was generally positive, and she totally supported the use of Miro board. She didn’t find it lame (my own word), despite the fact that she also uses the Miro Board on a daily basis. She still found the project interesting. Heidi did ask me to think about what I would want my audience to really take away from this project (if any). My answer to that is this is honestly just self-therapeutic work, and if participants even just grasp a little understanding from my perspective, I would find comfort in it. Heidi also talks about how my project seems like an investigation, a service into people’s subconscious (not unconscious).

An artist reference from Heidi is Douglas Huebler’s “The Secrets” artist book project.

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Pierre Depaz

Knowing Pierre’s background in Political Science, I introduced my project more from that lens and felt comfortable diving into the origin and intention of the project, as I knew I didn’t need to over-explained the complicated geopolitical origins of all things. Pierre was great to talk to, and we also spent some time talking about the swastika poll and the reinvention of the public; it turned out Pierre had also done similar projects before. We also talked about the play between public/private space, the digital “self,” and how people react differently when they think they are representing their countries vs just representing themselves.

Project references from Pierre: Citizens Convention for Climate (2019), America in One Room (2019), Please Vote For Me (2007)

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Cindy Jeffers

We had some technical difficulties since the meeting happened on Google Meet. The technical issues sort of got me into a chaotic space mentally and made me forget how to introduce my project a little bit. I was a little bit all over the place compared to the last two meetings. But overall, we still had a good time. Cindy was the first (and only, in terms of the people related to the Low Res program I’ve talked to about my project), that has not seen Miro Board before. When I showed her the prototype, it seemed the technology itself interested her a lot. She totally agrees this should be used as a broader polling tool before every meeting (which is common in many workplaces already, I assume). She agrees with my fascination that one is able to see voting live with the mouse cursor moving around but also stays anonymous. Cindy was the only person I picked who I didn’t find the background knowledge too related to my own project, so I wonder if the presumption made my explanation of the project difficult or if it really is difficult when presenting to someone who is outside your knowledge bubble. Anyway, it helps me think about how I will have to introduce this thesis project outside the Low Res community.

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Monika Lin

It was great meeting with Monika again since we last talked in Fall, and I felt like this conversation was really helpful. Since she knew a little bit of my background from last semester, I was able to talk more about the concerns and problems I’m having with the meaning of the thesis. Monika really enjoyed the Miro Board but also recommended the questions need to go deeper with extended sections. I showed her I was actually working on it, but it’s actually a difficult task to figure out the right balance to ask a question that has the right enough discomfort that I don’t turn off the conversation at all. As Monika put it, it’s like cooking the lobster. The second layer of the questions is an art I have to learn to master in order to make the poll works as well as I wish. I also asked about Monika’s personal experience as an artist working in China and whether she’d encountered censorship. The answer is ALWAYS. I won’t give out the details here, but it’s a constant struggle with a lot of internal conflicts for sure. Anyway, we had a lot of fun chatting.

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YG Zhang

My meeting with YG was the last one of the day. Since I know YG also speaks Mandarin,  I was at first wondering if I could try to introduce my thesis project in Mandarin, but I completely failed and switched back to English. My Mandarin is definitely way more fluent than my English, but somehow when it comes to introducing sensitive or personal artworks and projects, I couldn’t do it in my native tongue as I felt exposed, naked almost. Perhaps I was too nervous, and knowing YG didn’t know anything about me, I went in-depth talking about the swastika poll project. I felt like I actually did a really good job talking about the project this time around, no more misguiding, and it helped him understand more about what I’m trying to do in the thesis project. YG’s main questions were also on what’s the motivation behind it and what I wanted the general audience to get away from this experiment.

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During the Show-a-thing this week, I was able to practice presenting my project and I got a lot of good feedback on my presentation and project.

Heidi

• Clarity on who is my audience, and what is intended for that audience? Through my presentation, it was not clear if the camera is used only by me, or by the public
• More to show more clarity on what was discovered from my research. I added a slide about my research, but I was not clear about what was discovered through my research.
• From my project, Heidi’s key takeaway were the terms “nostalgia” and “scarcity”
• Adding a use case to my presentation would be useful to understand how the project would be used by my intended audience.

Enrique

• From my project, Enrique felt that my main message is “slowing down the process”
• I asked a question about whether I should be concerned if the accuracy of the photo between the viewfinder and the final photo is important. Enrique thought accuracy not that important because user knows that it’s not the purpose of the camera
• Related to a question about reducing bias in my ML model, he suggested that the more people who tag the photos and train the model, the less bias there is
• Enrique advised possibly considering making each photo uploaded as an NFT
• Is this project going to be an open source project?

Maria

• Maria’s main takeaway is that the project forces you to take your time with photos because they’re precious
• Asked if I imagined if the camera would be sold as a product or renting it, or possibly passing the camera around
• Asked if the limit of 36 shots will create a story
• Not 100% clear that I was building a camera from my presentation
• More interested in my process vs. the research I presented. It would be more interesting to add quotes that move me and influence my practice
• Not clear who the camera is for, is it for me or the public
• Think about the intention of open source—would it encourage a more community-based approach

YG

• YG’s main takeaway is that people are relearning the photography process
• Asked why I you considered this “social media” since the users don’t have much control over the platform
• Asked why the user doesn’t interact with the website with likes/followers, and does that impact the audience
• In terms of accuracy, people would more critical on whether the collection matches the theme, rather than the accuracy of the photos
• To measure bias, should I compare results from other search engines?
• Bias may be good—I could be teaching people my definition of what these themes should mean
• If I’m upfront about who is training the model, and that it’s someone who is “trustworthy”, then it’s not important that there’s bias

I presented my updated Thesis slides (after I saw the flow of my presentation wasn’t working during Show a Thing)

Sarah suggested a change in the order, to present the project earlier, then the background and narrative later.

I’m struggling to figure this out, feels like a jigsaw puzzle or wack-a-mole, where do I explain the basics first so people understand the technology first (making music from the mind with an EEG software) or jump into the thesis exploration first, but when I’ve done that, people have told me they felt lost because they just wanted to know how the tools worked first – when saying “can this system reproduce psychedelic experiences?” people first wonder ‘wait, what is the system?’ and what is it i experienced using it.

I can see move the Background section later, but I find it’s useful to explain how I got to making the EEG software in the first place, because that question usually comes up early when I present my work. I can shorten in, but also feel a tension to explain my background because of my conversations with Rothberg and Zurkow about identity and audiences won’t know by looking at me that I have prior experience in these various fields.

Not sure how to sort all this out.

Perhaps mentioning authorship opens up another can a worms and I can just focus on replicability of the experiences I had?

Exploring new sequences (written as outlines) on my notion page:

https://www.notion.so/jasonjsnell/2023-06-04-3ba2d573da204dcdb7f7b5a906d2a92b?pvs=4

I spoke with five reviewers. Although each session was quite brief, the feedback from Show-A-Thing proved to be truly valuable. It forced me to reevaluate my entire thesis, which was both daunting and exciting! The primary medium of my thesis involves using a pen plotter. You can see here: https://itp.nyu.edu/lowres/thesis2023/2023/04/06/1-1-meeting-5-and-sketches/

The first piece of feedback addressed the need to teach non-coders the git process. While non-coders can learn the flow of git, it’s essential to clarify the purpose. Another reviewer found the concepts of branches and forks interesting due to the potential they offer. However, they suggested organizing the project as a story to provide non-coders with a meaningful context.

A critical question raised was about the final output: would it be printed papers or the participants’ process? If the latter, I could even use a camera to record the entire process. The last reviewer recommended that I write an “Artist’s statement,” something I had never considered before.

Regarding form and technical issues, one reviewer suggested using user-generated data as an intermediary for the pen plotter. This idea broadened my perspective, as even a simple drawing could be filled with doodles.

In conclusion, the central question is not the form but the purpose. I feel compelled to reconsider the title “Tangible Open Source” and determine the main issue I want to address.

(Meeting on March 28 and thesis class and following sketches)

I discussed two prototype ideas with Sarah. One uses voxels as a code metaphor but is not as practical for an installation.

The other one uses a pen plotter. It metaphorizes coding as drawing. A user “forks” from the latest commit or a previous commit. Then, they continue to draw sketches, just like revising code. After drawing, the user leaves a commit message to submit a “commit.” The pen plotter will print the latest commit as a snapshot every hour (or at other intervals). The printing process is like the building process of code. Finally, it is printed, as if the software is released.

During the class, I received meaningful feedback. One concern was what a user should do during the interval. Suggestions included leaving an email and sending the released version to them. The other concern was about people’s roles in this AI era. In addition, someone raised the question of the relationship between this installation and the open source community.

Here’s a current version sketch:

 

 

 

Another powerful session with my mentor Greg!

Talking to him made me realize that the goal of my prototype game was an obstacle to the connection of the two players. So for my next prototype, the goal of the game needs to not be an obstacle.

He suggested some ways to do this. If I go the “giving” route, it would be easier to have someone give something they no longer needed to avoid this sort of collectivist mindset when we play games (since usually they have a purpose).

Also wondering if I can turn this into some sort of “infinite game”, within a shorter timeframe. We talked about how this can by easier to do with asynchronous gameplay but I have a technical limitation of using synchronous gameplay only. However, there might be a way to create the emotions of an infinite game within a short period time? Basically it becomes more about the gameplay and having fun than winning it.

I was thinking that a balance is that ultimately, you can play the game by yourself but it’s way more fun with someone else, and perhaps easier and more rewarding. My design strategy right now is almost to do as little as I think is possible to achieve this “Altruistic” behavior, then add more if it doesn’t work.

For the show a thing, I have presented the thesis progress to the following professors and resident, which I found immensely helped me from their perspectives how my project is going, and what I need to look into more for. Here I want to kinda organize the feedback they were offering to me in the span of several minutes:

Adam Colestock: It would be good if you could talk about how your performance could potentially help with the subject brought up. + A lot of researches in How to help people with traumatic experiences:Taking medication/drug when you reliving the experiences, look into those.

Enrique Garcia: Wifi wireless system doesn’t work, diagnosis could be that my device offers 24Ghz and since iphones has the same frequency band, it creates interference.

Tiri Kananuruk: Performance magnesium, the logic behind the performance and the subject.

Sakar Pudasaini: I address that it is hard to talk about subject trauma related to memory in normal conversation, that is why performance is important to me because I took another route to not only “talk” about it, but also directly experiment with the healing. It is worthy to mention about the performance as a way to expand capacity of the container, rather than the substance in it.

David Rios: Wifi and circuit board conversation.

 

With the feedback above, I was able to re-organize the way I present this thesis to the public. Super helpful to me, so thank you all for making this happen!

 

 

Just finished my 4th Peer Group meeting with Beth, and Zaida! 🙂

All went well! We spent time going over our thesis progress, while also talking about our reflections from our Show-A-Thing sessions!

Beth gave some great ideas when it came to the footsteps as well as some great alternative solutions!

Welp that’s all for now!

Until next time! 🙂

https://first-latency-df1.notion.site/Show-A-Thing-0a1b0e6b26fa4109ac82038b5b218ab1