Tentatively Trained Entropy Generators

In my intervention, I intend to explore the connections between information and entropy, and context – in post GPT-4 (large multimodal language model published by OpenAI in March 2023) commercialisation reality. We will begin with a “return to cybernetics”, its creator Norbert Wiener having warned, “Cybernetics is a two-edged sword, and sooner or later it will cut you deep”. Cybernetics is indeed worth revisiting, as it has revisited us. The contemporary context of cybernetic “image-objects” (such as the automatic factory described by Wiener) has little in common with the way of producing science or technology in the early post-World War II days. Nonetheless, the “image-objects” designed by cybernetic engineers have become a reality, yielding machines whose workings would cross all boundaries of cybernetic imagination: Amazon’s warehouses, autonomous vehicles, or the aforementioned GPT-4. With regard to the latter, I will argue that this “generative and tentatively trained transformer” is a primary-level trained generator of entropy – social and information-oriented – and of mental entropy defined by psychiatrist Antoni Kępiński. Yet in order to perceive these entropies and describe their generation mechanisms correctly, critical revision needs to be applied to the interpretation of entropy in information theory, and to the calculative description of the mind as a cerebral property involving information processing. I will attempt to showcase the outcomes of such theoretical interventions, as well as its potential practical use.

Electronic Cohabitation / Digital Collaboration

Piotr Cichocki
Electronic Cohabitation / Digital Collaboration

A profound change is about to take place, one spanning daily life and global political processes, and announced by media researchers over thirty years ago. The change will question the very core of such categories as local culture, cultural identity or space of culture. It has become blatantly obvious that developments on other continents affect our daily reality. Our political communities, neighbourhoods and individual consciousnesses have been incorporated into economic, ecological and political transformations spanning the globe.

New digital media are a significant – though by no means exclusive – component of aforementioned change. As it turns out, they are more than an information channel providing us with news from the other side of the planet, for example. They are also spaces and tools of co-existence and collaboration. Websites have become venues for hostile cohabitation – and alliances for taking action to make the world a radically better place.

We will be thinking and talking about collaboration in the space of the Worldwide Web, wherein representatives of assorted placed and communities work together by choice or from necessity, basing on multiple habitus and work methods. Examples of such actions include the “1000Hz” music production label I am head of, associated with ethnographic research across East Africa. The label publishes and promotes works by artists of the region, all communication between us handled by electronic platforms.

The group Help refugees in Lithuania, Poland and Belarus is a yet another and terrifying current example. Families of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Yemen use the group to try and contact individuals engaging in rescue and salvage operations in Poland.

The next example involves an array of broadly defined activities organised under the shared tag Extinction Rebellion (XR). In the nebula of virtual groups and face-to-face meetings, XR stands for assorted forms of collaborating to reverse the climate disaster.

In the course of the workshop, we will ponder successive spaces of collaboration and cohabitation.

Creative Ethnography and Social Art

Tomasz Rakowski
Creative Ethnography and Social Art 

The purpose of creative ethnography’s conceptual framework is to describe artistic and social projects with the use of a specific method: the language of description is intended to transcend the language of art critique, cultural animation, or anthropology and social sciences. It is an experimental form of “thick description”, wherein knowledge and action, cultural cognition and artistic projects are connected to one another in different and more compact ways, with the use of new and frequently prototypic concepts. Generally speaking, these are quests for keywords which might help capture the experience of being and acting along frontiers of art, ethnography and daily life worlds.

Accordingly, I am describing social art projects primarily as an area of experimental collaboration, wherein a new and unpredictable sense of event is born. I believe something akin to a cultural cyclotron emerges therefrom, the ethnographic experience recognised as a point of departure; concurrently, a fully new cognitive field evolves alongside. These processes might well be referred to as the creation of artistic-and-demographic appliances which “produce extra reality”, conferring certain appearance upon it in order for a new look of social imagination to emerge. Often as not, these processes take on the nature of a pitfall referenced by Alfred Gell and, later, Roger Sansi: a draft scenario combining intentions and motivations of all project initiators and participants into a dramatic whole – wherein an artistic or animation action, once created, begins reinventing the perspective of each of the parties involved, generating something akin to an “inner” performance.

The concept further comprises a certain scope of freedom – an individual’s capacity for reaching a state of liminality and becoming “someone else” or “anyone” – for surpassing one’s life and cultural roles. The creative ethnography conceptual framework thus enables a more adequate rendering of artistic processes occurring in the extended field of art. As a methodology introduced to social practice, it co-creates a collaboration network which becomes an art-supporting environment, frequently outside art market structures. Consequently, creative ethnography enables the process of transcending ostensible contrasts formatting the modernist institution of art – an opposition between high art and the daily creativity of marginalised groups, practical value and aesthetic value of art, or between expert-level and radically democratic comprehension of artistic competencies.

Virtual Reality and Its Boundaries. An Organological Perspective. 

Michał Krzykawski
Centre for Critical Research on Technologies
University of Silesia, Katowice

Virtual Reality and Its Boundaries. An Organological Perspective. 

The most amazing thing about Virtual Reality is that it lets our brains be deceived. For the first time in the history of technologies – which is, in all actuality, the history of mankind – we have become capable of making the human brain believe that it is in a different location from the factual one. By employing a technological stratagem, we are tricking an organ whose pliability we have discovered only recently, and whose activity does not, on the other side, remain unrelated to technical environment transformations occurring at unprecedented speed.

Concurrently, we have begun tricking the human brain in a very specific political and economic reality of (digital) platforms capitalism to which these disarranging transformations are subjected. “Virtual Reality has potential for becoming the most social platform ever, because it actually makes you feel as if you had another person there”, said Mark Zuckerberg in 2016. No wonder he is attempting to turn Facebook into a “metaverse company” (combining the virtual world with the physical one) today by trying to convince nearly three billion users that “metaverse is the ultimate expression of social technology”.

Can Virtual Reality be conceived as socially and aesthetically desirable in the face of psycho-social consequences of physical world undergoing virtualisation? Can Virtual Reality be socialised to avoid exacerbation of “symbolic poverty” (Stiegler) and systemically preclude the “distribution of the sensual” (Rancière)? Wherein lie the virtual illusion boundaries? We will ponder these and other questions in the spirit of general organology proposed by French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, which explores relations between three types of organs: the psychosomatic, as the material foundation for mental structures; the artificial, as technological system components; and organisations (institutions) forming social systems.

 

VR in Daily Life, or the Pressure of Imaginary Futures 

Jerzy Stachowicz
VR in Daily Life, or the Pressure of Imaginary Futures 

In my intervention, I would like to begin with a glance at Virtual Reality as a component of imaginary futures, a term used by Richard Barbrook when describing the development of computers, robots and artificial intelligence.

According to Barbrook, a revolutionary technological change – one that would forever alter our daily life – has been constantly predicted since the late 1930s. Androids and robotic animals will evolve and become our genuine autonomic helpers, artificial intelligence indistinguishable from that of humans. A future thus imagined is not only projected from pages of science fiction novels; it is also present in sober analyses by sociologists and theoreticians of culture, marketing and media – and in everyday conversations.

The vision of such change assumes assorted forms, adjusting to social conversion, actual technological discoveries, market needs, etc. Invariably, the assorted sources estimate a timeframe of several or over ten-twelve years, whereupon an enormously dynamic technological and/or social variation is to be expected. Yet that variation continues to be late in coming – imaginary futures are yet to witness their moment of reality.

As the world of computers developed, the futuristic imaginarium has expanded to include virtual reality, ostensibly a “natural” consequence of the evolvement of computers, graphic interfaces, and artificial intelligence. William Gibson’s literary cyberpunk and such films as Tron or The Lawnmower Man have contributed to the process of disseminating visions of cyberspace. Are the incessant attempts at creating a universally accessible “VR for everyone” not an expression of science fiction-based determinism, as it were? Do we need such profoundly immersive experiences in daily life? Do imaginary futures comprise an actual political dimension? Or will VR forever remain a phenomenon fascinating and niche-focused in equal measure?

Boundaries of Simulation. Staged Lives of Virtual Influencers

Piotr Fortuna
Boundaries of Simulation. Staged Lives of Virtual Influencers

In the course of the meeting, I will be exploring the topic of “virtual influencers” – computer-generated characters with full-fledged social media profiles, emulating behaviours of real-life influencers: they publish photographs and video footage, interact with other users, promote and sell goods, are featured on magazine covers and billboards, record songs, and give interviews. Virtual influencers trigger assorted responses: fear of humans being supplanted from the labour market, uncanny valley phenomena, and reflexes of awe, jealousy and empathy. 

During the workshop, I intend to consider ways of presenting virtual influencers and their associations with related (or somehow similar) constructs, such as avatars, data doubles, virtual assistants or humanoid robots. While similar in anthropomorphism, all these constructs differ in terms of function, agency mechanisms, and levels of realness or disembodiment.

We will also talk about properties constituting and/or undermining the credibility of virtual influencers; ways in which these characters are incorporated into contemporary “economy of attention” mechanisms, and how they establish relations with female digital platform users; how they address matters of corporeality, sexuality and race, provoking and exacerbating identity policy-related debates, and testing the boundaries of the allowable (and the efficient, in terms of communication). Last but not least, we will ponder the question of what the virtual influencer phenomenon can tell us about ourselves and the moment we have found ourselves at – human anxieties and fantasies in times of technological rush.

VR: New Experience of Reality. An Attempt at Recording.

Matylda Szewczyk
VR: New Experience of Reality. An Attempt at Recording.

The history of culture, of the social functioning and impact of assorted images, is filled with descriptions of new media experiences: the sense of immersion in a battlefield landscape experienced by visitors to a 19^th-century panorama, through to a sense of shock at an approaching train during early film screenings. All have become a basis for legends of the magic of the “first experience”, inaccessible to successive recipient and user generations. The tale of changes to the perception of non-media reality spawned by aforementioned experiences is equally interesting to that of impressions of early recipients of new image types. Upon exiting a cinema, the world is no longer as it used to be before we had entered. It has also changed ever since we have gained the capacity for recording it in photographs; people have most certainly altered their self-perception from the time when childhood photograph albums holiday snapshots were things unknown.

When it comes to assorted VR interfaces, we have found ourselves in rather fortunate circumstances; we are privy to the becoming of subsequent VR realisations and types of media technologies serving the purpose of evolving “virtual occurrences”; to personal exposure to “new media” experiences; and to ponderings on what we have just undergone and sensed.

On the other hand, the VR legend often as not precedes personal experience. The majority of culture participants have read about virtual reality or seen it on film before having had the opportunity of experiencing attempts at designing and delivering it in practice. Consequently, one would be hard-pressed to approach assorted types of actual VR realisations free of any expectations or bias. That, however, is not necessarily a disadvantage, as long as we allow our imaginings and expectations to become part of the experience rather than a barrier separating us from it.

In the course of the workshop, we will explore “virtual experience” as a new form of media exposure. We will try and describe its specificity with regard to individual users and broader cultural context, making it part of a more extensive history of change introduced by “new” media emerging across the years. Last but not least, we will try and imagine how the world may change – in terms of self- and identity-focused perception, our relationships with others, physicality and nature – once the virtual reality experience has become a universal one.

The Metaverse and Contemporary Dystopias: a Quest for Critical and Involved Virtual Reality Recipients

Anna Nacher

The Metaverse and Contemporary Dystopias: a Quest for Critical and Involved Virtual Reality Recipients

Main reactions to Facebook CEO’s most recent decision to transform the corporation into a company with a focus on developing a Virtual Reality platform, and change its name to “Meta”, were ones of scepticism and widespread criticism. In principle, the decision was interpreted as an escape from the critique of previous strategies, wherein the business side and desire for profit took precedent over accountability for the shape and form of communities evolving within the platform and its outreach. Mark Zuckerberg’s intentions included the introduction of the concept of “metaverse” – a term coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash (published in Poland as Śnieżyca, 2020). Zuckerberg’s decision was based on a blatant increase in VR’s importance to film, journalism and entertainment over the past five years, and on Facebook’s ownership of Oculus (a leading and hugely popular hardware platform) since 2014.

In view of experience drawn from the brief yet tempestuous history of social media impact on the process of forming social imagination, and basing on past extensive debates regarding VR and forms employing the so-called Mixed (Mode) Reality, often as not referred to jointly as XR (Extended Reality), a more profound consideration of critical, conscious and involved recipience has become a necessity. What kind of skill should a conscious recipient be equipped with when encountering dystopian metaverse announced by Facebook policies and disclosed in revelations by Frances Haugen and other whistle-blowers? What, in general, is critical VR content reception all about? Does a critical approach involve selected specific content parameters, such as topic, methods of developing the narrative, multi-sensory engagement, commencing immersive reception and affective recipient response? Such are the specific questions I intend to focus on while pointing out that the stakes in this particular discussion extend well beyond the academic realm, and may be of significance to VR evolvement in the context of its social role. 

Meeting with the community of creators associated with the 3D and Virtual Occurrences II Studio of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

Virtual occurrences – trends and directions of developing immersive art projects – case study.

13.11.2020
Jakub Wróblewski o wykładzie:

Dokonam próby nakreślenia zestawienia współczesnych młodych działań i projektów artystycznych, które łączy użycie aktualnych narzędzi, takich jak 3D, fotogrametria, silniki gamingowe, rzeczywistość wirtualna i rozszerzona, w kontekście poszukiwań autorskich wartości estetycznych, nowych sposobów budowania storytellingu oraz rozwoju mediów immersyjnych na przykładzie wybranych realizacji. Od pierwszej kickstarterowej kampanii Oculusa (2012, konsumenckie HMD Htc vive – 2016) minęło niewiele czasu, jednak ten okres to ogromny skok jakościowy i ilościowy w projektach artystycznych adaptujących te narzędzia. Systemy szybko zaimplementowane zostały do branży filmowej, rozrywkowej, a po czasie – także artystycznej. 

Omówię również obszary tematyczne eksploatowane w Pracowni 3D i Zdarzeń Wirtualnych II, do których zalicza się: percepcja odbiorcy doświadczenia wirtualnego oraz składowe konstytuujące doświadczenie, w tym rodzaje iluzji, ucieleśnienia, propriocepcja, poczucie sprawstwa, jak i afordancje. Kluczowe jest badanie zagadnienia immersji i jej poziomu. Zakres tematyczny prac jest szeroki i wynika z poruszanych w danym czasie obszarów zainteresowań Pracowni. Obecnie eksplorowane narzędzia to: film 360, film 360 3D, symulatory 3D, silniki gamingowe, dźwięk przestrzenny i ambisoniczny, modelowanie 3D, fotogrametria, skanowanie 3D, symulacje, rzeczywistość wirtualna i rozszerzona. Pracownia otwarta jest na współczesne wykorzystanie nowych mediów w działaniach partycypacyjnych, wspólnotowych, doświadczeniach indywidualnych, interaktywnych oraz multimedialnych, z nastawieniem na poszukiwanie autorskiej estetyki – zarówno wizualnej czy audialnej, jak i interakcji.