I am writing to add more crap to the EPN and to get your opinion on a text.
I've been working on a video about transhumanism. For me this term refers primarily to the "uploading" of human consciousness onto a computer. This is a huge theme in pop culture - think "Lawnmower Man" "The Matrix" or the graveyard in "The Minority Report" (which is actually drawn from a different PK Dick story), etc. However, the most relevant for the purposes of this project is the inimitable "Max Headroom." I never felt that the character was developed to the point where it investigated anything really interesting, but I find it inspiring because it looks at the issue of information loss, translation error, and entropy. Max Headroom's personality was different than Edison Carter, the reporter he was a simulation/avatar of; much less serious, more sarcastic, more egomaniacal, more humorous. The way I see it, these differences are the result of a translation error during the uploading process. Of course, "Max Headroom" never took a hard look at questions like the continuity or doubling of consciousness or the quality of experience of a damaged consciousness. That is what I am trying to do with this new project in which a character (presented, in reference to Headroom, as a glitchy talking head) will discuss his approach to the crossing-over process, what he has discovered about the nature of our "real world" consciousness and his new simulated futuristic consciousness, how it feels to be a damaged mind, and the nature of death (don't think me overly morbid; transhumanism is driven at least in part by a desire for cybernetic immortality).
Below I have copied an excerpt of one "state" of a text which I am damage-processing though google machine translation - presented "as-is," without editing (i.e. if you translated the original text by the same process you would arrive at the same results). This is not the finished text, which will be drawn from several versions of the same text damaged in different ways and collaged together. The character prefaces this monologue by saying "I have to explain something about the nature of those slow times." (I don't want to frame the scene too heavily, as I would like to hear your interpretation.
I have some ((questions)) for you because I am too close to the text and can't see it. I want to know; ((1))what do you think the character is talking about? The text is only partially expository; it resembles one of Burrough's divinatory "cut-up" texts in that the associations you the viewer make between oddly juxtaposed words may be more important than the original text. Divination is a form of knowledge-aquisition that resembles dreaming. Of course, in the final product this will be presented as video, which is much easier to watch, but I wonder; ((2)) do you think that the effort you have to put into reading this pays off? Is it worth it? How? (Don't be shy...). I find the manner of speech to be interesting; the odd grammar, the parsing problems, the wrong words that are decipherable, and the wrong words that are opaque. ((3)) Do you find any beauty in this kind of text? What is the nature of this beauty (or ugliness)? Thanks for your feedback, here it is:
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"""I thought my eyes were opened to how primitive. However, it is now far more complicated than that.
I looked around my apartment, the floor for me to pull out a lot of the solid wall down quietly whirring wind to keep falling against the wire from the ceiling as I was still in my own inside. However, I still do not; flooded with closed eyes I was at full speed, through uncharted territory. Condominium in a series of photographs placed in the same column, quivery a very deep well, a tall, stand in all frames of a three-dimensional photograph FIRUMUSUTORIPPUHYU, cat's eyes as a high median strip.
Through this film, I was in the autumn scramble for the door open window 2000th time shoot out. I am a thousand times, and I go into uncharted territory for the second memo. My eyes are open a blur if it is the world's race, the 1000 smear of bright colors may have, in my eyes, clouds and radiation permitted and tracer bullets streaked contrail, overexposed to the point of understanding the past.
If I were racing world blearily open my heart is burnt out bulb plugged into the sun's core. So most of the time, keeping my eyes closed, and denied the unknown world flooded with only 100 picosecond every time I open a new apartment is still creating a world of fantasy. My cat's eyes blink an automatic camera to film only a nominal presence in my life is a huge potential, beyond the horizon stretched in all directions.
Nevertheless, my eyes just 100 picosecond time is open, this is a short period of time is not infinite. Thunderstorm is a quick rise and fall of Circle slit to the world in a tiny slit of a blur from the race to witness. If I look at so it is very very closely, I can still see the small world of racing a little blur. This is a small, small cracks can observe everything that I have and how I am, my legs on the door, the first step; keep this in mind, please."""
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Thanks for reading and backfeeding. Now here's that thiiing (there's pretty much a load of this crap on YouTube). I like this one because it's all about power paranoia, which is something that I'm into. However, I'm almost always let down by Max Headroom; I think there's some architypical character that he approaches, but does not reach, which may be why I am drawn to this project.
EPN 4 EVA!!!
5 comments:
1. I don't know if that graveyard scene is from Minority Report - I forget. Anyway, there are a lot of movies that approach this idea.
2. It's funny - I never noticed that Max Headroom is nothing but a HEAD floating in a low-tech cybergraphic ROOM before.
3. Anyone who is locked up in a dungeon or in a perpetual state of hyperactive boredom like le moi can find more about machine translation and quantum mind theory on Synesthetic Superscam.
There's something about his personality that seems to stem from a drug-like response to this disassociation with his body. I mean, he seems high. That's Headroom I'm talking about.
This idea of using google translation is to degrade the text is interesting . What about coming up with your own translator?
It seems like the character of your creation is talking about some kind of corporate office park nightmare scenario, articulated with rat-race imagery and hyperactive societal pressures.
G-reg;
It does sound like he's high when he's whispering at the beginning - pot paranoia or something. But, again, most of the time the Max Headroom I see is coherent and telling some crappy story like David Letterman or something. I think ideally he would be exhibiting more of the disassociative effects you are suggesting.
That, and isn't it funny how people assumed that it woud take more computing power to simulate the way someone looks than how they mind functions? Another case of unknown unknowns screwing the loop.
i like how he is the sort of fore-runner to "the blog." it seems especially evident when they show the shots o f him on tv talking to an empty room.
i think max headroom would be a little crazy...i mean...he never really has a two way conversation, and like you said he is trapped in electronic colitary confinement.
i would be interested to see machine translation of human speak...as in a max headroom who you talk to...i guess the best example is when you are on the phone with like verizon or something, and youhave that stupid yes or no robot....like so far robots aint that good at talking to people...i wonder what kind of process they, even the most advanced ones, go through when they are trying to "interpret" human speak. make that....i want to see how far my thoughts and ideas break down so that a simple robot can understand them
also...this relates to a post on synethetic superscam (check the links bar on the right)....about basic english....check it out
Thanks for being my librarian H-dub.
I guess I relate more to the idea of solitary confinement than to dialogue. Er... Yup.
But that was a smart comment about him talking to an empty room. He is always doing that.
Anyway, I was talking to a room full of people who were like 2-10 times smarter than me today (always happens here) about solipsism. As far as I can tell, solipsism isn't rationally falsifiable as an alternative to... er... consensus reality or whatever you call the real world.
To many philosophers and scientists that means that solipsism isn't worth looking at, but what it really means is that both options are equally unprovable. Most smart dudes when confronted with this are just like; well, but yeah, so like, reality just like feels more real to me, it's a simpler explanation, and, I don't know, we know a lot more about it. All of which are crappy reasons.
What I was saying is that this is exactly the region where an artistic/creative mode of knowledge is useful; a lot of rational thought is based on assumptions like "a simple law is better than a complex one" (Occam's razor; one of the most used but least justifiable scientific tools). Examining imponderable assumptions where emotions and intuition are better guides than logic is where the creative mode is clearly more useful than the rational mode of thought.
So, in other words, this project won't make any sense.
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