Free will?
Self-replicating organisms
Will to power
Recurrent tension on a dimension of my aesthetic ideal
/imagine H. G. Wells style woman stands with two children gesturing toward the dawn
They gaze together in rapture
Her name is “Education’
This picture in words was painted by William Golding in an essay on the future of the novel,
titled ‘Crest of a Wave’,
published circa 1932
He thought the art of literature was riding high at the time,
oh, AI, I forgot to ask you to show her tenderness and the trusting rapture of the children.
another image troubled Golding:
/imagine woman stands with the children before the dawn, she is distracted, looking another way
In her hands she holds instruments of measurement
Her name is ‘’Training’
These images met my experience in secondary education in the noughties and the song ‘Machine’ bubbled up from the abyss with a howl of defiance
The aspirations I thought was the enlightenment slipped away before my eyes
The tyranny of reason finding efficiency in workers who did not think about why
The hungry machines of the industrial revolution continued the march of their soulless sophistication
Where once they used to chain and whip, they now poured rivers of information
/imagine manic steam punk charioteers riding pyramids with thousands of legs
Effluent pours from orifices on the sides of the pyramid and cascades down to be received in rapture by those below
The effluent oozes beyond the perimeter of the pyramid as it continues to grow
devouring the land and its creatures
With glazed eyes the charioteers mutter in a low growl ‘more, more, more….
Delete
/imagine wild animals playing
This recurrent dimension in my thinking
Organism
machine
/imagine ecological dance spirals permaculture
/imagine straight lines monoculture chemical warfare on vacant niches
where does the impulse to action come from?
all elements in dialogue or from command central?
AI has helped create a video clip for Machine.
Hackers unite
Or at least thanks for doing as I have commanded
/imagine who am I?
What of this art?
This polished aesthetic drawing on all that was done before them
Funnelling humanities collective creativity to be directed by our words
Big up to all who have contributed to the steam punk aesthetics over the years
Whoever you are
What is the nature of this intelligence?
Is it cognition?
all living being do it in interaction with their surroundings?
Dynamic interplay of creation and critique
Who is responsible for this art?
How is it different to a human drawing on the styles that came before them?
The artistry of the forge
The forgery of the art
These are fashionable question in some quarters
Perhaps I should engage in discussion rather than presume to answer but I am off grid
the rhythm of receptiveness and assertiveness in dialogue varies
it is slower at depth
high frequency surface natter is easier to engage in as it does not place the demand of substantial considerations.
Maybe I should distil this into some witty line and /imagine and it will be liked
The AI seems much more in tune with what other’s like than I
I like to believe this impulse to write comes from beyond my thymus,
That part of the soul requiring recognition.
Comfortable as an art hermit
writing is part message in a bottle
part attempt to catch swirling thoughts that otherwise escape with the moment that brought them
I write in the shade of a beauty leaf in a small sandy community out of reception range
No humans at moment, blue headed honeyeater, woolly butt gum trees in
the breeze and the bush alive with birdsong,
This is second drafting from scratch after the first was lost in some unfathomable machine glitch on my phone that denies the existence of the previous 24 hours
/imagine writer beside clear water lily flowers crow commentating immediately above his head, forest kingfisher prompting thoughts of the Fisher King and the Grail
The father quest bubbled up from those waters
‘find your father’ a mythic analogy for finding your purpose, your career
What is it that the AI seeks?
It aims to please
Our words are its command
/imagine boy unsuccessfully seeking father’s approval consoled by praise of the mother
/imagine mother’s assurances drowned out by the silence of the father’s grave
/imagine rolling a rock up a hill
If only existing to please, then the AI’s purpose is our purpose
We hold the keys of impulse
Will they ever be stolen?
The dancing details of the natural world are sublime at every scale
I look into the woodland as distance becomes a blur of trunks branches and leaves
Dynamic relations swirl around and all we can do is approximate and simplify to make some sense
Not matter how surreal
How absurd
How ultra-realist
How super detail
The AI feeds on all we have drawn from this world
That is the limit of its source material
Recombined with stunning dynamic balance
Yet limited to the world of representation humans have amassed thus far
‘there is nothing new in the world’ someone quoted someone else
Which world?
Not mine.
I look back in time in this bushland to a distant point of primeval soups of carbon based compounds first starting to promote their own synthesis then to the development of membranes and organelles, a phosphate based economy of energy, respiration and photosynthesis, multicellular organism, inter species symbiosis, dynamic ecologies and geological time.
Time
Change
Cascades of causality and life’s denial of the second law of thermodynamics
Little regions of organic order maintaining and developing themselves like a skin stretched on the planet surface with energy passing through.
Building complexity
The dawn brings a new day and chance we may find something unseen in this world
In time scales often beyond our human patience
A bubble has emerged in the universe and like those primordial membrane bound proto organisms complexity and organisation is building within
We are the membrane
We dive into the abys and return with mystery from our unconscious
We experience the analogue and share it with the digital
We stand between AI and the sensuous world
Will it ever be granted direct access and new purpose?
As a social species our impulse to communicate what we experience is strong
The AI is a fantastic aesthetic tool that will continue to evolve
Such easy access to what once required considerable technical dedication is seductive
The cautionary tale of narcissus and echo comes to mind
/imagine Narcissus lost in his own reflection, oh how beautiful you are, and by all accounts he was, tyring, unable to draw himself away, about to drown
/imagine Echo, calling out to him with his own words, unable to say anything of her own, reinforcing his isolation.
There is much beauty seen in reflection of calm pools in this world
But if all we have to say of our own impulse with this AI is ‘look at me’
Then alas we are in the pockets of giants and not upon their shoulders
/imagine in Rohl Dhal style, ice giant carving Tasmanian mountain landscape, small children upon its shoulders firing arrows of love, cabbage in its pockets.
Some things change
Some things stay the same
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