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my desiring machines

Table of Contents

• The threshold between worlds
• The acceleration of history
• Cybernetics, automata and the production of time
• Bibliography

The threshold between worlds

For me the virtual had become more real than reality itself, how could it not be?, if the only place where you can really be yourself is in that space, where you can make a fiction of your life and no one else can question you, because that is the internal logic of the world and everyone benefits from it. Or at least that's how it was before Facebook. People who still cling to that illusion now inhabit the peripheries of the internet. It's not a feeling that particularly affects me, it's more like a generational thing, experienced perhaps most intensely by the transgender community, I'll explain why later, first I want to give an account of how things happened.

In the beginning I looked for a way to show those who are not plugged in, the collapsed wall, which used to be the border between the dimensions. The obvious solutions were virtual or augmented reality. The immediate problem was that the cities were just reopening after two years of coronavirus pandemic, everyone had been working through the screen, and unlike me, they had enough of the virtual world and were anxious for presentiality. So I had to ponder about the interface, since it wasn't as if humanity had turned off the the home-cocoon-machine, to fly free once again, she was still running the social control program in the background.

If he couldn't use devices that everyone disdained, what could I use instead? The question then turned to essence of these devices, which refers to Heidegger, who he writes: “Technique is not, then, simply a means. The Technique is a way of unconcealing.” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 121); “All production is based on unconcealing.” (p. 120) What is What does a screen, a control, a projector reveal? Images. They reveal something that is more than a mere representation of reality, are images produced by the input of a user, which exist only to the extent that someone commands their appearance of him. He then had the access code, since “only There is a type of production, the production of the real” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, p. 68).

While I sensed being in the territory of machines, I can now explain how I arrived, or rather, how It's just that we all find ourselves there. The command is an order, which flows from one body to another, this flow is interrupted in a point, processed and a response is returned. The language imperative implies a desire, of the type “I want you to do something” and desire, according to Deleuze and Guattari, is the production of production, to produce in the Heideggerian sense, of start the process. Under this theoretical framework, everything is a system with entrances and exits, through which desire flows, which They are not only orders, but also a desire for life, extends to the unconscious, that assumed to be non-real. In this world “everything is a machine” (p. 30), that is why understands “nature as a production process” (p. 32).

The machines that produce desire are the desiring-machines, that is a recursive definition, “every machine is a machine of a machine” (p. 73). And what are machines? “A machine can be defined as a system of interruptions or breaks” (p. 73).

What are my desiring-machines? That is the first task positive of schizoanalysis and is linked to the task artistic as a technique, which reveals the truth, a task which entails a necessary openness to the mystery. Heidegger like this he writes it:

The arts did not emerge from the artistic. The works of art They were not enjoyed aesthetically. The arts were not cultural production sector. What was art? Maybe just for brief but high time? Why did they carry the simple name tekné?

Because it was an unconcealment that contributed and produced and because that belonged to poiesis (Heidegger, 1997, p. 147).

We know then what is at stake, it is what Paul B. Preciado calls the need for a new epistemology, which allow those who have been considered sick to speak mental. Hence it is a transgender feeling, because for society are schizoids who cannot distinguish fiction of reality. And if art can possibly achieve that what a tremendous responsibility! I dare not suggest a response, more than partial and in process.

Having questioned the method of accessing the virtual world, I came to a key concept, the threshold. The machine is a break in the flow and the threshold is the break point. This takes us back to the myth present in all cultures, the threshold between the worlds. The virtual and the real collapse here. No we must lose ourselves in the representation, something is needed that It effectively connects you to the other side. As I had to create my own user interface, the Arduino platform is It was useful for prototyping and allowed me to use a Lots of modules and sensors that are easy to implement. A distance sensor in particular incorporated my conceptual research: the ultrasonic HC-SR04. This It works by echolocation, like a SONAR or a bat. It has a detection range between 2cm and 4m, making it ideal for capturing people in a room. Furthermore, the pulse sends is quite directional, capturing objects in its maximum distance at an angle of 15°. For these reasons it is possible to program it as a threshold, where the processor is dormant until someone crosses it, when it comes into range detection.

The first montages I made were from a computer graphing the sensor data in different ways, when a user moved in front of him. What I noticed is that the graph that was formed was that of an exponential function (Image 1). This line was not programmed, but is derived of the system's operation. The technique has its own internal logic that tends to produce a certain type of result. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail to be hammered. If you have a SONAR, every object seems to be accelerating, since the sound reflection takes less time to Get there the closer you are. I found this last fact fascinating, because it not only applies to echolocation, I believe that every revolutionary technique has this accelerant property and I decided to continue the research from this axis.

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The acceleration of history

When studying the history of humanity, we should pay attention to two things, the first is that to understand it, we divide it into periods delimited by paradigmatic changes, made possible by the introduction of new technologies. The second is that the pace at which significant events occur, which signal the beginning of a new era, seems to be accelerating. Thus, from the homo sapiens sapiens most similar to modern man to the beginning of agriculture, there are about 30,000 years, but from the Neolithic to writing there are only 7,000, to reach the Middle Ages we need 3,500 years, however from there to modernity 1000 years are enough and the first industrial revolution happens 300 years later, after 150 years the atomic bomb was already used. From the transistor, to the moon, the internet and soon to Mars. Technological progress has exponential growth.

I propose then that the acceleration of history is intertwined with technological development. I cannot say for sure that technology causes time to pass faster (Time, like the mind, is not knowable as such. We only know time indirectly by what happens in it, by observing change and what remains, by pointing out the succession of events between stable frameworks and indicating the contrast of various kinds of changes” (Kubler, 1988, p. 70)) , but its effects undoubtedly alter our perception of space, the world becomes smaller and smaller and space is not a thing that exists by itself, but exists in the time and at the same time, time, as a measure of change, cannot be understood without a space that transforms. Therefore, both concepts are codependent, the compression or expansion of one implies the same for the other. The compression of space-time produced by technological development is what I am interested in working on.

Perhaps the simplest example to explain how technology shortens distances (and therefore messes with the conception of time of the moment) is the steam engine. We cannot simply say that the railway improves quality of life in the city without being critical of the fact that this environment, once established, becomes necessary and therefore ceases to be an advantage as at the time of its creation. Indeed, production increases thanks to technology, but along with it, the standard of production also increases, so the expected demands of human beings are the same as before, or even worse.

Likewise, “in Germany the trains seemed to shrink time, as if they were a magical artifact” (Garfield, 2017, p. 42). Due to the machinic need for synchronicity, society adjusts, “before the arrival of the train, few saw it as necessary” (p. 39). It seems wrong to me, however, to suggest that the locomotive was what allowed man to win the fight against nature, or that it even makes sense to propose such a dichotomy, since "the reference in each town was usually the town hall or town hall clock." church and the time was still set from the midday sun” (p. 39). The cathedral had already established a schedule theologized as natural, but in reality it is something totally arbitrary. That the sun traces a path with a maximum point in the sky is a natural phenomenon, but it becomes useless as a reference when our own paths are so extensive that they relativize it, hence, once a higher measuring instrument arises , naturally people adapt better to it.

Systematic thinking allows us to understand technology, acting not only on itself or its direct environment, but also to think of reality as many interconnected abstract machines. The clock is not only a device that generates a periodic movement of its hands, but it harmonizes its frequency with the rest of existence.

Likewise, “in Germany the trains seemed to shrink time, as if they were a magical artifact” (Garfield, 2017, p. 42). Due to the machinic need for synchronicity, society adjusts, “before the arrival of the train, few saw it as necessary” (p. 39). It seems wrong to me, however, to suggest that the locomotive was what allowed man to win the fight against nature, or that it even makes sense to propose such a dichotomy, since "the reference in each town was usually the town hall or town hall clock." church and the time was still set from the midday sun” (p. 39). The cathedral had already established a schedule theologized as natural, but in reality it is something totally arbitrary. That the sun traces a path with a maximum point in the sky is a natural phenomenon, but it becomes useless as a reference when our own paths are so extensive that they relativize it, hence, once a higher measuring instrument arises , naturally people adapt better to it.

When local time was changed to railway time “people noticed, but, as it was known to be a very precise clock, in a matter of a year the churches and businesses in the city changed their time to adapt to it” ( p. 40). The issue is not only political, but also technical, because precision matters, or rather, technique is political, so “the employees' watches were, systematically and deliberately, five minutes late to alleviate the passenger's rush. that could be late” (p. 42).

Regarding space-time compression, Marx tells us that: “While capital must on the one hand try to break every spatial barrier to exchange, and conquer the entire world for its market, it tries on the other hand to annihilate this space over time.” , that is, reducing to a minimum the time spent moving from one place to another” (Marx, 1971, p. 119). The quote raises the issue from the labor theory of value, which uses time as an essential unit of measurement. In other words, greater efficiency, what is characteristic of technique, is what makes the world collapse in on itself.

Since we introduced Marx, it is pertinent to give space to the philosophy of history. From Hegelian dialectics we understand history as a constant contrast of ideas, a thesis of history, for example, romanticism, can be reasoned as the revolutionary antithesis of industrial technicalism. A paradigm shift is in essence a revolution. Marx's materialism, starting from Hegel, indicates that there is a constant in history, class conflict, it is the oppressors and oppressed who raise the theses of history. If in the past it was easy to identify who had power, thanks to the fact that it was concentrated in authoritarian figures, the revolution consisted of overthrowing the monarch and installing a new regime. The postmodern problem is that power is no longer concentrated in any figure, but rather is distributed among agents, who do not have sufficient control to generate a change, such as that necessary to replace the capitalist system2 (Which for Baudrillard is an impossible exchange. It can't be done exchanging the total of an economy, which is virtual, for using fiat money, since the real thing has lost its value. “When there is no longer an internal reference system, no “natural” equivalence, no purpose for exchange (as occurs between production and social wealth, between information and the real event), then we enter an exponential phase and in the speculative disorder.” (Baudrillard, 2000, pages 13-14)). However, an external force that controls trade is not necessary for its destruction, in the same free market logic that gives capitalism its ability to absorb any criticism, lies its final destiny.

Since the market is inherently chaotic, to maintain a stable state, external pressure must be exerted on it; without this, given enough time, society will inevitably would collapse3 (“The more the capitalist machine deterritorializes, decoding and axiomatizing flows to extract surplus value from them, the more its auxiliary apparatuses, such as government bureaucracies and law enforcement, do to reterritorialize, absorbing an ever-larger share of the surplus value in the process.” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, p. 71).). The problem is that we would not live to see it, to do so it is necessary for history to happen faster, therefore, "revolution is an acceleration of the flow of the world" (Groys, 2016, p. 24). This is where artists come in, who in their efforts to resist the commodification of art adopt a revolutionary attitude, "the work of art is in itself a desiring machine. The artist accumulates his treasures to create an immediate explosion, and that is why, in his view , destructions can never take place as quickly as they should” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, p. The linear model is oversimplified, the exponential 67). Boris Groys notes precisely this, "the flow of events inside the museum today is often faster than the flow outside its walls" (p. 36). Institutions are capable of functioning at an accelerated pace, but their potential is limited, since every institution seeks to preserve itself over time. The type of artistic agitation necessary to cause true change is more similar to that envisioned by the futurists, who wanted the destruction of museums, and even to be replaced by younger artists, since they themselves were also tending towards obsolescence. “We want to praise the man who holds the steering wheel, whose ideal shaft crosses the Earth, launched into the race, itself, in the circuit of its orbit” (Marinetti, 1909). The objective, however, is not to found a neo-futurism, although it is to represent the machine in all its terrifying speed and exalt its violence. Therefore, what I propose is an art that differs in two main elements, despite being inspired by the same issues and drawing attention to their inevitable dystopias.

First, the focus of the work should be on acceleration and not its derivative, velocity. The purpose of naming futurism is to integrate its function, not to generate its same graphics. If we travel at a stable speed, like on the train, it is enough to cover our ears and close the windows to change our frame of reference and stop noticing the movement. You have to feel the acceleration that hits you to the seat and makes you lose control. Remove the limiter. Exceed the safety threshold. Break the sound barrier. The linear model is oversimplified, the exponential allows asymptotic analysis, but in the real world we slow down when we reach the insurmountable speed of light, but at this magnitude time dilates, history reveals itself to be absurd, it clashes and fragments, it is not unique, with present, past and future objectives. There is no end of history, nor “extreme promontory of centuries” (Marinetti, 1909), “Time and Space died yesterday” (Marinetti, 1909), but like the hydra it grew more heads. The relativity of simultaneity puts our idea of linear time in crisis. We don't have to make more timelines, but rather lines of flight. Compose fugues with voices at different tempos, individual accelerandos and ritardandos. Playing in an orchestra without a conductor, with actors drawing world lines, which sometimes coincide, more by pattern recognition than by divine providence.

Second, art must not only represent technology, but be the technique in question. “Malevich believed that the artist must become infected through technique” (Groys, 2016, p. 137), a bacterial infection, of exponential reproduction. The way in which human- machine interfaces have been implemented is in the black box mode where the operation is hidden. You have to realize the engineering, notice the hammer in your hand and how it turns you into a hammer-man. The fundamental problem is nature: for feminism it is biology, for capitalism the second law of thermodynamics, for politics it is time; We defend ourselves from the natural thanks to the artificial.

We must be careful, however, not to fall into dualism, it is not man against nature, nor natural origin towards artificial development4 (“We make no distinction between man and nature: the human essence of nature and the natural essence of man come together within nature in the form of production or industry, just as they do in the life of man as a species. “Industry is no longer considered from the extrinsic point of view of utility, but from the point of view of its fundamental identity with nature as a production of man and by man.” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, p. 33).). The cyborg is not an ideal of the future, it is a reality that intersects with the human, primates also handle tools and a sufficiently advanced AI could perfectly handle us. The loss of values prophesied by Nietzsche extends to human nature, God has died and his clay man has died with Him. “Essentialist naturalism reeks of theology – the quicker we exorcise it, the better.” (Hester et al., 2015)

How exactly is the program to be executed? A good example is the Lines of Flight by Leo Nuñez and Laura Nieves:

“When statistics and data become so abstract to us. How do economic decisions influence us workers? In this work, based on simple home construction mechanisms, we can perceive how the interest rate is influencing unemployment. A high real interest rate, higher than the rate of return on investments, generates a drop in investment levels and therefore will negatively affect the occupancy rate.” (Nunez, 2019)

The work exists at the intersection of mathematics, politics, economics and art. The technological construct is the beginning and the end of the worker's life. Statistics is not only a measuring instrument, but becomes an end in itself. Maximizing profits comes before social well-being. The elevators that trace the interest and unemployment curve resonate with each numerical adjustment. The machinery in its multiplicity vibrates markedly tense and unstable, like the car going over the speed limit. An economic crisis is coldly read as the crossing of an imaginary threshold at a critical point on the exponential curve.

There is one fundamental thing that Lines of Flight lacks, something more than a spectator, it needs a human agency. Here the capitalist machine is the one that is exposed, in its alienating nature. The worker hides, in favor of the technical device.

In contrast, Daniel Rozin demonstrates how technology informs the perception of our being through its mechanical mirrors. “They are made of various materials but share the same behavior and interaction; Any person standing in front of one of these pieces is instantly reflected in its surface” (Rozin, 2019). The device is not hidden and the viewer stops being an objective observer and becomes a work of art. In all his work, the characteristic sound of servomotors reveals his functioning, while the chosen materiality says as much about itself as it does about the person reflected. In Weave Mirror, the artist makes this intention explicit, “its circuitry and wiring is visible behind the picture plane, exposing its craftsmanship” (Rozin, 2019). The trash mirror “suggests that we reflect in what we discard” (Rozin, 2019) and the wooden one “uses a warm, natural material to portray the abstract notion of digital pixels” (Rozin, 2019). His work, despite everything, remains a technological fascination. The game is too entertaining. It is necessary that at some point the thing stops working and gives you time to think:

Desiring-machines, [...], continually break down while they operate, and in fact only operate when they are not functioning correctly: the product is always an offshoot of production, which is implanted in it like a graft. and at the same time, the parts of the machine are the fuel that makes it work (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, p. 66-67).

The following is the way I approached the matter, inspired by Rozin, I decided to design an interface that would capture the user's movement in the room, using the ultrasonic sensor that I had previously tested. This only captures one dimension, on an axis that does not allow much deviation, so in order to traverse the space, an array of several of them must be configured. Ten HC-SR04s wired in parallel, each spaced 40cm apart (Image 2), are controlled by an Arduino. The data is transmitted via serial connection to a computer running Pure Data (Pd). The Pd patch contains a code (Image 3), which translates the numerical value of the distance measured by a particular module, into a frequency to be reproduced by a sine wave synthesizer. In this way, when someone crosses the threshold and enters the range of the sensor bar, the silence is broken and the work begins. The instrument is analogous to a theremin controlled with the entire body, rather than just the hands, and lacks an amplitude control, but can produce up to ten simultaneous tones, allowing group performances. Up to this point the work remains the same as Rozin, fulfilling the second fundamental element of accelerationist art, but without accounting for the first.

The other part of the work is the projection of a video on the floor, in front of the sensor bar, marking the area of to think: The following is the way I approached the matter, inspired by Rozin, I decided to design an interface that would capture the user's movement in the room, using the ultrasonic sensor that I had previously tested. This only captures one dimension, on an axis that does not allow much deviation, so in order to traverse the space, an array of several of them must be configured. Ten HC-SR04s wired in parallel, each spaced 40cm apart (Image 2), are controlled by an Arduino. The data is transmitted via serial connection to a computer running Pure Data (Pd). The Pd patch contains a code (Image 3), which translates the numerical value of the distance measured by a particular module, into a frequency to be reproduced by a sine wave synthesizer. In this way, when someone crosses the threshold and enters the range of the sensor bar, the silence is broken and the work begins. The instrument is analogous to a theremin controlled with the entire body, rather than just the hands, and lacks an amplitude control, but can produce up to ten simultaneous tones, allowing group performances. Up to this point the work remains the same as Rozin, fulfilling the second fundamental element of accelerationist art, but without accounting for the first. 10 Machine Translated by Google game. Visual content is created with artificial intelligence. The algorithm in question is VQGAN + CLIP. What it does is that from a text input, it generates an image that looks like the words that the AI interpreted. The interesting thing is that things happen from an iterative process. One neuron makes the drawing and another assigns a numerical value, which indicates the similarity of the image, then the first adjusts the drawing a little and obtains a new value, and so on hundreds of times. The objective of the generative adversarial network (GAN) is to maximize the similarity to the images that exist in its database, among which is the entire WikiArt collection. I give inputs like: a black hole, the singularity, human-machine fusion, time acceleration, etc.; the kind of things I've been interested in and studying. You can stop the generation process after any desired number of iterations, I cut it after about 300 images, because in that time the image has already been roughly defined and more processing only means greater detail or resolution, which tends to close the figure and limit the interpretation. From the last generated image, it can be mutated into a new entry (Images 4, 5 and 6), which is exactly what I do, then all the created images are taken and used as frames for a video

At the same time as the video plays and the oscillators sound, the former is manipulated in real time. The sensor data is adjusted with mathematical operations to translate the image in the Cartesian plane and alter its reproduction speed. The user's dance causes movement in the X, Y, or Z axis of the projection, as well as its temporal axis. In addition, the opacity and saturation are altered, allowing two or more different videos to be mixed, which are played simultaneously, to symbolize the divergence of evolutionary timelines. History is not a uniform rectilinear movement, but rather a network of causalities, in each decision. we diverge. The effect that is produced is that the iterative development of the drawing seems to be triggered by the action of the user, although it has been pre-produced by the AI. The idea is to question the distinction between machine and human, to note that technology is both a reflection of a culture as an active producer of it, which follows its own logic, efficiency. The matrix here is cultural, just as for flesh and blood artists, it is eleven Machine Translated by Google

It includes images stored in WikiArt in the database, so the computer is aware of the history of art. According to Griselda Pollock, “knowledge is always a system that enlightens us by producing understandings of relationships, and stories that are not otherwise visible in a chaotic jumble of objects. But this system is not neutral or self-evident” (Pollock 2010, p. 69), the databases with which neural networks are trained tend to produce racist and misogynistic responses (Buolamwini, 2019), an example of violence epistemic theory that Pollock describes. The objective technical machine enters into crisis, because evidently the output of the algorithm is influenced by the programmer, it always is, this is simply a extreme case.

The following are the conclusions I reached, based on research focused on the acceleration of history:

• The linear analysis of history does not explain the speed with which social changes occur today; an inertial frame of reference is needed.
• The linear analysis of history does not explain the speed with which social changes occur today; an inertial frame of reference is needed.
• The technological perspective sheds light on the acceleration of the history, or rather, of the space-time compression caused by exponential technical progress.
• The development of new technologies is not objectively positive, since the reason for their research is the search for greater efficiency, not human well-being, in this sense technical thinking is alienating.
• “The construction of freedom does not involve less alienation, but more” (Hester et al., 2015).
• Artists play a fundamental role in the revolution, but they must be willing to lead the world, step on the accelerator and tip over “into a ditch with the wheels in the air” (Marinetti, 1909).
• We must study the impact at the speed of light and Collect the fragments of history, rearrange them and design a more streamlined time capsule.
• You must recognize the cyborg in the mirror, magnify it and plug it into the social machine.
• Do not escape the technological singularity, because “nothing human manages to escape from the near-future” (Land, 1994).

Cybernetics, Automata and the Production of Time

The central question that provokes and connects all the concepts in my current project is: How does time accelerate? My hypothesis is that it is accelerated by devices that alter space, and therefore, the interaction between bodies located in the space-time network. Posed the other way around, my work seeks to account for space through devices that act in time (because we already live in a different space-time, in increasing compression).

Having explored the spatiality of sound, he felt that he must find a way to materialize the invasion of sound in space. I couldn't just occupy a wall, I wanted cyber-revolution, the machines had to take over the room, so I decided to do a site-specific installation.

What would my wishing-machines look like? They had to be guardians of the threshold between worlds, but they did not need to be physically imposing, their strength would be in numbers, they had to be everywhere, watching every corner. It had motion sensors, which for thousands of home-made robots, are the eyes of the machine. How many eyes should they have, if they have to look everywhere? not many, since they would communicate with each other, but in their status as liminal deities, it seemed appropriate that they had two faces, like Ianus, god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doors, passageways, frames and endings. It also seemed to me that their design should not be too elaborate, they should be functional, like the machines that you find controlling pedestrian traffic, totems with anti-theft alarms placed to monitor the exits of commercial stores, pedestals to form lines at banks, etc.

The final materiality is a square head with ultrasonic sensor eyes, like a children's toy, scaled. This head is installed on a pedestal. The device is made of metal, about 90 cm high and has an antenna on the top to transmit sensor data wirelessly (Images 7 and 8).

He now had a way to collect data from the room, but what to do with that information? I had previously used it for synthesis, both audio and images. Now I wanted the room to feel even more alive, the animation had to be movement of physical matter, the virtual would appear through of the real. This became very complicated, very expensive, very quickly. But I had learned that a lot could be done, with the simplest translation operation, a mapping of the user's movement, to the movement of an actuator. The cheapest motor I could find was an SG-90, its 90 rotation angles can be controlled by PWM, through Arduino. Naturally they have very little torque, so they cannot move large weights. What occurred to me was to configure a network of threads, driven by these motors (Images 9 and 10).

It then had an earthly world, controlled by machines, and a heavenly world, where pulses of information flow (Images 11, 12, 13 and 14). They were both connected and the Movement of one led to movement of the other.

To place this installation in the context of art I will analyze a key exhibition, Cybernetic Serendipity, from 1968. The exhibition curated by Jasia Reichardt “explored and demonstrated some of the relationships between technology and creativity” (Jasia Reichardt et al., 2018, p. 5), at a time when that “computers [had] not revolutionized music, nor art, nor poetry, in the same way that they revolutionized science” (p. 5). Among the participating artists were John Cage, Nam June Paik, Jean Tinguely and Edward Ihnatowicz; I will go into more detail about their work in the following pages, but it is worth noting that an important part of the call was made up of engineers, mathematicians, architects and "people who would never have put pencil to paper, or brush to canvas" (p. 5), if they have not been technically involved in the development of systems to solve problems with the support of images or sound.

These are definitions from the sample catalog:

Adj. of cybernetics - science of control and communication in complex electronic machines such as computers and the human nervous system” (p. 3).

"Serendipity – the faculty of making happy chance discoveries” (p. 3).

It is worth noting that like Deleuze and Guattari, “we make no distinction between man and nature” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, p. 33). Norbert Wiener provides the first definition, which is clearly political in nature and explains: “When I give an order to a machine, the situation is not essentially different from that which occurs when I give an order to a person” (Jasia Reichardt et al., 2018). , p. 9). Cybernetics then studies the input and output of feedback systems and its purpose is “to develop a language and techniques that allow us to attack the problem of control and communication in general” (p. 9). This is precisely what I am thinking about when designing my devices, however, having passed more than fifty years (The '60s are practically the bronze age in terms of computing!) the panorama is very different.

At the beginning of the internet there was a great expectation that this technology could revolutionize the world. Access to information and global interconnection would break down the borders that divide humanity, something that Bourriaud notes in Radicante:

“Without a doubt, we could formulate the ambition of the 21st century artist by saying that he or she tries to transform themselves into a network. The modernity of the 20th century was based on the coupling of the human with the industrial machine, ours faces computer science and reticular lines.” (Bourriaud, 2009, p. 155).

I think his approach is a little old-fashioned, since disillusionment was already experienced in the '90s. The technical implementation of a network is not enough, there must also be a political organization to generate meaning from it, if this is lacking what you get is a cacophony, or in the worst case, conflict, since it is easier to interact with a central unit, than negotiating a group consensus. There is therefore an absolutist potential in the technological domain. It seems then that art and technology are going in opposite directions. Programming is essentially deterministic, while art, “if you want to define it, is a criminal action. It doesn't conform to any rules. Not even their own” (Jasia Reichardt et al., 2018, p. 25), writes John Cage, who participated in the exhibition, with his experimental score, Fontana Mix, it consisted of ten transparent sheets with graphs, lines and points, to be interpreted as melodies and rhythms. By overlapping the leaves, Their arrangements and different combinations give rise to very different compositions. The rhizomatic character of the work is what is essential for me, it incorporates the non-signifying rupture and the conjunction and... and... ...and, but not falling into an automatism that produces meaningless scribbles. I seek to configure something of this style in my work, I want it to be possible to connect to the machine from any point and for everything to happen at the same time.

Cage's critical perspective on technology makes him work with chance, serendipity. In his diary (1966) he notes “Are we an audience for computer art? The answer is not No; is Yes. What we need is a computer that does not save work, but rather increases the work we have to do, that makes word games (this is McLuhan's idea)” (p. 24). This is precisely what we need! The production logic of the computer is inverted with an anti- operational machine, which demands movement from the user instead of functioning autonomously.

Nam June Paik is in dialogue with John Cage, not only on this occasion, but also because they are both part of Fluxus:

“[This] is a loosely knit association of artists whose activity ranges from concerts, films, performances and sightseeing, to games, sports, instruments and gadgets. It includes names such as Yoko Ono, Mieko Shiomi, George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, Takehisa Kosugi, La Monte Young, Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins and Ken Friedman, and spans a period of almost five decades. (Lushetich, 2011, p. 76).

What I rescue from Fluxus is the game, “art-fun must be simple, fun, unpretentious, concerned with insignificance, that does not require skills or endless rehearsals, that has no value either institutionally or as a commodity” (Trillnick) . Although the engineering behind my installation is very complex, in practice people relate to the pieces in a very intuitive way. This is also highlighted by Ihnatowicz: “Cybernetic art is, by its very nature, immediately accessible, so much so that children are its most appreciative viewers” (Ihnatowicz, 1986, p. 3).

For Cybernetic Serendipity, Nam June Paik collaborated with CRT televisions whose image could be manipulated by magnets, Tango Électronique and with his Robot K-456. It was very important that people intervene themselves on television sets.

“Let them play,” said Mr. Paik, “that's what they are for. If something breaks, the Art Department will pay for it.” “Okay, what does that all mean?” (Jasia Reichardt et al., 2018, p. 42), they asked him. Lushetich proposes a very interesting idea in The Performance of Time in the Intermedia of Fluxus:

“I would like to suggest what might be called a 'processualist' approach, according to which time is the expressive activity of any thing, being or phenomenon. Instead of occurring in time, an event or activity produces time in its occurrence, which further means that there can be no position outside of time, since all things, beings and phenomena are always temporalized by nature itself. of its existence.” (2011, p. 76)

This comes very close to answering my initial hypothesis, as Land says: “In the technocosm nothing is given, everything is produced” (Land, 2018, p. 321). Of course that is to completely lose the spirit of Fluxus. Again Land answers better than me:

“Philosophy, in its desire to rationalize, formalize, define, delimit, to do away with enigma and uncertainty, to cooperate wholeheartedly with the police, is nihilistic in the ultimate sense that it strives for the motionless perfection of death. But creativity cannot have an end compatible with power, since, unless life is extinguished, control must inevitably be broken. We possess the art so as not to perish from the truth. To conclude is not simply wrong, but ugly” (p. 174).

“Okay, what does that all mean?” (Jasia Reichardt et al., 2018, p. 42), they asked him. Lushetich proposes a very interesting idea in The Performance of Time in the Intermedia of Fluxus: For Cybernetic Serendipity, Nam June Paik collaborated with CRT televisions whose image could be manipulated by magnets, Tango Électronique and with his Robot K-456. It was very important that people intervene themselves on television sets. This comes very close to answering my initial hypothesis, as Land says: “In the technocosm nothing is given, everything is produced” (Land, 2018, p. 321). Of course that is to completely lose the spirit of Fluxus. Again Land answers better than me: There are things that we do not need to understand, but rather experience. There is a very popular quote by Arthur C. Clarke that describes the situation perfectly: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." If you know how the trick works, it stops being surprising. When inaugurated Cybernetic Serendipity, there was a lot of excitement about the possibilities that technology opened up. Today it is difficult to arouse such feelings because the accelerated flow of information and planned obsolescence makes you perceive everything as disposable and surmountable. Even the artificial intelligence that only a few years ago amazed the world, today is freely available for mass use and instead of elevating artistic practice, it has displaced human labor in the creation of images, for example, in stock photography , or illustration. In other words, due to its rapid development, it has become a tool of technical reproduction, rather than a space for aesthetic experimentation.

Which is not to say that it does not still have that potential, just that to access it, users must implement the code on their own, instead of having websites with a simple interface, through which they can exploit the algorithms. production by artificial neural networks.

The disappointment is not only aesthetic, but also political. Mcluhan's Electronic SuperHighway , produced by Paik, was effectively privatized, like any other highway. The decentralized internet has been replaced by authoritarian control of social networks, which are actively researching how to keep their users addicted through psychological manipulation. The Iron Curtain is no longer there, but China's Great Firewall and its Russian parallel do exist. Egypt and Turkey simply turn off the national internet in case the protests get out of control. The war against drugs and terrorism was won by drugs and terrorism, in part thanks to technological resistance, but all control and espionage measures were extended to include the entire population, all the time. I think people resignedly accept these setbacks partly out of convenience; it's easier to create an Instagram account than to design your own website. "I'm not worried about privacy, I have nothing to hide." Reflection on television videos manipulated by Nam June Paik's audience is that “the mass media is essentially passive [...] Passive art is a true threat to our culture. If the viewer does not enter the art, he has no chance of understanding it” (Jasia Reichardt et al., 2018, p. 42) and if art produces reality, then its revolutionary potential is (un)intentionally wasted.

In this new context, I want to compare the work of Jean Tinguely, Edward Ihnatowicz, and Theo Jansen, because for me they represent three very different historical attitudes towards technological development and yet they start from the same point, the machine as a living being.

For all the design of his work reflects its purpose, about the SAM, Ihnatowicz says that “it was an exercise in developing forms through a strictly functional discipline, with the hope that the final appearance would be a reflection of both the motif as well as the method” (1986, p. 3). The same thing happens with living organisms, due to natural selection.

In this line of research we can place Theo Jansen, with the evolution of his Strandbeest, but what characterizes Ihnatowicz is the introduction of a sensitive device, the microphone, and its translation into movement through computer programming. I have focused my work on the latter, primarily because I am concerned about the social dimension of the device. We can imagine Theo's beasts walking in a world without humans, but Edward's Senster would be completely immobilized; Although there is sound that could activate it in nature, in "ancient life everything was silent. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of machines, noise was born" (Russolo, 1998, p. 7). On the other hand, something truly cultural is multiplicity; there is nothing pure in culture, so, rather than generating a personal experience with the sculpture, the installation must involve a collective. For this reason I move away from the Senster, in favor of an installation where cooperation is essential to establish order, or break the state of equilibrium.

Quite the opposite (Or perhaps precisely the same?) is the kinetic art of Jean Tinguely, where the human being is excluded. His work could be considered neo-dada, since it deals with the absurd overproduction and automation post-industrial revolution, which reaches the point of total alienation. It is immediately reminiscent of Duchamp's wheel, which was sadly captured by the institutions of art, becoming completely immobilized.

Ihnatowicz is perhaps the most naïve of the three, saying that he “can embrace the new revolution and use new discoveries to improve his understanding of the world.” (Ihnatowicz, 1986, p. 4), Heidegger provides the most accurate criticism: “As long as we conceive technique as an instrument, we will remain attached to wanting to master it and we will omit the essence of technique” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 144).

Jean Tinguely pursues the flow of excessive desire, the process becomes more important than the end and the subject becomes a mere residue of it. “The subject itself is not in the center, which is occupied by the machine, but is on the periphery, without fixed identity, forever decentred, defined by the states through which it passes” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, p . 53).

Finally Theo Jansen seems to detach himself, and decisively shows us something that I would call "accelerationist art." He works from the position of a creator god, setting in motion (pro-duces) the process of evolution of creatures with machinic desires, such as perpetual movement, escaping death by avoiding drowning in the sea, lubricating their joints, rising above the sand to not ending up buried, etc., is a “radicant” art – a term that designates an organism that makes its roots grow as it advances.

(Bourriaud, 2009, p. 22). They are not just kinetic sculptures for aesthetic enjoyment, but are a true advance in the area of robotics. But the exaltation of human ingenuity is sublimated to the post-human, there is a point in the future, at which machines no longer need to be initiated, they are free of humanity and they evolve in a matter of years, with new appendages developing in each time less time. The abandonment of the human in the technical is what Nick Land writes about and is something that is present in the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Heidegger and Marx. ”Capitalism is like an organism, right? ...but an organism that evolved too quickly to develop a reliable immune system” (Land, 2018, p. 377). “Technique is the destiny of our time; where destiny lies: the fatality of an unalterable course” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 136).

Although I established the entry of my problem into the cultural scene in the 20th century, the topic of automation (and therefore, cybernetics) can be traced back to ancient Greece, or even further back if we refer to chronicles of automatons. incredible Chinese. These stories go through "deception", the machines seem alive; then there is a conflict, authority is offended; and finally there is a revelation of the functioning together with the praise of creative ingenuity. We find them in China, Egypt and Greece, with different engineers showing their work to kings who then, astonished, order more. Unfortunately we only have texts to verify its existence, many without explaining the operation of the machines, except for some designs by Heron of Alexandria and Ctesibius. The creation of automata is what allows us to connect matters that seem too modern, with an antiquity that dreamed of beings that fly through the skies, travel to space, transit between worlds, create artificial life, themes typical of science fiction. “Imagination, in effect, accelerated all possibilities” (Garfield, 2017, p. 42). Accelerationism has a concept to refer to this, hyperstition, it is a fiction that feeds back to the social technical machine until it produces its own reality. Before the trip to the moon, there were movies about it, before the mastery of flight, there were the designs of Leonardo Da Vinci, before the stomach grown in a laboratory, there was Vaucanson's duck, before the word processor, there was The Writer by Pierre Jaquet-Droz. Could any of them imagine what we would be capable of? Nietzsche echoes through Deleuze and Land: "the truth is that we have not seen anything yet".

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