Have you ever met a genius? I’m grateful to say that I have. You don’t stumble across geniuses very often. He doesn’t live on earth with everyone else. His mind is always in worlds beyond this one. And his computational genius extends to accommodate that. He makes virtual worlds that look like ours. He’s buying a tracking suit soon that will allow him to put himself and other actors in his video games and virtual simulations. It’s quite extraordinary. But the way he talks sometimes–”Very soon, you won’t need people to make movies. You can program them. If you want to make something in the sea, you won’t actually need to go to the sea. You can program it all on your own.” And it scares me. The technology that fueled computer vision is fantastic. It allowed us to put ourselves in worlds that allow us to express our deepest emotions and cognitive dissonances. But as what point do we abandon this world for the virtual one? And what will we sacrifice for it? I don’t want to live in a totally virtual world. My genius friend, he has no problem. As if he thinks there was nothing special about the one we occupy already anyways. And this world, which is never living up to our expectations, which we have no control over. This world, with its chaos and limitations and stopped dreams. Why would you choose this world over the one in your head? And hasn’t that always been humanity’s ultimate vision? To return to the Garden of Eden inside us. To be free. There’s this Arcade Fire lyric: “My body is a cage.” And computer vision and its associated technologies– it’s a way out of that. And I can see that. But even now, as our world grows increasingly digitally interactive, and the lines between technological worlds and reality increasingly blur, we are feeling the effects. And I’m not too sure that they’re all good. The old adage goes you can’t have your cake and eat it too. But have we ever really believed that, for a second?
I really loved the projects the reading used as examples. They reminded me of artistic conceptual pieces I’ve read about in photography and video classes. They’re so original. Such perspective-bending ways of interpreting reality that make you feel the way you do when you see a good design, that “aha!” moment–”life IS that way.” But they’re still innovations grounded in this reality. And in my heart, I was feeling I would rather stick to these methods of using the technology at our disposal. Even pieces like the Suicide Box, however jarring, stabilize me on Planet Earth. At least I’m grounded in this world, with its sadnesses and its issues. I still think, “And this is the story of us.” Soon, we’ll be leaving this world altogether. For better ones? I don’t know. I don’t know if being anxious about that makes me a luddite, short-sighted, conservative.
How far will you go to make a world? For me, I have to just focus on learning how to make even the most rudimentary projects using computer vision. Cute artistic pieces. But for the rest of humanity, for the farthest thinking of us, I think that will be the question on their minds as they delve deeper into these technologies. What is line between art and escape? Between reinterpretation and delusion? Either way, in the end, there is no escaping this life. Same party, different props I like to say. Mary Shelly was asking the same questions writing Frankenstein. The “modern day Prometheus” he’s called. How long can you play with the fire before getting burned?