New Animal Machine

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NEW ANIMAL MACHINE KAIT CARTMELL G R A DUAT E T H E SI S 2022

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Situated within the Digital Space and is formatted in a post-anthropologica Machine takes the title of main chara long been agents of environmental cha the natural order¹. Referencing Donna Animal Machine takes on the form of natural but are constructed, like a cyb be reconstructed. Being a cyborg is n oneself, it is about networks. Cyborgs networks, constantly feeding informati the line to the world wide web.²

The carbon in this New World becom evolved human form coexists with the E and moving between the opposite spe as a gradual decline into disorder, En participates in the simulated cycle. If t the human point of view) then the pro consistent and predictable.³ The shift important tension that the characters p the forefront is what humans have hid an essential part of the New Animals’ l

Computation, although not new, can n perception⁴. It makes up the Network, exist together. In the Network, all spec New Animal Machine becomes the co from system to system. Our new char about life lived along lines, not at po creatures of all kinds create generation

Entropy increasing, how

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d after Computation, this New World al world - one where the New Animal acter. As spatial actors, humans have ange while separating themselves from Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, the New an evolved human. If humans are not org, then given the right tools they can not about the freedom to reconstruct , like an old forest, are a collection of ion, like carbon, back and forth across

mes entropic transformation and this Entropic Species, affecting each other ctrums of decay and growth. Depicted ntropy becomes a character itself as it the sacred is what disrupts order (from ofane represents cycles of life that are between the sacred and profane is an participate in. In this world, brought to dden from their eyes and now becomes lives.

now be utilized by actors as a means of , which is the web in which all species cies are dependent on each other. The oders that pass Entropy and nutrients racters take on a tentacularity that is oints or spheres.⁵ In this New World, ns of interlaced trails.

w long before I am dust.⁶

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1. Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy. “Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment”, Design Earth, 2019.

2. Donna Haraway, “Tentacular Thinking; Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene”, 2016.

3. Judy Kuo, “Deconstructing Bataille: The Sacred and the Profane”, 2015.

4. Benjamin Bratton, “Some Trace Effects of the Post-Anthropocene: On Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics”, E-Flux #46, 2013.

5. Donna Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto”, 2000.

6.Imogen Heap, “Neglected Space”, 2011

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VOCAB

Entropy >>>

Sacred >>>

“Lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder. A thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.”¹

For Bataille, the sacred encompasses that element of ‘inner experience’ whose opacity defies any homogenous social structure or knowledge. It disrupts order, and tempts us toward destruction, in its irreducible heterogeneity — in its ‘useless expenditure’, ‘waste and destruction’. Yet despite this ‘rational world’ which man has ‘built up’, the sacred eternally returns as ‘a sickness’ in spite of any attempt to achieve its rational suppression. The sacred is radically beyond in this way, evading definition, limitation, or rationalisation, yet invariably central to human existence.⁵

Entropy is the central action within this world. It’s the movement of the sacred into the profane. Entropy creates change and begins the cycle of decay to growth and growth to decay.

Cyborg >>> Cyborgs can be figures for living within contradictions, attentive to the naturecultures of mundane practices”² The next machine, the one that comes after Computation, is the evolved human in a new form. If humans aren’t natural but are constructed, like a cyborg, then given the right tools, they can be reconstructed. But being a cyborg isn’t about the freedom to reconstruct oneself. It’s about networks.

Cyborgs, like an old forest, are a collection of networks, constantly feeding information, like carbon, back and forth across the line to the world wide web.³ The new animal machine will most definitely be a cyborg.

Profane >>> In contrast to the sacred realm, the world of the profane is the realm of the social where there is guarantee of ‘the stability of meanings’, of definition and order, of homogeneity in understanding. By this definition, the profane is everything we come to know as hierarchy, order, knowledge, language, and institution. Profane life is therefore a means by which we cope with the abyss of the chaotic and unknown, which constitutes the backdrop upon which profane rationality is both founded and perpetually disrupted. The profane always attempts to construct order on the backdrop of the chaotic sacred and human beings must constantly experience this constant tension.⁴ 4

Xenogeopolitics >>> Humans’ experience in relation to the earth has only been from that of a geopolitical aesthetic. It is a narrative whose essential subject matter focuses only on the inter-relational.⁶ The earth as a meditating polis can only be thought through aesthetics derived from the computation of possible geometries, subdivisions, doubles, inversions, localizations, and Hubblescale adoptions from the outside.⁷ From an exterior computational perspective, the humans’ existence can move past a nearly extinct Anthropocenic one. For humans to engage, they must take on a computational approach and retrain the work of the political towards a direct engagement with what succeeds and exceeds it. Humans will have to learn to measure that in which they have always been embedded but cannot perceive.

Connections >>> The term comes from the quote from Donna Haraway’s article Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene “Nobody lives everywhere; everybody lives somewhere. Nothing is connected to everything; everything is connected to something.”

This statement rids of the more commonly known philosophy that everything is connected to everything.

Haraway emphasizes that the proximity of connections

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ULARY

matters who we are bound up with and in what ways.

The brand of holist ecological philosophy that emphasizes that everything is connected to everything, will not help us here. Rather, everything is connected to something, which is connected to something else.

While we may all ultimately be connected to one another, the specificity and proximity of connections matters who we are bound up with and in what ways.

“And so, we need to understand how particular human communities, as well as those of other living beings, are entangled, and how these entanglements are implicated in the production of both extinctions and their accompanying patterns of amplified death.”⁸

1. Oxford Dictionary, “Entropy” 2. Donna Haraway, Companion Species 3. Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto 4. Judy Kuo, “Deconstructing Bataille: The Sacred and the Profane”, 2015.

5. Judy Kuo, “Deconstructing Bataille: The Sacred and the Profane”, 2015.

6. Oxford Dictionary, “Geopolitics”.

7. Benjamin Bratton, “Some Trace Effects of the Post-Anthropocene: On Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics”, E-Flux #46, 2013.

8. Donna Haraway, Tentacular Thinking, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene.”

9. Donna Harawy, Companion Species, p. 12.

10. Timothy Morton, Lectture on Kant’s Critique of Judgment 11. Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto

Coexistence >>> Coexistence or co-habitation come up many times in Haraway’s Companion Species. The use of this term is along the same vein as Connections but with an emphasis on “significant otherness”. None of the partners pre-exist the relating.⁹ Additionally, in Kant’s Critique of Judgment he writes of a beauty that goes beyond the human being and there’s beauty in death and the unknown. There’s beauty in the feeling of uneasy coexisting - when two companions could destroy each other but won’t.¹⁰

Network >>> The network is the web in which all species exist together, including humans. In the network, all species are dependent on each other. Humans have come to believe that their connection to the network is unnecessary, but this mindset is what has brought on the Anthropocene and what will bring on a posthuman Post-Anthropocene. Just as fungi in a forest, humans must become the coders that pass carbon and nutrients from system to system. Humans must adapt a tentacularity that is about life lived along lines, not at points or spheres. ¹¹ Creatures of all kinds create generations of interlaced trails.

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PRECED

Ian Cheng, Emissary Forks at Perfection

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DENTS

In Ian Cheng’s project series Emissaries, he develops “live simulations,” living virtual ecosystems that begin with basic programmed properties, but are left to self-evolve without

authorial intent or end. Cheng’s digital worlds are driven by a technology in which narrative agents behave within coded parameters, but on their own terms

Ian Cheng, Emissary in the Squat of Gods

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PRECED

Everything, David OReilly

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DENTS

Everything is a simulation game where the player has the ability to explore a procedurally generated universe and control various objects within it. The game uses a number of

levels of “existence”, representing different length scales, which the player can move between as they shift into different objects

Everything, David OReilly

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CONT

I’m using a previous theory article as context for the worlding process. Starting with the ‘New Animal Machine’ as the main character, interacting, affecting and being affected by organisms around them through simulated behavior trees.

Geopolitics vs Xenogeopolitical Aesthetics: Geopolitics - a narrative whose essential subject matter focuses only on the inter-relational.¹ The earth as a meditating polis can only be thought through aesthetics derived from the computation of possible geometries, subdivisions, doubles, inversions, localizations, and Hubble-scale adoptions from the outside”².

Xenogeopolitics - From an exterior computational perspective, the humans’ existence can move past a nearly extinct Anthropocentric one. Retrain the work of the political towards a direct engagement with what succeeds and exceeds it. Learn to measure that in which has always been embedded but not perceived.³

1. Oxford Reference, Oxford University Press, Geopolitical Aesthetics 2. Benjamin Bratton, “Some Trace Effecs of the PostAnthropocene: On Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics:, 2013 3. Benjamin Bratton, “Further Trace Effects of the PostAnthropocene”, Machine Landscapes: Architecture of the Post-Anthropocene:, 2019

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TEXT

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CONT

Project Synopsis: SACRED PLACE Sacred Place is an animation that depicts the extraction of ‘natural’ elements from a human-free planet and puts them on a pedestal for preservation. It begins through the lense of a National Geographic-like documentary. The viewer is taken on a visual journey through the planet. While this happens, it becomes clear that elements are being captured by a vague technological system. Eventually, the frame zooms out to reveal that the planet and its elements are being displayed in a gallery setting where scientific names have been assigned to each element.

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TEXT

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There are different ways of seeing We are watching many things at once and we see more than we think.

Sliding through a crack in the foundation reveals another world beneath.

Living things always move and our eyes move to follow.

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There’s stillness in the distance.

When we get closer, we see movement where there once was none.

Surprised by what we’re looking at, we try to make sense of what is here.

We bite our tongues as we find the words to say, breaking teeth.

Finally, we put our discoveries on display.

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CHARACTERS

Four Categories of Characters 1. New Animal Machine 2. Entropic species 3. Architecture 4. Infrastructure The question of how architecture becomes animal is entwined, especially today, with how animality (and in fact, animals) become architectural.¹

New Animal Machine The New Animal Machine is the evolved human in a new form.² If humans aren’t natural but are constructed, like a cyborg, then given the right tools, they can be reconstructed. But being a cyborg isn’t about the freedom to reconstruct oneself. It’s about networks. Cyborgs, like an old forest, are a collection of networks, constantly feeding information back and forth across the lins to the world wide web.³ Visuals: This character’s most effective form to a human audience should alude to a human-like character. It will contain human-like actions but it will move through the world in a narrative manner. They have a goal, which will be determined later on.

Entropic Species The supporting species act as agents of change, chaos, growth, and destruction. They’re the entropy that affects the New Animal Machine. They receive information from the New Animal Machine and send it back recoded.

Visuals/Behavior: Entropic species are not the main character but are the most important one. They move through the world in a cybernetic manner. They react to other characters automatically and usually have one task. These are the simulations and will have a tentacularity in their visual representation.

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Architecture Architecture is rebuilt to participate in entropic energy that moves between characters, therefore positioning architecture as a character on an equal playing field.

It becomes tentacular with an underground network of communication, much like trees in a forest. When one fails, it feeds other others and produces new growth.

This is what habitation in the Digital Space means. It’s network time is flattened by digital images that map a cosmogram. ⁴ Computation, although not new, can now be utilized by actors as a means of perception⁵. It makes up the Network, which is the web in which all species exist together. In the Network, all species are dependent on each other. The New Animal Machine becomes the coders that pass Entropy and nutrients from system to system. Our new characters take on a tentacularity that is about life lived along lines, not at points or spheres.⁶ In this New World, creatures of all kinds create generations of interlaced trails.

Infrastructure Infrastructure is typically defined as the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.⁷ In this world, infrastructure is the residue left over from information exchange between entities. This implicates that infrastructure is not a part of the cycle of life but the excess that eventually contributes to the end of a species.

1. Rona Pondick, “ Bratton – Flesh + Form”, 2010 2. Benjamin Bratton, “So me Trace Effecs of the PostAnthropocene: On Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics:, 2013 3. Donna Haraway, :Cyborg Manifesto:, 2000 4. Machine Vision - Benjamin Bratton in conversation with Mike Pepi and Marvin Jordan 5. Benjamin Bratton, “Some Trace Effects of the PostAnthropocene: On Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics”, E-Flux #46, 2013.

6. Donna Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto”, 2000.

7. Oxford Dictionary, “Infrastructure”

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SPECIES 1

S A C R E D < - P R O FA N E

RESIDUE

ENERGY

S A C R E D - > P R O FA N E

ANIMAL MACHINE

SPECIES 3

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SPECIES 2

ENTROPIC

ARCHITECTURE

INFRASTRUCTURE

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ARCHITECTURE

The human body is by tradition, a first architecture: a dwelling that precedes the worldly habitat.¹ The An Architecture has looked towards the speciic humanity of the body for its telos. When the body is always in a constant flux of animate formation and deformation and the image of stablity is only an image of frozen movement.² We stand on a pedestal, which freezes us in time as a sacred entity.

Here, Architecture is rebuilt to participate in entropic energy that moves between characters, therefore positioning architecture as a character on an equal playing field - no tiered pedestals. It becomes tentacular with an underground network of communication, much like trees in a forest. When one fails, it feeds others and produces new growth.

This is what habitation in the Digital Space means. It’s network time is flattened by digital images that map a cosmogram.³ So what is our cosmogram? I’ll begin by looking at stories. Stories are a means for understanding the world, for nurturing new habits of seeing, and, ultimately, for projecting alternative forms of organizing life.⁴ So what stories have we told so far and what narrative can be told for a world entangled in a network rather than living from node to node?

1-2. Rona Pondick, “ Bratton – Flesh + Form”, 2010 3. Machine Vision - Benjamin Bratton in conversation with Mike Pepi and Marvin Jordan 4. Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy. “Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment”, Design Earth, 2019.

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Everything, David OReilly

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