Toward a social theory of Human-AI Co-creation: Bringing techno-social reproduction and situated cognition together with the following seven premises

This article synthesizes the current theoretical attempts to understand human-machine interactions and introduces seven premises to understand our emerging dynamics with increasingly competent, pervasive, and instantly accessible algorithms. The hope that these seven premises can build toward a social theory of human-AI cocreation. The focus on human-AI cocreation is intended to emphasize two factors. First, is the fact that our machine learning systems are socialized. Second, is the coevolving nature of human mind and AI systems as smart devices form an indispensable part of our cognitive scaffolds, thus, shaping how we perceive the world and ourselves. The seven premises include: primacy of social structures; human’s desire for freedom and autonomy; AI systems will form inseparable parts of our cognitive/affective scaffolds and can change our self-understanding; philosophy and humanistic foundations on human flourishing as a guide to human-AI interaction; mindsponge information-filtering process; acculturative process of how values change and emerge from human-AI interaction; overlapping Venn diagram of the human-human, human-nature, and human-machine interactions. This article concludes with a discussion on human agency in our entanglements with socialized machines and the illusoriness of the Cartesian agent view of the mind

“No Place” in CyberSpace

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

Bone Meal

My research explores the material properties of gaming interfaces and the paranoiac virtual spaces of male fantasies. The first chapter of this thesis is an extended artist statement and a summary of influences in my work. Topics include the relationship between fantasy violence and real violence, digital avatars, and the limits of empathy in digital space. This chapter also contains documentation of works produced throughout the course of my MFA candidacy as well as the contexts and concepts behind those works. The second chapter is a case study exploring the work of artist Neo Rauch, whose paintings quietly critique and illustrate the social baggage of failed political ideologies. The collective methodologies Rauch employs towards creating political artwork are an important influence in my own studio practice

The Cleaving of House and Home: A Lacanian Analysis of Architectural Aesthetics

Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and digital media studies, this thesis explores the radical disconnect between the home as a fantasmatic object of desire and the house as the space in which the fantasy of home is staged. By analyzing the house as a prosthetic replacement for our originary home (the womb), the aim is to uncover how architectural aesthetics of the Victorian, modern, and postmodern house respond to this irreconcilable gap, and why each aesthetic necessarily fails to create a more homely home. Considering recent trends in architecture, the thesis then examines the coincidence of the “small house” movement with the transformation of the house into a “media centre.” New digital media technologies have opened up a new virtual world to explore that radically defies and blurs our conventional understanding of interior and exterior spaces. While such technologies open up new possibilities for reimagining our relation to the house, they are also potentially disruptive and dystopic

Possession: The Struggle for Female Bodily Agency in Exorcism Cinema

A dominant trope of the possession genre of horror cinema is the spectacle of the white female body that extends beyond narrowly-proscribed boundaries as being too active, too loud, too sexual, and too uncontrolled. This excess is depicted as monstrous, revolting to patriarchal ideology and in need of containment. In this dissertation, I argue that the long-standing horror genre of possession narratives reveals social anxieties about a loss of control over the productive and reproductive capabilities of the undisciplined female body in U.S. patriarchal, white supremacist, late capitalist culture. This study critically examines three sets of possession films: the Paranormal Activity franchise, possessed nun films, and the sole film focusing on a demon-possessed Black woman, Abby (1974). Historically and culturally-situated readings demonstrate that these films depict the carefully raced and gendered bodies of women as possessed by patriarchal institutions for the purpose of production and reproduction. In contrast to previous critical work on women in horror cinema, I read the systems which torment the female body as monstrous, rather than the women themselves and thus avoid reproducing dangerous notions of female abjection. This dissertation demonstrates the utility of an analysis that reads systems of oppression as horrific as doing so illuminates matrices of power in the real world. Understanding the filmic violence as the result of oppressive systems shifts the identification of the antagonist from the possessed woman to the force that limits her power and autonomy. This is more nuanced and more engaged with the complex and intersecting powers of real-world oppression than reading the films as narratives of monstrous rebels or abject monsters who are successfully suppressed

Meeting Trees Halfway: Environmental Encounters in Theatre and Performance

abstract: How do trees (live and representational) participate in our theatrical and performed encounters with them? If trees are not inherently scenic, as their treatment in language and on stage might reinforce, how can they be retheorized as agents and participants in dramatic encounters? Using Diana Taylor’s theory of scenario to understand embodied encounters, I propose an alternative approach to understanding environmental beings (like trees) called “synercentrism,” which takes as its central tenet the active, if not 100 percent “willed,” participation of both human and non-human beings. I begin by mapping a continuum from objecthood to agenthood to trace the different ways that plants and trees are used, represented, and included in our encounters. The continuum provides a framework that more comprehensively unpacks human-plant relationships. My dissertation addresses the rich variety of representations and embodiments by focusing on three central chapter topics: the history of tree representation and inclusion in dramatic literature and performance; interactions with living trees in gardens, parks, and other dramatic arenas; and individual plays and plants that have a particularly strong grasp on cultural imaginaries. Each chapter is followed by one or more corresponding case studies (the first chapter is followed by case studies on plants in musical theatre; the second on performing plants and collaborative performance events; and the last on the dance drama Memory Rings and the Methuselah tree). I conclude with a discussion of how the framework of synercentrism can aid in the disruption of terministic screens and facilitate reciprocal relationships with trees and other environmental agents.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Theatre 201

The Big Disease with the Little Name: Retelling the Story of HIV & AIDS in an Evolving New Media Landscape

Stories shape our social reality. This research explores new ways of storytelling around the topic of HIV and AIDS by using augmented reality (AR) and electronic literature to experiment with the meaning, structure, and form that a story can take. Employing a mixed methodological approach that combines Research through Design, Transmedia Storytelling and Critical Design methodologies, this thesis unpacks the potential of digital technologies in retelling and revisioning the story of HIV and AIDS as a way to give voice to stories that are often left unheard. AR Disclosures is an interactive documentary installation that tells stories about HIV in the form of augmented reality latrinalia. Once Upon A Virus is an interactive dystopian fantasy that subverts fairy-tale motifs in order to explore themes of inequality in relation to the AIDS epidemic. These two exploratory prototypes aim to propose new ways in which storytellers might leverage evolving new media technologies and experimental storytelling techniques to tell the story of HIV and AIDS to a new audience, while contributing to a developing definition of what the practice of storytelling is and looks like today

The killing fields of Cambodia: an investigation into motivations of visitors to dark sites

A central aim of this study is to establish tourist motivations to visit dark sites such as Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The body of literature that exists around dark tourism published so far agrees there is a general lack of understanding around dark tourism motivations. The research questions set out in this study ask if tourists who visit such sites view themselves as dark tourists, whether time plays a role in their motivations to visit and what factors inspire them to visit such sites. The study also considers sub-conscious, psychological and instinctive drivers that exist which may compel tourists to visit and experience dark sites. The study revealed that tourists who visited Tuol Sleng and/or Choeung Ek did not consider themselves dark tourists, and moreover, did not like to be associated with the terminology. They assumed that to be labelled a dark tourist, their motivations would be inspired by the dark and macabre nature of the sites, or that they would seek enjoyment from their visit. They were keen to stress that this was not the case. They were there to learn and understand what happened and to experience Cambodia properly. Moreover, tourist guidebooks, such as The Lonely Planet heavily advise a visit and act as a powerful driver, as well as trusted word-of-mouth sources. The study also revealed that chronology heightens curiosity and motivation to visit, but does not act as a motivator in its own right – tourists would have visited anyway. A significant finding of this study reveals that human instinct and psychology plays an important role in human fascination with violent death and, therefore, visits to dark sites. We need to learn and understand what happens to either avoid it happening to us, or to learn how to survive should we find ourselves in the same situation. Visiting such sites is part of our psychological make-up and that these drivers exits in all of us to a greater or lesser degree