Nicolas Marechal
What is the role of performativity in designing intelligent objects? A study into the dark side of artificial intelligence through five cinematographic objects used or scripted in the work of Stanley Kubrick
Summary
In their seminal book, Understanding Computers and Cognition (1986), the authors tell us that the main issue with Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an issue of representation. Computer scientists have owned the topic and have been looking at it from a rationalist, Cartesian perspective. The machines would become the human we had never been. Recent attempts to reframe the topic in interaction design have brought Neo-animism as an alternative that takes it sources in indigenous thinking. These approaches bring meaningful progress in the field as they are inclusive to other disciplines such as design and anthropology. There is an opportunity to understand intelligent objects from a new perspective and my proposal is to look at cinematographic things as a source. They have been studied not only for their role in media but as Things-in-themselves. My proposal is to look at these objects as intelligent things, multi-layered objects for the theme they approach, their origins and their performative quality. This intellectual bifurcation allows to see AI in a new light, not only a matter of facts (as the rationalist had us believe) but also a matter of concern (the making and representation as a performance).
Additional info
In this dissertation, I will be looking at a particular set of objects, written or conceived by Stanley Kubrick as a warning of the intricate relationship between human and technology.
Private Pyle’s riffle was featured in Full Metal Jacket (1987). Unlike other films about Vietnam of that time, the riffle is part of a training. What this riffle allows us to talk about is the re-engineering of the human in time of war. As design script object to be used, this film allows us to talk about the morality of objects in the time of war.
The Ludovico machine (aversion therapy) was featured in A Clockwork Orange (1971). The machine offers an interesting parallel with the recent discoveries around social media and their pervasive effects on society. The kind of torture in A Clockwork Orange is interesting as the goal is for the better good, for a better society.
A glove that covers the prosthetic of Dr. Strangelove is featured in
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). A lot of what we consider being AI started around that time. It was then called automation and another invisible machine, the Doomday machine is also featured in that film. The machine automatically responds to a nuclear attack as the best deterrent ever created by man. However, what interest us here is not the general machine but the specific assemblage between humans and machines. Dr Strangelove was a German imports from the Second World War to America and while his allegiance switch guaranteed is survival, his ideas and values declared themselves in a situation of crisis.
Gigolo Joe is a robot from the film AI (2001) by Steven Spielberg. It was based on Stanley Kubrick's development. Gigolo Joe, played by Jude Law, is interesting as he is a helper to the main character as he helps him accept that he is a robot. Beyond the story, which is incredibly rich in themes such as robot consciousness, ethics and robot's dream, the interesting part to me was the development of the character as a robot using a choreographer.
HAL is a voice AI from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1951) and one of the most famous robots in cinema history. Much has been said about this robot and the most recent research deal with the voices of computers. What interests me is not so much the aural material but the speech, what is being said by robot as scripted in cinema, how do they perform the ethic of failure is the thing that, us human, needs to learn from them.
