Collaborating with the enemy

possible symbiosis in times of adversary networks

Abstract

There is no possible emphasis that allows us to actually represent the exponential acceleration of development of digital agents, Generative AI’s, systems that use part of our culture as a dataset and develop particular modes of intelligence, agency and production. What we can infer and intuit, not only about each system itself, but about the way we relate to these interfaces, about ourselves, our desires and the creative use of these platforms. What these systems can mean for our poetic processes, and for a varied experience of distinct temporalities, symbiosis, practices and presences.

Starting from the debate established by Santaella on the symbiosis of humans and technologies, from the concept of tertiary media in Pross in the reading of Norval Baitello, in the concepts of line and surface, by Flusser, and in Byung-Chul's visions of temporality and ritual experience Han and Hans-Georg Gadamer, in addition to the simulacrum in Baudrillard, composite objects by Graham Harman, agency in Gell and the contemporary in Agamben, it is possible to think more deeply about digital entities and functions, and from there, analyze the emergence and part of the expressive potential of generative artificial intelligence today. And notice what the mirror of digital agents shows us as they feed on our culture, at the same time producing with us and also partially making us simulacra. It presents different classes of focus and the notion that complexity is not necessarily linked to longer interpretation or manifestation time.

Noticing distinct temporal experiences and how this informs artistic production, as well as the use of AI and its symbiotic and also destructive potentialities. It shows recent poetic experiences with digital agents, both with systems responding on command and in free operations. Part of a series of studies generated in symbiosis with AI’s, it serves as a record of the current capabilities of this type of interface, and, at the same time, gives some insight into its future potential. Systems that automate part of production cannot, at least for now, clone our human, ethical, political and social role in machine production. They only partially simulate us. But our real biases are already present and in use in the datasets.