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Research Timeline
Supervision report (M)
Reading: Frow, J. Character and Person (2014). Ward, M. Seeming Human: Artificial Intelligence and the Victorian Realist Character (2018).
Supervision report (G)
Question: Can the dual mechanism of a code and its ‘expression’ contribute to a revised model of autonomous systems broadly and agents or persons specifically? Could this model be used to engineer a fictional character that could pass a Turing test?
Supervision report (M)
Reading: Dennett, D. C. Real Patterns (1991)
Experiment: Use GPT-2 to generate autocompletions of my performance text, which starts with the phrase, "Are you aware, that between 20-22% of things that happen, actually don't happen?" with varying substitutions for that percentage.
Art Research Presentation: Breathing Space for Voices by Rowena Harris, Erica Scourti & myself. I presented a performance in which I become a fictional character, and followed this with a presentation called Accommodating Others: The Role of Author as Medium, which later formed the basis of a thesis chapter.
Teaching: Began teaching BA CS Y1
Rehearsing & developing three short performances for exhibition at Elephant West: Twenty Percent, Long Term Ethics and The Widow.
Supervision report (G)
Supervision report (M)
Met and started conversation with psychology researcher Sylvia Terbeck of Liverpool University after her talk at Goldsmiths (Whitehead Lecture Series)
Idea: To collaborate on an experiment to test potential therapeutic benefit of my performance method (ST) and to find out about the relationship between the self-estrangment method and the self-complexity psychological measure (KR).
Question: Is ‘character’ a technology of the self which both enables and demarcates the limits of what is thinkable to a person? If so, could a fictional character be a prototype of general AI?
UK Covid-19 lockdown begins
Joined an independent research group, Intelligence Debiased, run by Exposed Arts. Over a period of a year, we will research and discuss non-human or unconventially considered forms of intelligence - my focus is on 'character intelligence'.
Idea: Maybe method comes before question in an art practice? A question might be the final outcome of an art PhD. I might present my thesis in chapter 'pairs': artwork paired with reflection/theory (e.g. Pseudo with Accommodating Others)
New work: Self-Estrangement Methods, Pt II
While part I attempts to neutrally introduce my method, part II demonstrates its application to the topic of our research: intelligence. In this video I switch into a different character. But in the 'neutral' tutorial, I also seem to be performing. When am I not?
Funding: received departmental Research Support Award to translate a performance text (A Ritual Resuscitation of Eternal Lovers) into Arabic, Italian and Lithuanian.
Idea: My efforts at direct activism over the past couple of months seemed futile. My art practice is the best way for me to intervene politically in the world, even if indirectly. My practice seeks to estrange the ideological foundations of personhood. Maybe that's not a superfluous ambition, even in crisis.
Supervision report (G)
Supervision report (M)
Ethics Form
New work: Horse. Ink on paper, A3.
I'm not sure that this is connected to this research project, but I spent some of lockdown returning to older work, such as these empathy drawings. It's been about five years since I made the last one. They conjure for me some of the sensibilities running through Anomaline.
Free writing for Anomaline
New Iteration: A Ritual Resuscitation of Eternal Lovers.
This older-than-the-phd project helps me think about the play script as a computational mechanism for cultivating agents.
New Iteration: A Ritual Resuscitation of Eternal Lovers.
This older-than-the-phd project helps me think about the play script as a computational mechanism for cultivating agents.
Question: Can performance art / acting show that roleplay (both the kind we do automatically in the daily practice of living, and the more deliberate kind), in the sense of ‘taking on a character’, be a factor in the discrimination of ideas, or a factor in ideation?
Anomaline: Wrote Reclaiming the Pen chapter.
Do my characters have an 'agenda'?
Submitted examination entry form
Reading: Dennett, D. C. Freedom Evolves (2003)
Supervision report (M)
Supervision report (M & G)
Reading: studies on bi/multicultural frame switching
Thesis chapter: Drafted sections on Politics of Inner Self & Frame Switching
Anomaline: began finishing first draft of the novel, picking up from “Reclaiming the Pen”.
Anomaline: First draft of the novel completed.
Reading: critical pedagogy theory (By Freire, Carpenter & Mojab)
Anomaline: Revised final third of the novel.
Anomaline: Second draft of the novel completed.
Supervision report (M)
Supervision report (M)
Supervision report (G)
Teaching: Delivered Authors and Agents lecture and drawing experiment to MA Drawing students, Camberwell College of Arts, 5th July
Supervision report (M)
Began experimenting with making video research notes 'in character'.
Simply talking aloud about my research from the perspective of an invented persona.
Published The Shape of a Thinking Thing in Goldsmiths PhD publication
Reading: Enacting Others, Cerise Smith & My Mother Was a Computer, N Katherine Hayles
Idea: Write a video thesis. This will be a playlist of video lectures in which I speak my thesis. It will be a more accessible and intuitive version of the thesis.
Teaching: Began teaching at Glasgow School of Art
Online Course: Mathematics for Machine Learning by Imperial College London
Thesis: Wrote Chapter 5: Classes of Character and a Politics of Inner Self
Supervision report (G)
Started making introspective performances. I initiate the performance method, but comment throughout on the method itself and how I am making decisions. The document forms a basis for reflecting on the 'transition' from an initial character into another.
Supervision report (S)
Supervision report (S)
Supervision report (S)
Teaching: Professional Practice talk for MLitt & MA Curating at the Glasgow School of Art
Supervision report (S)
Started a new series of 8 performance experiments. They are designed to address 'hypothesis 2' of the thesis, that character is the shape of thought available to the human being at the time of adopting it. In these performances I place all my attention on inhabiting character, and allow the story I tell to grow out of that.
Thesis: Wrote Chapter 7: Conclusion
Supervision report (G)
Thesis: Wrote Chapter 1: Becoming a Question
Thesis: Wrote Chapter 2: The Shape of a Thinking Thing
Thesis: Wrote Chapter 3: Code and Expression
Thesis: Wrote Chapter 4: Character, Climates and Formulas
Thesis: Wrote Chapter 6: The Holographic Human: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Thesis: Prepare for digital submission
UK Covid-19 restrictions end
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