new animal machine
KAIT CARTMELL GRADUATE THESIS 2022
Situated within the Digital Space and is formatted in a post-anthropological Machine takes the title of main character. have long been agents of environmental themselves from the natural order¹. Cyborg Manifesto, the New Animal evolved human. If humans are not cyborg, then given the right tools a cyborg is not about the freedom networks. Cyborgs, like an old forest, constantly feeding information, like line to the world wide web.²
The carbon in this New World becomes coexists with the Entropic Species, between the opposite spectrum of although not new, can now be perception³. It makes up the Network, species exist and depend on each becomes the coder that passes Entropy system. It’s composition changes updating its code to match the language
Our new characters take on a tentacularity lines, not at points or spheres.⁴ Entropic connection to their home network. between species, earth, and themselves senses. They are extended in all directions, World, creatures of all kinds create entropy increasing, how
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and after Computation, this New World post-anthropological world - one where the New Animal character. As spatial actors, humans environmental change while separating order¹. Referencing Donna Haraway’s Animal Machine takes on the form of an natural but are constructed, like a they can be reconstructed. Being freedom to reconstruct oneself, it is about forest, are a collection of networks, like carbon, back and forth across the becomes entropic transformation and Species, affecting each other and moving of decay and growth. Computation, utilized by actors as a means of Network, which is the web in which all each other. The New Animal Machine Entropy and nutrients from system to to participate in this computation, language of its surroundings.
tentacularity that is about life lived along Entropic species well understand their network. Through their view, connections themselves are scripted through the directions, collecting data. In this New generations of interlaced trails. long before i am dust. ⁵
1. Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy. “Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment”, Design Earth, 2019.
2. Donna Haraway, “Tentacular Thinking; Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene”, 2016.
3. Benjamin Bratton, “Some Trace Effects of the Post-Anthropocene: On Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics”, E-Flux #46, 2013.
4. Donna Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto”, 2000.
5. Imogen Heap “Neglected Space”
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vocabulary
entropy >>>
“Lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder. A thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.”¹
Entropy is the central action within this world. Entropy creates change and begins the cycle of decay to growth and growth to decay.
cyborg >>>
Cyborgs can be figures for living within contradictions, attentive to the naturecultures of mundane practices”² The next machine, the one that comes after Computation, is the evolved human in a new form. If humans aren’t natural but are constructed, like a cyborg, then given the right tools, they can be reconstructed. But being a cyborg isn’t about the freedom to reconstruct oneself. It’s about networks. Cyborgs, like an old forest, are a collection of networks, constantly feeding information, like carbon, back and forth across the line to the world wide web.³ The new animal machine will most definitely be a cyborg.
xenogeopolitics >>>
Humans’ experience in relation to the earth has only been from that of a geopolitical aesthetic. It is a narrative whose essential subject matter focuses only on the inter-relational.⁴ The earth as a meditating polis can only be thought through aesthetics derived from the computation of possible geometries, subdivisions, doubles, inversions, localizations, and Hubble-scale adoptions from the outside.⁵ From an exterior computational perspective, the humans’ existence can move past a nearly extinct Anthropogenic one. For humans to engage, they must take on a computational approach and retrain the work of the political towards a direct engagement with what succeeds and exceeds it. Humans will have to learn to measure that in which they have always been embedded but cannot perceive.
connections >>>
The term comes from the quote from Donna Haraway’s article Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene “Nobody lives everywhere; everybody lives somewhere. Nothing is connected to everything; everything is connected to something.” This statement rids of the more commonly known philosophy that everything is connected to everything. Haraway emphasizes that the proximity of connections matters who we are bound up with and in what ways.
The brand of holist ecological philosophy that emphasizes that everything is connected to everything, will not help us here. Rather, everything is connected to something, which is connected to something else. While we may all ultimately be connected to one another, the specificity and proximity of connections matters who we are bound up with and in what ways. “And so, we need to understand how particular human communities, as well as those of other living beings, are
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entangled, and how these entanglements are implicated in the production of both extinctions and their accompanying patterns of amplified death.”⁶
coexistence >>>
Coexistence or co-habitation come up many times in Haraway’s Companion Species. The use of this term is along the same vein as Connections but with an emphasis on “significant otherness”. None of the partners pre-exist the relating.⁷
Additionally, in Kant’s Critique of Judgment he writes of a beauty that goes beyond the human being and there’s beauty in death and the unknown. There’s beauty in the feeling of uneasy coexisting - when two companions could destroy each other but won’t.⁸
network >>>
The network is the web in which all species exist together, including humans. In the network, all species are dependent on each other. Humans have come to believe that their connection to the network is unnecessary, but this mindset is what has brought on the Anthropocene and what will bring on a post-human PostAnthropocene. Just as fungi in a forest, humans must become the coders that pass carbon and nutrients from system to system. Humans must adapt a tentacularity that is about life lived along lines, not at points or spheres.⁹ Creatures of all kinds create generations of interlaced trails.
1. Oxford Dictionary, “Entropy”
2. Donna Haraway, Companion Species
3. Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto
4. Oxford Dictionary, “Geopolitics”.
5. Benjamin Bratton, “Some Trace Effects of the Post-Anthropocene: On Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics”, E-Flux #46, 2013.
6. Donna Haraway, Tentacular Thinking, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene.”
7. Donna Haraway, Companion Species, p. 12.
8. Timothy Morton, Lecture on Kant’s Critique of Judgment
9. Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto
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precedents
In Ian Cheng’s project series Emissaries, he develops “live simulations,” living virtual ecosystems that begin with basic programmed properties, but are left to self-evolve without authorial intent or
end. Cheng’s digital worlds are driven by a technology in which narrative agents behave within coded parameters, but on their own terms
Everything is a simulation game where the player has the ability to explore a procedurally generated universe and control various objects within it. The game uses a number of levels of
“existence”, representing different length scales, which the player can move between as they shift into different objects
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context
As context for the worlding process, this article sets up the ‘New Animal Machine’ as the main character, interacting, affecting and being affected by organisms around them through simulated behavior trees.
Geopolitics vs Xenogeopolitical Aesthetics:
Geopolitics - a narrative whose essential subject matter focuses only on the interrelational.¹ The earth as a meditating polis can only be thought through aesthetics derived from the computation of possible geometries, subdivisions, doubles, inversions, localizations, and Hubble-scale adoptions from the outside”².
Xenogeopolitics - From an exterior computational perspective, the humans’ existence can move past a nearly extinct Anthropocentric one. Retrain the work of the political towards a direct engagement with what succeeds and exceeds it. Learn to measure that in which has always been embedded but not perceived.³
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sacred place
Sacred Place is an animation that depicts the extraction of ‘natural’ elements from a human-free planet and puts them on a pedestal for preservation. It begins through the lens of a National Geographic-like documentary. The viewer is taken on a visual journey through the planet. While this happens, it becomes clear that elements are being captured by a vague technological system. Eventually, the frame zooms out to reveal that the planet and its elements are being displayed in a gallery setting where scientific names have been assigned to each element.
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categories of characters
1. New Animal Machine
2. Entropic species
3. Architecture
4. Infrastructure
We categorize characters as a way to make sense to what we see. The intention of this is by no means to limit the flux in which separates the controlled from the organic. Categorization begins by mapping characters on a chart similar to the Ecological Theory System. This chart organizes characters based on their influence to each other.
The question of how architecture becomes animal is entwined, especially today, with how animality (and in fact, animals) become architectural.¹
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INFRASTRUCTURE ARCHITECTURE ENTROPIC SPECIES 1 SPECIES 2 SACRED -> PROFANE SACRED <PROFANE RESIDUE ENERGY SPECIES 3 ANIMAL MACHINE
new animal machine
The New Animal Machine is the result of necessary human evolution. Moving away from the form we know as the body, we have recoded our composition to match the language of this new world.
If humans aren’t natural but are constructed, like a cyborg, then given the right tools, they can be reconstructed. But being a cyborg isn’t about the freedom to reconstruct oneself. It’s about networks. Cyborgs, like an old forest, are a collection of networks, constantly feeding information back and forth across the lines to the world wide web.²
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1. Rona Pondick, “ Bratton – Flesh + Form”, 2010
2. Donna Haraway, :Cyborg Manifesto:, 2000
entropic species
The supporting species act as agents of change, chaos, growth, and destruction. They’re the entropy that affects the New Animal Machine. They receive information from the New Animal Machine and send it back recoded.
Entropic species are not the main character but are the most important one. They move through the world in a cybernetic manner. These characters well understand their connection to their home network. They remain in constant conversation with each other, scripting connections through their senses. The connection to the ground as they shift their weight is a moment of communication - forever leaving a trail of residue along the surface of the earth, feeding and communicating with species rooted in it.
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infrastructure
Infrastructure is typically defined as the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.⁷ In this world, infrastructure is the residue left over from information exchange between entities. It is the infrastructure - a result of species behavior - that builds the architecture of this world.
architecture
The human body is by tradition, a first architecture: a dwelling that precedes the worldly habitat.¹ Architecture has looked towards the specific humanity of the body for its telos. When the body is always in a constant flux of animate formation and deformation, the image of stability is only an image of frozen movement.² We stand on a pedestal, which freezes us in time as a sacred entity.
Here, Architecture is a result of entropic energy that moves between characters. It becomes tentacular with an underground network of communication, much like trees in a forest. When one fails, it feeds others and produces new growth. This is what habitation in the Digital Space means. It’s network time is flattened by digital images that map a cosmogram.³
So what is our cosmogram? It is the code behind the scenes. Computation, although not new, can now be utilized by actors as a means of perception⁴. It makes up the Network, which is the web in which all species exist together. In the Network, all species are dependent on each other. The New Animal Machine becomes the coders that pass Entropy and nutrients from system to system and the architecture is the code.
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1-2. Rona Pondick, “ Bratton – Flesh + Form”, 2010
3. Machine Vision - Benjamin Bratton in conversation with Mike Pepi and Marvin Jordan
4. Benjamin Bratton, “So me Trace Effects of the Post-Anthropocene: On Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics:, 2013
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