Use the word 'cybernetics', Norbert, because nobody knows what it means. This will always put you at an advantage in arguments" - Claude Shannon 1
I find myself lacking terminology to define the boundaries of my practice. Am I primarily seeking to comprehend AI's technical mechanisms, or am I more concerned with how AI shapes our perceptions? Aside from perceiving AI as a black-box tool, I want to treat it as an open-ended inquiry, an evolving medium to be explored critically, playfully, and reflexively through practical engagement, with the process itself serving as an exposition. I aim to dissect this black box and examine the medium through the lens of a feedback loop.
Throughout the process, the term cybernetics has repeatedly surfaced in diverse contexts. Like Artificial intelligence, there are multiple variations and explanations throughout time. Margaret Mead's description resonates deeply with me. She described cybernetics as a cross-disciplinary set of ideas initially known as feedback, later termed teleological mechanisms, and eventually named cybernetics.2 It offers a language enabling disciplines to communicate with each other. Mead further cautioned that if we approach ideas with our former methods, treating them in isolation, we might create systems detached from their broader, less structured contexts, potentially causing significant harm.3 Similarly, AI should be approached holistically rather than in isolation, considering how technical developments could inadvertently raise questions such as authorship, aesthetics, biases, resource extraction, inequalities, and ethical dilemmas and how users and developers might influence the direction of these technical apparatuses.
Emerging during the pre-digital computing era as a discipline concerned with managing complex systems4, Cybernetics originally addressed the science of regulations. Over subsequent decades, cybernetics has expanded beyond purely technical regulation to encompass socio-political frameworks5. Yuk Hui stated that it offers systematic and evolutionary analyses of diverse phenomena6, which is crucial to be revisit with contemporary discourses about mass automation implications. The term cybernetics, rooted in the Greek word κυβερνήτης (kybernētēs), meaning steersman, governor, pilot, or rudder, prompts me to reflect on the metaphorical ocean I am navigating—what specific realm of "AI" am I steering myself toward?
Defining the medium in question could lead to recursive loops. When I began cooking more often since living in Germany, I realized that understanding heat is essential in the process; it affects the texture, flavor, and overall quality of the dish. While adjusting the scale on an electronic stove is straightforward, does diving deeper into the construction of frying pans, the principles of induction stoves, or the infrastructure behind power grid distribution truly enhance the quality of my fried rice? Our notions of what constitutes a medium vary by individual encounters: one's mastery of a related skill set, the political dimensions of the tools used, and the combination of multiple thinking frameworks. Yet, art practice is not merely a capitalistic point of view of efficiently accomplishing something; the experience and the journey of understanding the frameworks behind it could also be inspiring. However, this pursuit of understanding often falls short of a recursion, making sense of EVERYTHING that is related. As an artist working with technology, I am neither a trained programmer nor a researcher on Science, Technology, and Society (STS); how far should I go into the void of the unknown?
In finding the indeterminacy of computation, Beatrice Fazi defined aesthetic as an ontological novelty7. In search of something new, requires artists to reflect on different perspectives to what has been or could be and subsequently collide with different fields of study. This is not to suggest that art holds a sublime points of view, nor could function as a meta-discipline that acts easily in and out of other field8. Art practice should be humble, keeping curiosity while embracing the known and unknown. Still, I want to share my experiences and journey from the perspective of a practitioner, a coder, and a teacher, to share what I have learned and what I did not know. To approach different topics with respect but also with a critical attitude, and to surf the vortex of technologies so as to find the nuanced qualities in the in-betweens9.