Norbert Wiener – The Studies of Art, Media and I Have Never Discovered

Final Hyperessay: When Human Dance with Technology – Daito Manabe

Daito Manabe (まなべだいと) is a Tokyo-based interaction designer, programmer, DJ and new art media artist. Launched Rhizomatiks in 2006 which committed to effecting wide-scale social change by bridging the gulf to foster collaboration between media art, industry, and business. He was also selected as one of the 11 most influential people by Apple celebrated 30 anniversary of Mac mark with website tribute in 2014. In addition to high-quality, high-premium and multiple sensory-style performances, his practice is informed by careful observation to discover and elucidate the essential potentialities inherent to the human body, programming, computers and other phenomena.

Music- the medium of human and machine

Daito is also the key creative and technical director of Perfume (Japanese pop girl group) and Elevenplay (Japanese dance troupe). His past works were highly relevant to music, such as concert or music video filming, and were consisted of professional dancers and cutting-edge technology with bright rhythm and futuristic sound effects. Moreover, the performances rarely have any speech and word. Maison de la Culture du Japon à Paris (MCJP) held Fertile Landscape welcoming Daito also talked about his artistic practice. Reprinted from the interview:

If I had wanted to express myself with words, I probably would have become a singer or a writer. The reason I chose music as the medium for expression precisely was that I did not want to use words. That is because I was attracted to the universality of things that are not words.

The music video, “Cold Stares”, is one of his works to present how Daito thought of the relationship among music, human and machine. This video is the collaboration between Daito Manabe and Los Angeles beatmaker, Nosaj Thing featuring Chance The Rapper in 2015. The dance piece by two dancers was produced to express the message in the lyrics—their mental situation and conflict searching for the reason of being and memories, wandering along the border between reality (the real world performed by people) and illusion (the delusional world of Computer Graphics Effect). In the design of performance, Daito frequently utilized each beat and bridge of the music to alternate the real and virtual realities, thereby creating a scenario that dancers and drones mutually support and communicate with each other. The audience seems to be drifting on a virtual-to-reality space with the rhythm of music through the six shots installed on the drones, and sometimes is in a short distance but far away from the performers. Besides, it may be discovered that the virtual reality is filled with a considerable amount of minimal polygon and glitch art. The dirty media artist Jon Cates talked about his approach and inspiration of glitch art in the interview with Randall Packer:

It should be extended to considerations about other aspects of our society beyond art, in which we ignore those who don’t fit into our social ideals of perfection and worthiness.

Unlike Jon Cates took advantage of the glitch to create the imperfections, errors and the aberrations remaining people to face this “problem”, Daito’s glitch presents the essence of the machine and differentiates the real and the virtual world in this work. Each glitch was arranged on the beats and camera movements perfectly. Jon Cates provokes the conflict and contradiction, but this work rather aims to encourage the cooperation between human and glitch. The interview and official website have more details of this work.

The cooperation between human and glitch

Anthropomorphism- Machine-as-human

In Daito’s numerous works, it could be further discussed how he handles the relationship between human and machine. Fly, one of his works in the series of drones created in 2015. The three drones are arranged three-dimensionally in real space through a tracking technology and control system, and the work, in which dancers give performances to find the possibility of a new bodily expression. Working through a set of cameras with motion capture, dancers can physically and intuitively perceive the relationship between the body and data through the computer-controlled drones.

We are constantly experimenting and thinking of ways to create a new form of dance performance by utilizing technologies such as machine and deep learning

Like Daito said, he successfully created a duet dance attended by human and machine by this work. In the first three minutes of the performance, the drones played a supporting role and kept up with the dancer’s movement, but they were able to move individually with the music in the following time as the dancers left. This solo was like to resort to the rhetoric that they are exactly alive and do not doubt their existence to the audience. Anthropomorphism is commonly considered to be the quaint and archaic activity of people far removed in time and place from the complex functioning of contemporary technological society. But anthropomorphism is widespread in modern life, so common that we take it for granted and fail to react to its peculiarity (Caporael, 1986). “When I give an order to a machine, the situation is not essentially different from that which arises when I give an order to a person” Norbert Wiener said in his book, Cybernetics in History. When modern human are used to living with artificial intelligence, Daito dropped a bombshell which reminds us do not forget ignoring the existence and possibility of the machine. However, rather than the majority of sci-fi movies or theories which narrate machine will eventually rule the earth, the author considers that Daito aims to accomplish a co-prosperity of human and machine by this work.

Mechanomorphism- human-as-machine

If anthropomorphism, referring to machine-as-human, is one face of the human machine, we might allow “mechanomorphism,” the human-as-machine, to be its other face. Mechanomorphism is the attribution of characteristics of machines to humans (Caporael, 1986). Thus, Motion, one of Daito’s work, could be a classic example of mechanomorphism. This performance was shown at an Electric Company’s Opening Ceremony in 2015. Integrating the industrial robots and dancers, it aims at making the audience feel and imagine the harmonization of human and robots.

Interestingly, compared with Fly (the previous example), this work has a completely opposite performance that the industrial robots acted alone at the beginning but the dancers joined afterwards. If the purpose of Fly is to express the soul of the machine, the piece could be seen as a demonstration how human get along with these souls. The audience may be attracted in the first half of performance that each robot handed over the cube to another and worked in cooperation, but the fascinating part should be the human dancers acted along with the robots. Nowadays, human always lead the machine and bring them life, but no one can guarantee that the situation may be completely different someday like the dancers mimicked the robot motions as machine-like dance. Nonetheless, the most impressive part is the consistent performance of human and robots (like the below image shows). The piece not only performed human-as-machine choreography but also convey what the mentality of people see machine should be in the future. In this interview, Daito also mentioned that how he is inspired by technology:

No matter how much machinery and algorithms advance, you can re-motivate them creatively in service of a new idea. That process is a lot of fun. I think it is going to become more important that humans have better faculties of judgement when inputting information.

Reference

Caporael, L. R. (1986). Anthropomorphism and mechanomorphism: Two faces of the human machine. Computers in Human Behavior, 2(3), 215-234.

Final Research Hyperessay: New Media Art and Daito Manabe

Daito Manabe (まなべだいと)

He is a new media artist and programmer based in Tokyo, Japan, and launched Rhizomatiks, a new media art company, in 2006. His end goal is not simply rich, high-definition realism by recognizing and recombining these familiar elemental building blocks. Rather, his practice is informed by careful observation to discover and elucidate the essential potentialities inherent to the human body, data, programming, computers, and other phenomena, thus probing the interrelationships and boundaries delineating the analog and digital, real and virtual.

When human meet machine

As the same as other new media artist, Daito Manabe specialize in studying the interaction, relationship and boundary between human and machine. If Magnet TV provided a medium that human can communicate with the machine, Daito’s Yaskawa Electric Robot Village delivered a message how human live with machine together. This performance was shown at a Electric Company’s Opening Ceremony on June 1st, 2015. Integrating the cutting-edge technology, the performance was aimed at making the audience feel and imagine the collaboration between humans and robots as well as the new possibilities of Yaskawa Electric. In the beginning of this performance, audience usually were attracted by the five automatic robots, futuristic music and light effect, then the eyes will turn to the dancers. In the second half of the performance, the robots and dancers had a artistic collaboration which displays the harmony of human and technology in his ideal world. As he thought how machine can achieve what human cannot in this interview:

No matter how much machinery and algorithms advance, you can always re-motivate them creatively in service of a new idea. That process is a lot of fun. I think it’s going to become more important that humans have better faculties of judgement when inputting information.

In the musical realm, you’ll no longer have to be able to play an instrument. AI is going to compose all sorts of new music for us. In the next era, it’s going to be all about foresight and rational judgement, the ability that makes us determine whether something is truly good.

The collaboration between human and machine

New media art tends to a medium or performance that communicates and connects between or among the participants in technological ways. The participants can be human, animals, machines and everything rather than only between human and machine. In Norbert Wiener’s book, Cybernetics in History he also mentioned that:

When I give an order to a machine, the situation is not essentially different from that which arises when I give an order to a person.

If you ask artificial intelligence “Does you speak English?”, then it will commence to analyze the answer should be “Yes, I can.” and enter the three words to you. However, what is the difference of this answer when you ask a real person? Like the 1995’s Japan animation “Ghost in The Shell” narrated, the boundary between human and machine has become more and more blurred. Human are no longer to be seen as a carrier of independent and creative thinking, because no one cannot guarantee machine will have their own awareness. Until now, “what is human?” this question is still controversial in philosophy. Thus, New media art more like a realm to perform the feedback (or a reciprocal exchange) that the participant which learned and responded after receiving an information from each other, and the two-way interaction is not always given by human who interact with human.

If my control is to be effective I must take cognizance of any messages from him which may indicate that the order is understood and has been obeyed.
– Norbert Wiener

From the early example Nam June Paik’s Magnet TV which human interacts with machine in 1965 to 1980’s piece, Hole in Space, which multiple people should cooperate together. Or like Jon Cates demonstrated the result after human meet the non-physical objects, glitch, these cases all gave us a new understanding of interactivity through the different ways and participants. Perhaps we can find the interaction between machine and machine, animal and machine and so on we never thought in the near future.

Additionally, unlike a dance performance or static painting which audience may only be a passive receiver. Everything has been arranged steadily on the stage. An unpredictable performance is the majority of new media art to seek. Such as in the online symposium Annie Abrahams asked every participants close their eyes, everything became more uncertain, and participants should be more concentrate and aware of the surroundings by their ears. Or another piece, Chalk and Blackboard which the classmate shared and designed by Hsin-Chien Huang, you never know what words the previous audience inputted on this third-space. Maybe there are dirty words or a love sentence, the piece is still bare but beautiful because of these unstable factors (or participants). Like Roy Ascott illustrated in his book, Behavioral Art and the Cybernetic Vision, “An important characteristic of Modern Art, then, is that it offers a high degree of uncertainty and permits a great intensity of participation”. The performer is no longer passive, but they can involve in and shape the outcome of a work.

Human and Machine

Besides, Daito has been the pursuing possibilities of relationship and interaction between the body and technology by interacting with a variety of hardware and devices such as robot arms and motor-controlled floating balls. In his 2015 work, Fly(dance with drones), objects are arranged three-dimensionally in real space through a tracking technology and drone control system, and the work, in which dancers give performances, has been presented so as to find the possibility of a new bodily expression.

We are constantly experimenting and thinking of ways to create a new form of dance performance by utilizing technologies such as machine and deep learning

In this performance, working through a set of cameras with motion capture, dancers can physically and intuitively perceive the relationship between the body and data through the computer-controlled drones. As there are two kinds of drone movements – one motion produced by tracking dancer’s movements but also an artificial motion operated on the software – dancers have to be perfectly trained to interact with the drones because they could not always predict how they would move. As my aspect, this piece was not only a meditation on how we see each other and how machines see us, but also narrate how human learn and adapt with machine. More details: site

Who am I, this question always is seen as the beginning of philosophy. However, as the medium of human and technology, new media artists pointed out this issue again and again with their artworks.

Through social networking sites, for example, we all represent different slices of our personality. How can we make sense of the world when we are overwhelmed with different sources of information, when there is such a fluid boundary between fact and fiction? -Maria Chatzichristodoulou

When people participate in The Big Kiss or Telematic dreaming, why they are willing to embrace or even kiss with other person who may just first meet? If they kiss each other in the virtual space, does it also mean that they have a real contact? Or being a hater on the Internet, are they troll in the real world either? Perhaps like this movie Inception, for some people the dream without social constraint is their real world. However, Annie Abrahams demonstrated and gave us a better understanding the nature and quality of the third space environment we increasingly find ourselves in. In my viewpoint, the virtual space inspire our inner personality which is under the social constraint. In here, people become more completed and comprehensive, because they use the past cognition and knowledge to challenge the things they never do.

There’s a certain poetry to the idea of drones seeing humans as human, rather than as lines of code, or however computers “see” things. Was this an attempt to humanize drones, or further our own feelings of detachment?

In these works, the questions are asked again and again:

1. What is the end when human meet technology?
2. What the viewpoint that human see technology and technology see us?

Daito Manabe is seeking and developing a ideal utopia that human and machine live and work harmoniously. Machine see human as human, human can collaborate with machine as human. Alternatively, we are all machine. Like the story of Ghost in The Shell illustrate, the border between human and machine is becoming ambiguous. Even we do not know what human should be like. In the three-space, we explore and learn ourselves again just like the case of Telematic Dreaming human lying besides a stranger as a couple, but we only have a real body in the reality. With the technology, human is walking between the reality and the illusion.

Research Critique: Cybernetics, Nam June Paik and Magnet TV

Cybernetics

In 1948, Norbert Wiener derived this word from a Greek word, cybernēticḗ (meaning governance), and defined as “the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine” in his essay. Nam June Paik described the impact of it as “the exploration of boundary regions between and across various existing sciences”¹. Yet, Ascott suggested that the spirit of cybernetics “offers the most effective means for achieving a two-way exchange between the artwork and its audience”². In the 21st century, the term is often used in a rather loose way to imply “control of any system using technology.”

As my aspect, it might be defined as a scientific approach of how humans, animals and machines communicate with each other through a practical action or interaction.

Nam June Paik

Together the historical concepts of cybernetics, and art works by him, have influenced how electronic art is conceptualized today. His artworks usually combined music aesthetic with technical and performative concern of new electronic media, such as a series of manipulated television sets and the Robot K-456. Personally, there are two crucial elements which indicate the contribution of cybernetics:

1. His use of cybernetics has left an important legacy for contemporary media art
2. Giving a new way to think about the machine in art

Just Paik said “Cybernated art is very important, but art for cybernated life is more important, and the latter need not be cybernated”³, I think he wants to convey if the artwork critiques society through a new technology and medium, society can learn and then grow from it.

Magnet TV

Magnet TV is an early example of Nam June Paik’s “prepared televisions,” in which he altered the television image or its physical casing. Physicist Norman Bauman describes the experience of holding a magnet to a television, and the thrill of seeing magnetic fields in motion. “When you learn to play a Paik TV, you are forced to see these patterns of technology in terms that are different from those you learned in physics”⁴.

Actually, after I searched the relevant studies of cybernetics, there are numerous results and quotes , but it is quite difficult to get a consensus or conclusion to describe what is cybernetics simply. However, I am still fascinated to Magnet TV, and convinced that a good artwork is always beyond the times. This is a quite interesting art of how human, human’s action and machine interact.

Reference

1. NJ, Paik (2004). Paik in Global Groove 2004, p.107.
2. Ascott, R. (1966). Behaviourist art and cybernetic vision. Cybernetica, 9(4), p.247.
3. Wikiquote, NA. from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nam_June_Paik.
4. S, Ballard (2013), Reichardt, [9] p.43.