Abstract

Keywords:
Ectogenesis, Chronopolitics, Necropolitics, Algorithmic Society, Data-driven Algorithmic Systems, Technocapitalism, Technoetic Aesthetics, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Machine Learning (ML) for object detections and classification, Mnemonics, Generative convolutional aesthetics, Convolutional Mnemonics, Speculative Reproduction, Generative power attributed to tubes, Amazonian Tucano people’s cosmology

The paper presents and discusses aspects of the installation “Window Water ${object} Moving (convolutional mnemonics)” (2023-2024) experimenting with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) with ml5.js for object classification to critically address ectogenesis concerning Chronopolitics and related temporal aesthetics in the evolution of Government views, policies and program measures concerning population size and growth. The works address the necropolitical use of humans’ bodies, which can foster economic growth in ways that directly and dramatically impact our tentative friendly permanence on Planet Earth. As if an appropriated and deconstructed hookah could be a ‘metaphorical ectogenous chamber’ — the relational object (plastic bag resembling a biobag for ectogenesis, atomizer, USB camera/P5JS ml5 for object classification, two hookah flexible hoses tubing and handle) — invites the audience to interfere in the mist pattern by ‘blowing through the hoses’ and consequently influencing in the guessing of objects by the machine learning library. The ml5 library is so, guessing ‘objects’ from fluid mist patterns as we guess ‘shapes’ by observing the clouds. The work explores a possible ‘generative convolutional aesthetics’ of ‘objects-as-babies-as-objects’ — as if the only possible ‘babies-outcomes’ our accelerated hypermediated algorithmic society want to produce are ‘objects’ — namable shapes that can be identified by convolutional neural networks’ based libraries. The aesthetics of the trans object and its ‘functioning’ — blowing through tubes and interfering in the mist fluid and mutable patterns, invites us to navigate animistic references to tubes — flutes, shamanic pipes, humans’ respiratory and reproductive organs, and the generative power attributed to them in the Amazonian Tucano people’s cosmology, from the perspective brought by the anthropologist Stephen Hugh-Jones in his “Thinking through Tubes: Flowing H/air and Synaesthesia”.

• Dr. Clarissa Ribeiro, Program Coordinator of the Roy Ascott Studio Advanced Program in Technoetic Arts at SIVA/DeTao in Shanghai, has been honored with the Pete Townshend Endowed Senior Lectureship in Performative Technoetics (2022-2024). Ph.D. in Arts (ECA USP Brazil, Poéticas Digitais/CAiiA hub of The Planetary Collegium, UK), Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship awardee (UCLA, Art|Sci Center/James Gimzewski Lab, US), M.Arch. (IA USP, Brazil), B.Arch, member of the UCLA Art|Sci Collective (2013-present), is the chair of the first Leonardo/ ISAST LASER talks to be hosted in Brazil/Latin America (2017- present). The core of her explorations is the interest in cross-scale information and communication dynamics that impact and shape macro-scale emergent phenomena. She explores the metaphysics of information visualization in subversive morphogenetic strategies that welcome the animistic to navigate ecologies as cosmologies.