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| start [020231119 181644] – [presentations and publications] joost | start [020240123 214734] – [research description] joost |
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| In my reading and writing I am trying to articulate the sources of what can be perceived as an agency of machines and look at how a dialogue with machines can be a form of collaboration in which new representations appear. My approach is to focus on the question of what humans have hoped to learn from building physical, electronic models. My planned thesis will consist of four parts, the first of which is a detailed media-archeological study of the history of analog electronic computing and the history of the philosophical motivations behind the use of electronic and electrical analogies in physics and engineering. The second part enlarges the question of electronic modeling to cybernetics and the practice of making electronic models inspired by living organisms. I approach the role of material agency in such models by giving an overview of historical philosophical discussions around the concepts of function, modularity (related to completeness) and shielding (related to situatedness). Armed with these three concepts I articulate a critique of a number of utopian electro-chemical experiments done by the British cyberneticians Gordon Pask and Stafford Beer around 1961. They tried to tap into physical processes of self-organization in a series of early artificial intelligence experiments that triggered very interesting philosophical, artistic and technical responses. In the conclusion I try to draw conclusions from these utopian experiments by developing a view on materiality, media-archeology and the relation between humans and their technology, centered on the notion of 'liberating the machines'.\\ | In my reading and writing I am trying to articulate the sources of what can be perceived as an agency of machines and look at how a dialogue with machines can be a form of collaboration in which new representations appear. My approach is to focus on the question of what humans have hoped to learn from building physical, electronic models. My planned thesis will consist of four parts, the first of which is a detailed media-archeological study of the history of analog electronic computing and the history of the philosophical motivations behind the use of electronic and electrical analogies in physics and engineering. The second part enlarges the question of electronic modeling to cybernetics and the practice of making electronic models inspired by living organisms. I approach the role of material agency in such models by giving an overview of historical philosophical discussions around the concepts of function, modularity (related to completeness) and shielding (related to situatedness). Armed with these three concepts I articulate a critique of a number of utopian electro-chemical experiments done by the British cyberneticians Gordon Pask and Stafford Beer around 1961. They tried to tap into physical processes of self-organization in a series of early artificial intelligence experiments that triggered very interesting philosophical, artistic and technical responses. In the conclusion I try to draw conclusions from these utopian experiments by developing a view on materiality, media-archeology and the relation between humans and their technology, centered on the notion of 'liberating the machines'.\\ |
| For this I am primarily leaning on the work of Isabelle Stengers, Alfred North Whitehead and Gilbert Simondon, with frequent appearances by Katherine Hayles, Georges Canguilhem, Bernard Stiegler and Andrew Pickering. An important element in these reflections is the notion of abstraction as articulated by Whitehead: abstractions are not objects but decisions to focus on certain aspects of a situation and relegate other aspects to the background. This is a view on abstractions as performative, inherently ecological and non-anthropocentric, and the fundament of my thesis will be to look at machines in these terms. | For this I am primarily leaning on the work of Isabelle Stengers, Andrew Pickering and Gilbert Simondon, with frequent appearances by Katherine Hayles, Georges Canguilhem and Bernard Stiegler. An important element in these reflections is the notion of abstraction as articulated by Whitehead: abstractions are not objects but decisions to focus on certain aspects of a situation and relegate other aspects to the background. This is a view on abstractions as performative, inherently ecological and non-anthropocentric, and the fundament of my thesis will be to look at machines in these terms. |
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| * try-out screening of my film "Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59" (2023, 79 minutes, 2K DCP) at the Anifilm animation film festival in Liberec, Czechia (May 2023) | * try-out screening of my film "Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59" (2023, 79 minutes, 2K DCP) at the Anifilm animation film festival in Liberec, Czechia (May 2023) |
| * artist's talk "Dialogue with the Tool", Tetem, Enschede (May 2023) | * artist's talk "Dialogue with the Tool", Tetem, Enschede (May 2023) |
| * premiere of my film "Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59" (2023, 79 minutes, 2K DCP) at Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (May 2023) | * premiere of my film "Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59" (2023, 79 minutes, 2K DCP) at Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (May 2023). A review by Dana Linssen (in Dutch) can be found [[https://filmkrant.nl/artikel/joost-rekvelds-mechanisms-common-to-disparate-phenomena-59/|here]]. |
| * artist's talk "Liberate the Machines !", live visuals performance and screening of film "Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59" at Conflux festival, Rotterdam (June 2023) | * artist's talk "Liberate the Machines !", live visuals performance and screening of film "Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59" at Conflux festival, Rotterdam (June 2023) |
| * screening/performance of "Ueda's Shattered Egg, Prologue to #59" (2023, 14 minutes, 2K DCP) during the "Obviously Unthinkable #6, the Art of Cold War Science" event at iii in The Hague (September 2023) | * screening/performance of "Ueda's Shattered Egg, Prologue to #59" (2023, 14 minutes, 2K DCP) during the "Obviously Unthinkable #6, the Art of Cold War Science" event at iii in The Hague (September 2023) |
| * presentation "Tending to Machines" during the "Alien Organicisms" panel at the 2023 conference of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, in Tempe, Arizona (October 2023) | * presentation "Tending to Machines" during the "Alien Organicisms" panel at the 2023 conference of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, in Tempe, Arizona (October 2023) |
| * screening of "Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59" (2023, 79 minutes, 2K DCP) at the Light Matter Film Festival in Alfred, New York (November 2023) | * screening of "Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59" (2023, 79 minutes, 2K DCP) at the Light Matter Film Festival in Alfred, New York (November 2023) A review by Michael Sicinski can be found [[https://www.patreon.com/posts/mechanisms-to-59-93233800|here]] or [[https://kemono.su/patreon/user/14177788/post/93233800|here]] and a shorter review can be found [[https://st.letterboxd.com/film/mechanisms-common-to-disparate-phenomena-59/|here]]. |
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