Abyss

FIRST YEAR OF RESEARCH ON THE ORACLE MACHINE (April 2009)

When the abyss looks at me
During this year (September 2008 – March 2009) working on the Oracle Machine I had a chance to better identify the field of my research and my objectives, as well as the techniques and the theoretical back-ground I have to be confronted with. My main question concerns the dynamics of 'decision making' in contemporary urban globalized societies, starting from the opposition and differentiation between primitive and industrial decision making. In post-modern world decision making appears to be more controversial, as it can also be interpreted as a merchandise in itself (the trade in decisions); the homogenization of commodities, space and place, the deformation of perception generated by fast communication and low cost travelling, are multiplying the possibilities of action, and this widening of possibilities is provoking dismay and disorientation in individuals. I question whether this abyss of uncertainty which turns its gaze upon the human Self can be overcome through the use of tools that mediate a relation with a supernatural which is now, otherwise, completely lost. If instinct and the relation with natural ambience and environment are at risk, humans are still living in a open Universe, assuming scientific development historically decreed the metaphysical drama of the "death of God", in the sense that science and religion do not interweave anymore a hierarchic relation, whereas in the past religion tried to subordinate scientific achievement to its assumptions. Echoing Shakespeare, the question is: why does it take so long for Hamlet to act? Hamlet is in the trap: human beings are excessive (they are not anymore the centre of the Universe), the order from cosmos to senseless infinite has lost its subject, it is time for comprehension, and the Self disappears in the symbolic: universal laws govern and describe relations and cosmic constitutions, language and social structures. The point of subjectivity is lost: relations between elements exist beyond the elements themselves. According to Jacques Lacan, anxiety is induced by the loss of the Ego, and it can be defined as that affect whose object is unknown. Thus the decision processes I am interested in are not necessarily crucial or critical, but are, rather and more precisely, those which engender anxiety and a loss of the capability of judgment, will, and liberum arbitrium. The relation with multiple possibilities and the question of undecidability is providing a further perspective on this unknown object, which nothing else is if not the Self, lost in the reflecting mirrors to outher dimensions, establishing a kaleidoscopic relation with its own projection, and the Self becomes unknown.

Undecidability
Approaching such critical point from a multi-disciplinary perspective, my aim is to study the phenomenon of "undecidability" from general, physical, mathematical, and metaphysical point of view in order to contextualize the social impact that such mechanisms may have on individuals. As a practitioner artist, I am going to develop and transform the abstract theoretical reflections and the speculation in the following, practical way: I will build seven machines, each based on a peculiar implementation of a software I am writing capable of making decisions for people. In this sense, my study is not only trying to analyse the phenomenon, because it is proposing an instrument which can be used both to solve the problem of decision making, and to gather information on humans and their relation with others, themselves, and the surrounding world.

Alan Turing and the book of change
The main references for the research underlying the development of this software are Alan Turing, father of modern computer science, and the I Ching or 'Book of Change'. Alan Turing was the first to introduce the concept of 'oracles' in machine theory, in his PhD thesis, where he introduced the notion of relative computing; this was further explored in his later investigations, where the ‘oracle’ becomes the element able to perform, as if by magic, an uncomputable operation. An oracle is infinitely more powerful than anything a modern computer can do: Turing defined ‘oracle-machines’ as machines with an additional configuration in which they ‘call the oracle’ so as to take an uncomputable step. These oracle-machines are not purely mechanical: they are only partially mechanical, like Turing's choice-machines. Indeed the whole point of the oracle-machine is to explore the realm of what cannot be done by purely mechanical processes and to bring to possibility of logic functioning one step further. The other reference, the Chinese classic text called I Ching (or The book of Change), is a symbol system used to identify dynamic tendencies in the transforming of events. The text describes an ancient system of cosmology and philosophy that is deeply rooted in archaic Chinese culture. The cosmology centres on the idea of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as processes, and the acceptance of the inevitability of change. Based on a combinatory system of two main symbols, the continuous line or the broken line, the 64 symbols show a constant modification and unstable configurations, which can be interpreted, in a sense, as deferring an absolute formalization; this metamorphic structure and its intrinsic binary representation make it one of the first structured binary languages. Both Turing's Oracles and the I Ching are systems that manifest at a level above that of logic, they appeal to a level of inscrutability which calls upon supernatural intervention, a 'Deus ex-machina' to take us humans out of our impasse. In this sense, both software and I Ching are systems of logic which can appeal to a higher sphere (one that is perhaps understandable as supernatural) to overcome human limits.

Formalism and trust
What we learn from our everyday experience in the technologic world of comfort and commodities, is that machines are intrinsically different from humans. First of all, they are honest: machines are not programmed to lie to people, and, whenever they make a mistake, they would declare it. Whereas humans tend to deny or hide mistakes, machines pre-emptively advise us of any possible error. Thus, when we learn how to use machines, we learn how to trust machines. Living in a open Universe, living in a open and relative Universe, we are exposed to a wide variety of syndromes: whereas we do not have faith, still we trust machines. The machinic identity, its properties and predicates, do make machines closer and more similar to supreme, supernatural entities. But machines are also tools. It is common belief that when humans do not understand what technology is doing, then magic is happening. There are many points of contact between a theory of magic and software mechanisms: both magic and software are formalistic, imply spells and the use of tools, involve numbers and formulas, repetition and loops, and minimal representation. Both magic and software cannot be wordless, they imply transformation, transmutation, a change of state, some result, and a main effect, or event. Between a wish and its fulfilment there is, in magic, no gap, just the time to process the receipt. My references for a general theory of magic are Marcell Mauss and Bronislaw Malinowski. I analysed the structures of magic as they delineate them, comparing it with the constitutional functioning of software.

Generative semiotics and the structuralist method
To approach the symbolic system of I Ching, I use the instruments of the generative semiotics of the 'Paris School', which is based on that linguistic tradition originated from De Saussure and Hiemslev, and whose most representative member is Algirdas Greimas. According to the generative hypothesis, semiotics is the study of systems and processes of signification. The basilar postulate is that the signification of a text can be articulated in different levels, from the most abstract to the concrete, along the 'generative trajectory'. The instruments of semiotics are useful to study not only the field of action in its specific sense, rather that of transformation and deviation of this action, following a conception, at least for what semiotics of Greimasian influence is concerned, which interprets the act starting from its intrinsic strategic nature. According to the semiotic perspective, every subject taking part in a interaction is composed of different functions, which are progressively filled of different modal propositions and values, that are 'will', 'have to', 'can', 'know', 'believe', 'be', and 'make'; such modalities, inherited from linguistics, can constitute different combinations forming a subject which can be described as a multiplicity of agents accomplishing different plans of action. In this sense, subjectivity is not a compact and monolithic structure, because the stratification of the subject is constituted of different layers and levels interweaving a dynamic balance, thus the interrelation among subjectivities is interpreted by semiotics as a 'polemic' exchange of fluctuating modalities that are components of action. The binary conception conceives the constitution of languages, up to the construction of sense and signification, through differences: sense would not be given in any positive and atomistic manner, but through disparity and relations between differences. Any value, or component, that constructs a significate, would be given by the difference in relation to another value. This structuralist method, which represents my back-ground from the University of Bologna, will be the main tool I will use to extract matrixes, patterns and paradigms of operational functioning that I will translate in algorithmic language and software, in order to construct a back engine (that of the software) whose operational method is not random, statistic, or simply logic, but over logic, in the sense that: it appeals to magic structures, it is promising a positive effect, it requires trust and, especially, it waves the responsibility of the action on the entity Machine.

References:
Greimas Algirdas Giulien, Del senso, Paris: Seuil, 1970. Milano: Bompiani, 1974.
Greimas Algirdas Giulien, Del senso 2. Narratività, modalità, passioni. Paris:
Seuil, 1983. Milano: Bompiani, 1984.
Greimas Algirdas Giulien, Semantica Strutturale, Rizzoli.
Jaques Lacan, Le séminaire, Livre X: L'angoisse. Paris: Seuil, 2004.
Bronislav Malinowski, Magic, science, and religion, and other essays. Free Press, 1948.
Marcel Mauss, A general theory of magic. London: Routledge and K. Paul,1972.