Jeff Crouch: Asemics
is going to become more important as AI becomes more pre-dominant. Why?
AI is still fundamentally tied to the concept of symbolic expression,
something which dates back, at least, to the significant linguistic work
of Noam Chomsky, which supplanted the linguistic work of Benjamin Lee
Whorf and made generative grammars vogue. The work of Chomsky greatly
benefitted the development of computing, especially compilers and
computer logix. So, it’s a path that has had its benefits. Yet for me,
such grammars are linked directly to symbolic expression. But Geoffrey
Hinton, the brain behind the use of AI at Google, does not believe that
mental images reduce to pixels, nor does he believe that thoughts reduce
to symbolic expressions. Again, for me, the insight of Hinton is in
line with the insight asemic writing provides. Asemic writing is about
something other than the symbolic, for the most part. So, the path
Hinton provides allows us to re-incorporate the work of Whorf into our
studies and to investigate mind as something largely not
representational, a path which asemics has provided in aesthetics for a
while now.
Cecilia Chapman: This is soooo helpful....I would even suggest the mind was trained to
use symbolic images and got off on the wrong path at the dawn of
history....and has caused a lot of divisive human problems. You know me
and shamans and in a sense I think they helped steer us wrong...by
providing symbols as a way of being helpful, or manipulative and
cunning, to maintain control of the tribe to survive, while they were
the last guardians of the intuitive mind. Which, as primitives going
into space, is a mindset we might need to regain, the intuitive mind,
completely erased of symbolic imagery. I mean we won't need to
communicate about getting the cows into the barn before the storm, or
buying socks for winter or gold before a crisis or supporting a
politician or any of those symbolic messages will we? Coming from a
design background where the message is used to seduce and sell, I find
that hopelessly inept and following the shamans original intent....we
might be encountering new life forms and need to engage on an entirely
different level. Maybe we don't even engage ourselves, but through AI,
then what? Maybe our minds are read, maybe we learn to read
minds...perhaps our minds are too vulnerable and we have to learn to
shut down through advanced forms of meditation and find other
neurological ways to engage. Anyway I don't know about Chomsky and
Hinton and I am going to go read about that. But I totally get the
future-as-here-now uselessness of symbolic thought to engage and I won't
use the word communicate because that implies message which needs
symbols. But in asemic drawing I get to erase my almost senseless
graphic training and explore new ways of visual engagement and
conversation.
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