[Synapse elist] Post from Daniel Bisig

[Vicki Sowry]

Hi all,

its great to see that this month's discussion has already started  
with Reva's introduction and questions.

I would like to start my participation in this discussion by  
outlining my interest in AI and how this interest is reflected in my  
artistic focus. For this reason, this email isn't a direct response  
to Reva's contribution but rather tries to represent my focus as an  
alternative possibility to approach AI and Art.

As has been mentioned in my bio, my very primordial background is  
Molecular Biology. On a practical level, this background has become  
totally obsolete for me but it is still very important on a  
conceptual level that informs my art and links to my interest in  
Artificial Intelligence. So as my first contribution to this list I  
would like to present some thoughts about the relationship between  
these two seemingly unrelated fields and how this relationship serve  
as motivation and inspiration for my activities both as a scientist  
and artist.

Traditionally, AI has been preoccupied with understanding and  
modeling human level intelligence (reasoning, planning, problem  
solving etc). Since then, many researchers in AI have realized that  
some of the main challenges have to do with cognitive capabilities  
that are shared by many animals as well (perceptional capabilities,  
locomotion, orientation etc). This change of focus is accompanied by  
an increasing appreciation of the fact that intelligent behavior  
cannot be understood by focusing on an agent's cognitive capabilities  
only but that the agent's morphological properties, sensory setup, as  
well as its social and physical environment have to be taking equally  
into account. As a result, the breadth of AI keeps increasing and at  
the same time, increasingly simple and primitive systems attract the  
interest of the scientific community. As this tendency progresses,  
our understanding of intelligence reaches a point when formerly well  
established distinctions cease to exist. It is a this point, that AI  
and molecular biology meet. This point forms a singularity at the  
other extreme. Here, the duality between mind and body becomes  
entirely meaningless. The physical, the chemical and the biological  
form a continuum that shifts depending on the mindset of the  
observer. At this point, structure and behavior become equivalent,  
the boundaries between organism and environment diffuse. Live and  
identity emerge from the maintenance of processes. At this point, the  
term intelligence becomes rooted in the immediacy of the physical.  
Intelligence is then the capability to orchestrate interrelated  
processes, to alternate between exposure and protection, between  
modification and preservation of ones own facilities. At this point,  
the distinction between information and matter, perception and  
reaction, drive and dissipation, desire and necessity becomes  
diffuse. For me, this singularity is also a point of great  poetic  
and philosophical attractivity. What do we understand by identity,  
personality and intentionality at this level? At what point does  
meaning and interpretation come into play. Could cognitive  
capabilities manifest at this level either metaphorically or  
literally. Does a foot imprint represent a sand dune's memory? Does a  
stone possess an intuition about rolling?

For me, creating artworks (in particular interactive and algorithmic   
art) is a means to explore and experiment with such issues. It is the  
artificial, that allows me to blend properties of animate and  
inanimate systems. I can combine aspects of autonomous cognitive  
systems with purely passive reactive behaviors in order to create  
artefacts that act like possessed tools. Objects, that at some point  
seem to express personality and intentionality and at some other  
point become passive and moldable. For me, it is interesting to  
investigate how idiosyncrasies emerge from the gain or loss of  those  
capabilities that seems to segregate living from non-living systems.  
Or I like to experiment with interaction scenarios in which the  
response of the artefact shifts between forms that seem to indicate  
levels of mutual understanding and those that resemble purely passive  
reactions.

I hope that these descriptions are able to convey some of the  
motivation and fascination that underly my own activities as artist  
and scientist. Obviously, my interests and activities are positioned  
somewhat at the limit of what many might consider relevant for AI and  
AI based art. Nevertheless, I hope these explanations in combination  
with the contribution of Reva reveal the potential breath and  
diversity of artistic interests and engagements with AI.

I definitively intend to address some of the questions that have been  
posed by Reva. But since it's getting really late and my cognitive  
capabilities are thus deteriorating rapidly, I have to postpone this  
discussion to a later email.

Best regards

      Daniel

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