auto auramata
auto auramata adapts Conway’s Game of Life into an environment of interaction between humans and nonhumans. The reciprocal space that is generated is the aura of interaction between humans and cellular automata. It is an interactive multimedia installation that creates a transhuman ecology. The Game of Life is a zero-player game in which cells on a board are either alive (on) or dead (off). The initial state of the cells on the grid and the program’s internal logic determine how long the cells propagate for, if they propagate at all. In auto auramata, we argue that the cellular automata is not a zero player game, that the entity is in conversation with effectors in its environment that determine the position of the cells, and eventually the evolution of the organism. In Conway’s Game of Life, an initial state is statically determined and then the program is run uninteruppted. In auto auramata, human motion triggers the on/off state of cells on the grid while the program is running, allowing the evolution of the automaton to dynamically change rather than be completely determined by the an initial state.
This work elaborates on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s notion of monads. Leibniz invented calculus contemporaneously with Isaac Newton. He worked in logic and was interested in games. His contributions laid the foundation for computer science and he was also an inventor of the early calculator. Leibniz’s monadology includes four types of monads: basic monads, soul monads, spirit monads, and the supreme monad. These monads have different ontologies. Basic monads are material and atomistic entities which possess dim consciousness and no awareness, soul monads are animals which possess memory and consciousness, and spirit monads are humans which possess memory, consciousness, and reason. According to Leibniz, it is not possible for spirit, soul, and basic monads to interact; it is the supreme monad—a monotheistic god—which configures and simulates interactions between the spirit, soul, and basic monads. For example, a person hearing a bird’s song is not an actual interaction between bird and human— it is a simulation facilitated by the supreme monad.
With modern day practices of multispecies ethnography, Leibniz’s ideas may be a little out of fashion (he was a creature of his time), but now that humans live in a reality in which we are interfaced with non-biological agents, questions of consciousness and trans-species ecology do arise. What does it mean to share a reality with a machine, with an automaton? Is an automaton a basic monad? In auto auramata, the automaton doesn’t “know” we’re there— but we inadvertently affect it’s state and evolution with our presence. The poetic output of this agent may affect the human actor’s decision as well. Do you want to proliferate the cells? Move here, or is it there? There’s a poetic cybernetic feedback loop between these two monads embodied in the reciprocal space of the simulation.