<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title><style type="text/css">p.MsoNormal,p.MsoNoSpacing{margin:0}</style></head><body><div style="font-family:Arial;">Steve,<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">the sloshing space might be in the world of games that are blurring the boundary between on-line and physical reality - Pokemon go would be a trivial and simplistic example. This is an emerging SF trope - see Waltern Jon Williams, <i>This is Not a Game</i> - or my favorite Daniel Suarez <i>Daemon</i> and <i>Freedom</i> (same story over two novels).<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">davew<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div>On Fri, Jan 22, 2021, at 9:46 AM, Steve Smith wrote:<br></div><blockquote type="cite" id="qt" style=""><p>Jon -<br></p><p>I appreciate your observation about approaching the UV from
either side, there is definitely an asymmetry, though as with my
earlier references to "estuarial" it seems like there must be some
intermediate territory where one can wash or slosh back and forth
each direction and find some commutivity? I suspect *someone*
has done some research/investigation on this in the realm of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reMRbvXfqAo">Max Headroom</a>?
I didn't bother to Google but it seems like synchronicity if
someone hasn't done a Headroom workup on Trump, especially with
"Network XXIII, a world where nothing matters but ratings!".<br></p><p>I am also reminded (as I often am) of the <a href="https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.75.057201">Inter-reality</a> work of Gintautas and Hubler when I see the coupling, for example,
of the slime-mold and the robot face and when I think of the
coupling of individuals in social network contexts like Instagram
(followers and influencers) where the fans influence the
influencers as much as vice-versa, or in odd hysteresis loops.<br></p><p>I think your point about identity and sources of information are
very relevant (and related to what I said last paragraph about who
is leading and who is following or who's influencing the
influencers).<br></p><p>- Steve<br></p><p><br></p><blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:1611258005820-0.post@n2.nabble.com"><div>From a naive glance, there appears a misleading duality, that of
approaching the valley from one side or the other. For instance,
the use of puppets to bring the non-human closer to the human: Jim
Henson's work, the dancing figures in Kimmel's piece, the neural
net fake exemplified by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rkQn-43ixs&ab_channel=NowThisNews" target="_top" rel="nofollow">"Nixon's moon landing"</a>, neural net <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lE9tV9vm0&t=385s&ab_channel=TeroKarrasFI" target="_top" rel="nofollow">fever dreams of photorealistic models
that never existed</a>, or the now all-to-common place notion of
an embedded avatar as in "Snow Crash", "All Tomorrow's Parties",
"The Matrix" ... <br></div><p>From the other side come humans moving closer to the non-human
or even simply a different human: plastic surgeries and botox'd
lips, Thailand's cross-dressing prostitutes, internet
catfishing, Victor-Victoria, "Boy's don't cry", butoh dance,
(acting in general?).<br></p><p>What seems strange to me is that in any puppet-puppeteer case it
is not always clear that it is one bringing the other closer to
the valley. It doesn't even appear to be directly a function of
*being human* as in the case of this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0i-Df4w4KY&ab_channel=NewScientist" target="_top" rel="nofollow">slime mould driven robot face</a>. Here
a non-human puppeteers a non-human face, the combination of
which drives an observer toward the uncanny valley.<br></p><p>Other times, it isn't about misrepresentation but rather
identity tracing or a transformation of representation. There is
the holding fixed of Dorothy as she moves from black-and-white
to Technicolor, the holding fixed of Mary Poppins as she enters
an animated-context, or the transformation of Milo to "animated
Milo" as he passes through the phantom tollbooth.<br></p><p>There are also those themes that appear in some religions and
sci-fi where humans themselves are vessels available to "ride"
as puppets: Ghost in the Shell, Altered Carbon, or in the case
of loa. An interesting, though tangential, case is that of stop
motion animation. Here, it isn't really puppetry nor strictly
animation. Like the former, there is something of an artifact in
the world. Something that is there to be manipulated. Like the
latter, these manipulations are enacted by something outside of
time, part of a time outside of time, in-between the frames.<br></p><p>Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of such a frontier isn't
being able to tell the difference between a fake or not, but not
caring about the sources of information. With deep fakes come a
kind of modularity, one where *voice* is treated like a backend
to be swapped out. The *voice of Nixon* is lost among many or
any.<br></p><p>Here, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iZuffHPDAw&ab_channel=NewChinaTV" target="_top" rel="nofollow">China has already taken the plunge</a>.
We can all see that these news anchors are AI, and no one
questions this
fact. What becomes questionable, or rather obscured, is whose
perspective we are presented with. But, this is already the case
at once whenever scripted news is decoupled from whatever it is
to be journalism. Again, I cite the *Telecom act* and the
disappearance of the radio disc jockey.<br></p><p>Lastly, there is the cyborg revolution. I am thinking of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cyborg_Manifesto" target="_top" rel="nofollow">Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto"</a>,
or every time I prepare a post by googling, looking through my
books, or more generally consulting my extended mind. <br></p><div><hr width="300" align="left">Sent from the <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/">Friam mailing list archive</a> at
Nabble.com.<br></div><div> <br></div><div> <br></div><pre class="qt-moz-quote-pre">- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
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