Steve,

the sloshing space might be in the world of games that are blurring the 
boundary between on-line and physical reality - Pokemon go would be a trivial 
and simplistic example. This is an emerging SF trope - see Waltern Jon 
Williams, *This is Not a Game* - or my favorite Daniel Suarez *Daemon* and 
*Freedom* (same story over two novels).

davew


On Fri, Jan 22, 2021, at 9:46 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Jon -

> I appreciate your observation about approaching the UV from either side, 
> there is definitely an asymmetry, though as with  my earlier references to 
> "estuarial" it seems like there must be some intermediate territory where one 
> can wash or slosh back and forth each direction and find some commutivity?   
> I suspect *someone* has done some research/investigation on this in the realm 
> of Max Headroom <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reMRbvXfqAo>?   I didn't 
> bother to Google but it seems like synchronicity if someone hasn't done a 
> Headroom workup on Trump, especially with "Network XXIII, a world where 
> nothing matters but ratings!".

> I am also reminded (as I often am) of the Inter-reality 
> <https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.75.057201> work of 
> Gintautas and Hubler when I see the coupling, for example, of the slime-mold 
> and the robot face and when I think of the coupling of individuals in social 
> network contexts like Instagram (followers and influencers) where the fans 
> influence the influencers as much as vice-versa, or in odd hysteresis loops.

> I think your point about identity and sources of information are very 
> relevant (and related to what I said last paragraph about who is leading and 
> who is following or who's influencing the influencers).

> - Steve

> 

>> From a naive glance, there appears a misleading duality, that of approaching 
>> the valley from one side or the other. For instance, the use of puppets to 
>> bring the non-human closer to the human: Jim Henson's work, the dancing 
>> figures in Kimmel's piece, the neural net fake exemplified by "Nixon's moon 
>> landing" 
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rkQn-43ixs&ab_channel=NowThisNews>, neural 
>> net fever dreams of photorealistic models that never existed 
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lE9tV9vm0&t=385s&ab_channel=TeroKarrasFI>,
>>  or the now all-to-common place notion of an embedded avatar as in "Snow 
>> Crash", "All Tomorrow's Parties", "The Matrix" ... 
>> From the other side come humans moving closer to the non-human or even 
>> simply a different human: plastic surgeries and botox'd lips, Thailand's 
>> cross-dressing prostitutes, internet catfishing, Victor-Victoria, "Boy's 
>> don't cry", butoh dance, (acting in general?).

>> What seems strange to me is that in any puppet-puppeteer case it is not 
>> always clear that it is one bringing the other closer to the valley. It 
>> doesn't even appear to be directly a function of *being human* as in the 
>> case of this slime mould driven robot face 
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0i-Df4w4KY&ab_channel=NewScientist>. Here 
>> a non-human puppeteers a non-human face, the combination of which drives an 
>> observer toward the uncanny valley.

>> Other times, it isn't about misrepresentation but rather identity tracing or 
>> a transformation of representation. There is the holding fixed of Dorothy as 
>> she moves from black-and-white to Technicolor, the holding fixed of Mary 
>> Poppins as she enters an animated-context, or the transformation of Milo to 
>> "animated Milo" as he passes through the phantom tollbooth.

>> There are also those themes that appear in some religions and sci-fi where 
>> humans themselves are vessels available to "ride" as puppets: Ghost in the 
>> Shell, Altered Carbon, or in the case of loa. An interesting, though 
>> tangential, case is that of stop motion animation. Here, it isn't really 
>> puppetry nor strictly animation. Like the former, there is something of an 
>> artifact in the world. Something that is there to be manipulated. Like the 
>> latter, these manipulations are enacted by something outside of time, part 
>> of a time outside of time, in-between the frames.

>> Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of such a frontier isn't being able to 
>> tell the difference between a fake or not, but not caring about the sources 
>> of information. With deep fakes come a kind of modularity, one where *voice* 
>> is treated like a backend to be swapped out. The *voice of Nixon* is lost 
>> among many or any.

>> Here, China has already taken the plunge 
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iZuffHPDAw&ab_channel=NewChinaTV>. We can 
>> all see that these news anchors are AI, and no one questions this fact. What 
>> becomes questionable, or rather obscured, is whose perspective we are 
>> presented with. But, this is already the case at once whenever scripted news 
>> is decoupled from whatever it is to be journalism. Again, I cite the 
>> *Telecom act* and the disappearance of the radio disc jockey.

>> Lastly, there is the cyborg revolution. I am thinking of Donna Haraway's 
>> "Cyborg Manifesto" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cyborg_Manifesto>, or 
>> every time I prepare a post by googling, looking through my books, or more 
>> generally consulting my extended mind. 

>> Sent from the Friam mailing list archive 
>> <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> at Nabble.com.
>> 
>> 
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