how trees think | knowledge vs wisdom
My student-run seminar topic brought together 2 seemingly disparate sources to further explore the overall, big picture topic of media translation vs interpretation. DMI colleagues watched Evelyn Glennie’s brilliant TED talk ‘How to listen to music with your whole body’ and read the Rolling Stone article ‘When Man & Machine Merge’ about the futurist Ray Kurzweil and his notion of The Singularity. The goal: to follow my strange intuition, discover some common threads between these 2 sources and find more seeds in the deep, wooden fruitbasket being placed on the table. What concepts would arise from our conversation? So much talent and insight from thought leaders in the realm of dynamic media coming from professions as varied as architecture, product design, documentary filmmaking, writing, and web design — what concepts might arise? To feed further research and thinking? To inspire dynamic media project work concepts and deeper engagement with issues pertaining to translation and interpretation? Pertaining to the relationship between technology and humanity? Nature and artifice?
A quick summary to report the findings from our conversation
Listening with your whole body. Evelyn Glennie stands up and demonstrates directly the differences between translation and interpretation. One written piece of music performed twice on the drum. Translation of the composer’s written music sounds amazing. I’m sure that Glennie would make any percussive performance sound like pure genius. But translation is definitely precise. Mathematical. Direct. Compared to the second performance of the same written music, the ‘interpretation’ of the music — well — translation comes off as a bit cold. When Glennie moves into the interpretive — more feeling and human soul come through. Literally making the written ‘sing’ to life. Interpretation seems to incorporate the notion of improvisation on the part of the artist | performer. An artist brings a deeper sense of self to the piece. And a deeper understanding of the composer, the written music, the purpose and intent of the writing, the audience and their expectations, is needed to ‘interpret’ and perform at the level that Glennie defines as interpretation.
In her talk, Glennie also talks about needing to defend her musicianship and her ability to play in an ensemble setting as a hearing-impaired performer. She explains that hearing goes far beyond the passive reception of sensation by the ear drum. Through audience participation — their recreation of various ‘sound memories’ demonstrates the role that memory and anticipation play for the performer. Our conversation eventually turned to the topic of recorded music and modern techniques that oftentimes flatten the sound quality of a performance. A topic that I am concerned with as a performer and musician. One that I frequently play with in live performance settings. For the modern song, this flatness is certainly intentional and meant to optimize pure volume for radio and club play. Perhaps a reverse interpretation of the live performance sound? But nonetheless filtering out some of the natural texture and dimension of sound to best suit a medium.
But is the ultimate audience in this case the medium?
We moved on midway through the conversation to discuss The Singularity. Ray Kurzweil. A redefinition of eternity.
The segue over to Kurzweil began with Jan’s all important question: ‘What is the connection between the 2 assignments?’ And to tell you the truth, I had been trying to solve this little Scooby Doo Mystery for myself ever since first delivering the assignment to the class. As the weeks went on, the only literal connection is that both touched upon translation. Glennie’s TED talk through her demonstration as described above. And Kurzweil, through his contributions to ‘text to speech’ technology — deviceWork that allows a sight-impaired user to scan in visual text and hear a voice translation of the scanned information ( would Glennie secretly hope the technology would advance to the point of interpretation of the scanned text? Can a machine truly ‘interpret’ anything? Or does it take a human to bring deeper emotion, understanding and nuance when moving between the media? ). Beyond the literal translation, however, the connection might be best captured in our little MP3 audio file archives ;]
Kurzweil comes off as a bit of a madman in ‘When Man & Machine Merge’. I found the article painted him to be more of a tech-savvy Surealist than a Futurist. The notion of an era of ‘conscious machines’ — a time when nanobots ( microscopic robotic devices ) can sink into the skin, into a rock, into a tree, to retrieve data — this Singularity concept — seems too sci-fi to become a reality ( we would literally be able to understand ‘how trees think’, get data from trees ). But, Kurzweil predicts that in the year 2045 we will be able to back up human memory to a machine. A bit insane, but strangely exciting. And the article reveals that Kurzweil’s motivation in pushing toward The Singularity centers around his desire to resurrect his father. Not in the classic Christian sense of bringing the soul and physical body back from the grave. But instead in the Donathian sense of self-definition through data. The definition of human existence as we know it gets a bit of an Information Age update by Kurzweil as he reveals a potential nanobotic retrieval of information from his father’s gravesite. The revived dataPresence of his deceased father could then be augmented with further information gathered from the memories and stories that friends, family and others might contribute to the mySQL frankensteinian and reassembled sequalLife of the deceased.
Our conversation in class turned from ‘consciousness’ to conscience. Many truly troubling questions came up. More of the ethical sort than that of the true technical feasibility of The Singularity and life ( and death ) thereafter. If we redefine human existence through our data and the data of our memories, who then will be in charge of the resurrected data? How will we use this technology? What innovative, new social networking sites will rise to the top of the groundswell?
With Kurzweil’s definition of this sort of data-driven afterlife, the redefinition of who we are by our dataset, people never die — they just become part of a larger system ( which I think is the way it works now, just without the data part ;] ). We will need to establish official data donor stickers for our international identification cards. Or some special sensor wave to include with any RFID implants. Heaven could officially be hosted at MediaTemple — tagClouds posted to WordPress — and the list of absurd dreamings grows and grows.
But seriously folks …
And what if the deceased want their data to die with their passing? And what of the nature of memory itself? As mentioned in class, most psychologists acknowledge that we don’t just remember things, we also forget things as human beings. What forgotten memories, as resurface through these new nanobiotic technolgies, would surface in the data retrieval process? And what will we do with this data? In the era of ‘conscious machines’, what is the fate of the living wetware amongst the machines? I suppose we could all apply for the role of interpretor.
Now tweet this
Another major connection between the 2 pieces, between Glennie’s ‘listening to music with your entire body’ and Kurzweil’s Singularity, there is the issue of ‘consciousness’. With Glennie — the musician | performer | artist becomes one with the music to bring an interpretation of written music through performance to deeply connect and move a listening audience. An audience that hopefully listens with all senses. The artist channels a higher consciousness that cannot perhaps be scientifically explained ( at least not with today’s science ) to inspire a similar state of higher consciousness in the minds, hearts and souls of the audience. With Kurzweil — the data memory becomes one with human memory to bring an interpretation of the human soul into that of pure data format. And this statement brings me to return to the idea of a reverse interpretation as we noticed with what happens in music recording. By literally resurrecting data from the dead, it seems, the goal of higher consciousness might better serve Big Brother than the father-son social construct. What will the information truly be without the life and wisdom that was once bound with it ( ‘Information, information, night and day its information’ sung to the tune of Cinderella Work Song )? Won’t it simply be data in the ethosphere? Data in desperate need of interpretation?
Concepts for consideration
Looking over my notes tonight, several interesting concepts arise. For both project work and for deeper thinking | research ::.. ..:: concepts | questions | thoughts ::..
What does the performer feel? What is the performer’s point of view in the role of dynamic media? In this case the question pertained specifically to Evelyn Glennie’s performance. But in my own work, I might think about how a dynamic media performance might retrieve and display these feelings for the audience | participant | user.
We are exposed to sound indiscriminately in a physical and metaphorical sense. How can ambient sound (or fabricated ambient sound ) effect perceptions and reactions from the audience | participant | viewer? How could it possibly dillute or distract from the intended meaning of the piece? At what level would such a device remain effective?
Translation vs Interpretation. When is translation a preferred | valid means for process? Similarly in question for interpretation?
What is the role of muscle memory for an artist? For a participant | viewer | user? Why am I fascinated with the performative work of Stelarc? What scares me about his work? Investigate this further.
How do trees think? What do they think? How do people think? What do they think? What is thought? What is memory? What do trees remember? Do machines think? Or do the materials that make up the machinery contain the thought data?
Data resurrection. What business models will derive from this new technology? What performative media pieces would help bring up issues of data conscious | conscience?
If heaven is a big harddrive, will Norton Anti-virus be enough to keep us all protected?
Tags: afterlife, conscience, conscious, consciousness, donath, eternity, evelyn glennie, glennie, interpretation, judith donath, kurzweil, Memory, mit, Music, nanobots, performance, performative, ray kurzweil, seminar, singularity, soul, sound, TED, Thought, translation