FIELD NOTES FROM THE FOREST
Contents
1. Design Strategy 2. Early Design Tests 3. Supporting Research Material 4. Drawings
Dominic Oliver
Design Strategy
Abstract
Given enough time and space, anything that can exist, will exist. By anticipating the eventual existence of all possible entities, the project creates a scenario in which Occam’s Razor - the apogee of reductionism, is futile. The proxy - an object that is an ambiguous, low fidelity version of its (yet to exist) referent, will be explored both as a design method, and a tool to foster more positive relationships with uncertainty. This hopes to open new ways of approaching mental distress, for which we currently lack any precise or quantifiable understanding.
Occam’s final cut leaves only one: a single unifying theory, which is presumably a single sentence or even a single word. No, just a big-dumb monad.
Research Questions
Would anticipating the eventual existence of all possible entities help embrace complexity and uncertainty? Can proxies be used to shift away from reduction and preemption, by creating known unknowns? Would this consideration of uncertainty help us to better understand unquantifiable issues such as mental health, where simplified models have failed?
Injustice
Does simplicity have an intrinsic value? Even before the empirical turn of the nineteenth century, the benefit of simplicity appears to be unspoken truism. Attempts to explain this desire relies on instinctual claims such as Quine’s defence, the same reason we prefer ‘clear skies’ or ‘desert landscapes’1 For centuries, western science has favoured the parsimony of simple explanations as they are easier to verify or falsify through experimentation, crystallising in the form of Occam’s Razor (c.1340) - ‘Entities should not be multiplied’ often paraphrased as ‘The simplest explanation is the correct one.’ Occam’s Razor presents as a heuristic but is employed more as a doctrine, and so emblematic of the value systems of the enlightenment and modernity. It’s blade may be metaphorical, but Occam’s Razor has spilled blood.
Whilst current data is supported by simple explanations, future data tends to be better explained by more complex theories. It’s easy to list a wealth of now adopted theories that were dismissed under the scythe of Occam’s razor - heliocentrism, atomic theory, vacuums, fermentation, the wave-particle duality, the list goes on. But perhaps it’s more valuable to consider the impacts of Occam’s Razor beyond theoretical science alone. One swing of Occam’s Razor has been to reduce complex systems to simple models. While they may be ‘elegant’, these reductionist models are now being challenged by emerging technology as deep learning models are able to operate within complexity. As this reflection of life’s inherent complexity becomes more pronounced, the desire for simplification becomes more at odds with reality.
Complex models exposing flaws in simplicity is perhaps seen most viscerally in crash tests. Digital crash tests are able to simulate the minutiae of forces on internal organs and different body types, while the standardised test dummies modelled on a 50th percentile American male leave women and more likely to die in crashes. Similarly, birdstrike simulations show that the chicken carcasses launched at planes in tests led to crashes upon impact with different birds in real flights. So much so that the Federal Aviation Administration hired Roxie Collie Laybourne as a ‘forensic ornithologist’ to identify different species by their feathered remains to improve safety measures. Unsurprisingly, the existence of complex models alone has not been sufficient to quell a seemingly in-built desire to simplify. Bonini’s Paradox tells us that the more complex models become the less understandable they are. As finance and threat models become too turbulent to cohere, many turn to preemption, using perceived threats from the future to simplify the present. It seems that Occam’s Razor is sticky, we cling to it even when our own technology refutes it.
In a bizarre situation, FEM simulated crash tests are higher fidelity than real tests due to simplified physical dummies.
Simple models have been particularly damaging in the case of mental health. As it has no quantifiable evidence or biological markers2, abstract models are the driving force behind diagnosis and treatment. Despite the lack of physical signs, the simplified biological model of a neurochemical imbalance has long been the emphasis. Whilst some professionals move towards more rounded and socially influenced models, the chemical legacy is still seen in ever increasing prescription of medication. Mental illness has been medicalised, not for some clear biological defect, but for sitting outside of rationality, beyond the realms of positivism. The project does not promote the potentially harmful Szasian anti-psychiatry views that all mental illness is a metaphor and socially constructed. Rather, it seeks to question whether something so intangible can ever be understood by simplification and reduction. Historically, architecture has been complicit in manufacturing otherness, playing a large role in exclusion and what Foucault dubbed ‘the great confinement’. Architecture is presented with a dilemma - even well meaning clinical buildings literally construct boundaries of normality. While non-clinical responses to the mental health crisis still weakly echo the modernist sanatorium-style emphasis on sunlight and fresh air, as the crisis only grows. The project will propose a more fundamental shift.
1
Legal Fiction
In Lon Fuller’s seminal text, he suggests that legal fictions exist to help the judicial system cope with concepts at the limits of human comprehension.3 The project will present its own legal fiction as a mechanism to build a world in which Occam’s Razor is futile, blunted and moribund: “Entities multiply naturally, until everything that can exist actually exists” This will lead to a plausibly impossible scenario, where the world will eventually contain all possible entities, becoming infinitely more complex with time. The legal fiction is expanded from the ‘principle of plenitude’ “Quantum mechanics replaces a deterministic model of the universe with a model based on objective probabilities. There are numerous ways the universe could have evolved from its initial state, each with a certain probability of occurring that is fixed by the laws of nature. Consider some kind of object, say unicorns, whose existence is not ruled out by the initial conditions plus the laws of nature. If there is a small finite probability of unicorns existing then given enough time and space unicorns will exist.”4 These entities do not ‘subsist’ in a linguistic non-being sense, rather they are what Quine calls ‘unactualised possibles’ entities that within the laws of physics will actually exist given enough time and space. What might emerge out of this scenario? Would forecasting become impossible? Would we see the end of models? Would we stop trying to ‘make sense’ of things in the face of raw and unbounded uncertainty? Would an anticipation of radically new entities allow us to break free normativity altogether?
Into the Undergrowth
From the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Chivalric Romances, the forest consistently reappears in canonical mythology as an analogue for complexity and uncertainty. Protagonists will often find themselves utterly lost within a pathless, wooded labyrinth. But slowly these places become a refuge, as their gnarled logic seems preferable to the ruthless rationality of the outside world. Similarly, forests invoke feelings of infiniteness and endlessness among humans. They can be unknowably vast and endure over an intangible timescale. In De Bello Gallico Caesar marks his awe at the Hercynian forest in central Europe, reportedly so large that it was untraversable in a single lifetime and said to contain unicorns and glowing birds.
Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs Walt Disney (1937)
Before Darwinism a prevailing theory on the ontogeny of living organisms postulated that life ‘spontaneously generated’ from existing matter. Jan Baptist Van Helmont showed through experiments that mice spontaneously generated from food left in cupboards. Aristotle believed that toads were formed from mud, as the sun warmed it. By the seventeenth century the true embryonic force of spontaneous generation was revealed - the undergrowth. The forest floor generated countless beings - mushrooms, lizards, snakes, insects, snails, all born from the shady green milieu. So much so that the undergrowth inspired its own sub-genre of still life - sottobosco. An interest in these humble beings, right at the foot of Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being led to new fields of science like entomology. Many have drawn parallels between Darwinian competition and capitalism, seeing it as a ‘natural’ ideology. Would economic and political systems become more egalitarian in a world that does not venerate competition and predatory nature? The notion of an endless forest, one that’s centre can never be reached, will be appropriated as a landscape to enact the legal fiction. The forest will act as a productive typology, given infinite time and space, anything that can exist, will exist in the forest. The forest resists Occam’s razor, too dense to be cut, too vast to be reduced.
A Forest Floor Still Life with Mushrooms, a Snake and a Butterfly Otto Marseus van Schrieck (1657)
Proxy as Method
Occam’s Razor tells us we should not consider anything other than what is right here in front of us, that postulating the existence of unicorns is not only wrong, but wasteful. The mental health crisis has perhaps never been so apparent as it is today, but its aetiology remains a unicorn, a complete mystery. Perhaps in order to further our understanding, we must move beyond observation, rationality, and simplicity. The legal fiction forces us not only to think of unicorns but to actively anticipate them. Complexity as a term is polysemic, and for many years ‘true’ complexity has been confined to nature and organic life. Or as Erhard Schüttpelz separates, a human conversation is complex (simultaneous, ambiguous), a computer is complicated (successive, difficult)5 But as we are seeing with the emergence of deep learning models in many fields, the seeding of a human ‘corpus’ into the complicated, is making it complex. The bifurcation of complexity was particularly arresting in animation, with many feeling the well known ‘uncanny valley’ would always remain slightly disturbing, never truly embodying the natural complexity of reality. However, the uncanny valley has now been conquered by digital animation. In the case of motion capture, Anselm Franke suggests the gap has not been closed, but changed, “The ‘frontier’ between the complex and the complicated has transformed: the complicated now ‘accommodates’ and ‘frames’ the complex.”6 Harun Farocki goes further to suggest that the visual output of complex models no longer seek to match reality, but outperform it. Rather than attempting to cross the uncanny valley or consciously regressing behind it, the project seeks to create a new space, the forest - a space of potential, using proxies and dynamics to force an unpredictability into what is normally a highly controlled and curated process.
Test - a common method of using a hair proxy to plant trees fails when gravity is accounted for
Proxy Objects Current limits of processing power have led to the adoption of ‘proxy’ objects in digital animation. Proxies are simplified, low-count meshes that stand in for heavier geometry, creating a smoother work flow for animators when rigging scenes. Proxy objects exist only to refer to other, more complex objects. Due to the complexity of the organic world, trees and particularly large amounts of vegetation such as forests employ proxy objects to prevent crashing. Proxies will be explored in their native digital environment through animation. Rather than a necessity, the proxy will be used as an inherent tool to animation, to create a digital mirror of uncertainty and potential. These experiments aim to explore how embracing uncertainty can be productive, just as the plausibly impossible world does. The future existence of all possible entities would have consequences in the present. The project will also explore the notion of the proxy as a physical object in a series of prototypes. Echoing how animation proxies refer to more complex meshes, the proxy objects stand in for future entities until they are actualised. Intentionally amorphous and undefined, the proxy objects do not claim to be accurate representations or predictions. In fact, they proclaim the opposite, clearly stating their low fidelity. The proxy objects act as a physical manifesto for the project’s position - that predictions always fall prey to the problem of induction, the future cannot be foreseen based on past knowledge. Can we foster more positive relationships to uncertainty?
Owner introduces their dog to a possible pet
Bathing with possible sea creatures
Who?
known model predictions
known known
The key characters of the project are arranged around those who adopt the unpredictable, spontaneous forest as a method, and those who resist it in favour of the ordered, rational status quo. Reductionists - Simplify the present, use rational knowledge of the past to predict the future. Clearly, many agents of reduction benefit from wielding Occam’s Razor: politicians promise simple solutions to complex problems, abnormality is medicalised and confined, while the conflation of simplicity with control gives the illusion of order and foments a fear of complexity. Ontocrats - Use preemption to leverage threats from the future, manifesting them in the present. Brian Massumi suggests that biopower has been succeeded by ontopower. Threats can no longer be monitored or deterred, they have to be preempted. Power focuses on what may emerge, threats that are not fully formed are provoked into existence in order to be managed. Ontopower acts as a fulcrum, taking perceived threats from the future and forming them in the present through the act of preemption. One such threat-based environment of ontopower is the market. Finance has ceased any attempts to simplify the present, as complex trading models have taken on a life of their own unintelligible to us. Instead choosing to simplify the future, by ‘capturing chance’ of complex systems. While militaries use preemption as a fulcrum to produce a surplus of power, finance leverages emerging events to produce monetized value.7 The proliferation of new entities would make forecasting impossible. Emerging situations can no longer be leveraged as they are unforeseeable, chance cannot be captured. Risk can no longer be valued or profited from, as all risk becomes uncertainty. While a world that will eventually contain all possible entities may appear to be a world filled with threat, the proxy objects advocate an acceptance of uncertainty, that threats can never be fully known. In the same way that Occam’s Razor is blunted, its distorted manifestation as ontopolitcal preemption is also made futile. Through an acceptance of uncertainty, the project aims to question the operationalization of the immeasurable such as mental health. Rather than designing a therapeutic building that merely reinforces notions of normality, the project proposes a world whose values change the way we view and understand issues that sit outside of rational empiricism. Equally, the project does not attempt to undermine medical professionals, or the suffering of severely affected individuals. The questioning is directed mainly towards mental health at the community level, rather than the clinical, while mainting a dimensional view - that mental health is a spectrum across all society.
ontopower
perceived known (actually unknown) threats
unknown known
past
known unknown
present
future proxy
unknown known
known unknown
unknown unknown
unknown unknown
unknown
Rumsfeld matrix redrawn with a time axis
Regions of Potential . The project naturally inhabits the same space of uncertainty where ontopower is abused - regions of potential. Massumi outlines, “Although they are space-like, no spatial logic can contain regions of potential. They only cohere in the excessive time-logic of a future-crammed present on the dynamic edge of emergence.... threat-based environments are scenario independent, manifesting over a space rather than in a specific point in space.”8 Pre-render space - the pre-rendered viewport of animation software will be used as an experimental site, creating a digital space of uncertainty, mirroring that of reality. Mainframes - Within the forest the project will explore microsites, cultural constructs that allude to order and certainty. A football match that has two halves and an end, a performance that has an interval and a close, will become never ending. These will be transformed by placing them within regions of potential, becoming endless scenarios that contain every possibilty. Transmedia - The forest will act as a landscape to explore proxies. It could exist physically, fictionally and transmedia. Forests are multivalent, and parallactic, they can be constructed by man - cultivated, designed, maintained, managed; or a raw untouched wilderness. This diversity gives them potential to be explored by different vocations in radically different ways and mediums. Now the page is almost full, almost every entity exists. But the exact course of the project remains uncertain. Perhaps this document will do, slightly ambiguous and undefined, it can act as a kind of proxy, while we wait for the real one to be actualised. I’m sure it won’t be long now
narrative forming complexity
umwelt of the undergrowth mourn progressive change to status quo Lorem ipsum
post-colonial mourning
hauntology
textual haunting
haunted by lost futures
collective mourning
media ghosts
positive futures that never materialised
lost ideological systems
lost worlds
reworlding
long term, complex solutions
ghosts of extinct species
dyschronia and deterritorialization constructive ignorance
move from reductionism to complexity
sloterdijk monogeism gloablism
The Catalyst
address issues with no conceivable solution
machine learning data crunching
engender antiscience
black box technology
bifurcation
long term investment
operate within complexity
sottobosco (undergrowth) movement
capitalism is natural reflection of darwinst comeptition
veneration of large predators ‘hero’ animals
less darwinist ideology
food chain dynamics
invention of microscope new fields of science
greater protection of habitats
poisoned chalice politics
reflexive circle
governments no scapegoating solutions
machinic animism
bipartisan politics short-termism
anomalies absolute truth
paranormal ‘weird’ science
lost future of spontaneous generation
collective responsibility / action
falsifiability Kuhnian ‘normal’ science
lost cultural production
puzzle solving
foster interdepencies/form collective bodies
haunted data voices of things which don’t appear
ghosthunting
progress future data
multiplication of entities
record of metamorphosis described within lexicons
extra-discursive, outside of the discourse
quasi-events
hyperchaos
description of action endows life
how animate are agents/actors?
causality an act of narration
reduction / vitalism
incommensurability
alien ontology
undead
characters miasma
new form of language
illness
estoppel
bipartisan politics
short-termism and sabotage address issues with no conceivable solution
The Antagonist Government
long term, complex solutions
THE COMPLICATED
THE COMPLEX long term investment
difficult
THE FRONTIER
successive
collective responsibility / action
modernist rationality
medication seen as negligent
biomedical psychiatry
social / environmental factors
The Merchant
The Protaganist
Pharmaceuticals
Mental Distress medication seen as negligent
chemical imbalance in individual
clinical gaze
social control
impossible cure
privatisation of psychopathology
mirror of collective human psyche
corpus of human writing
motion capture
language neural netwrok GPT-3
library of babel
objects take on human distress algomorphs
provoke empathy
the capacity to act
AI and machine learning
distress becomes visible
algomorphs require legal disclaimers
operate within complexity
machinic animism
less darwinist ideology
food chain dynamics
bio-psycho-social model
black box technology
sottobosco (undergrowth) movement veneration of large predators ‘hero’ animals
bifurcation
ambiguous
falsifiability anomalies puzzle solving
absolute truth
Kuhnian ‘normal’ science
lost worlds described within lexicons collective mourning
quasi-events
how animate are agents/actors? alien existence
description of action endows life
reduction / vitalism
hyperchaos
causality an act of narration incommensurability
new form of language
illness
miasma
characters
textual haunting
haunted by lost futures
media ghosts
positive futures that never materialised
dyschronia and deterritorialization
reworlding
constructive ignorance
sloterdijk monogeism ghosthunting
progress record of metamorphosis
simultaneous
hauntology
paranormal ‘weird’ science haunted data
multiplication of entities
mourn progressive change to status quo
talking therapy
many models of distress
normalisation of mental distress
lost cultural production
capitalism is natural reflection of darwinst comeptition
constructed through dialogic conversation
simultaneous, multiple agents
force government action
pharmechanics
post-colonial mourning
aetiology unclear
The Side Kick (Catalyst)
capitalism
lost ideological systems
marxist alienation
objects experience distress
move from reductionism to complexity
neoliberal thatcherism
lost future of spontaneous generation
no material signs / biological markers
treatment unclear
anti-psychiatry movementl
alleviate symptoms but not root cause
absurd devices
human qualities into the things we make
take on human qualities
future data
engender antiscience extra-discursive, outside of the discourse
gloablism
mainframes reinforce constucts of order
REDUCTION Occam’s Razor
“The simplest explanation is the correct one”
ORDER
The Merchant
reductionsim and abstractions
benefit from simple explanations and simple solutions
The Antagonist
sottobosco (undergrowth) movement
biomedical psychiatry
spontaneous generation
chemical imbalance in individual
does not follow darwinst comeptition
reductionist simplified models
Governing bodies
simplicity gives illusion of order and control
foment fear of complexity and uncertainty
The Catalyst Deep Learning Models models operate within complexity
digital models higher fidelity than physical
complexity of world is reflected through technology
move away from competition economies
privatisation of psychopathology
exponential increase in processing power
algorithms perform brute force automation
less darwinist ideology
pharmaceutical medication
MODELS
unquantifiable distress operationalised
classical physics replaced by quantum mechanics
universe based on objective probabilites
various ways universe could have evolved from intial state
aetiology unclear
no quantifiable evidence / biological markers
The Protaganist
small probability of unicorns evolving from initial state
MENTAL DISTRESS
unicorns will exist given enough time and space
PLENITUDE
Bonini’s Paradox - complex models are unintelligible
ONTOPOWER threats cannot be monitered of deterred
threats are preempted
complex models become ‘black box’ technology
predictive models work inductively
END OF MODELS
empirical methods make little progress
bio-psycho-social
constructed through dialogic conversation
entities multiply naturally
understood through simplified models world will eventually contain all possible entities
complexity increases infinitely over time
models determine diagnosis and treatment
prediction and forecasting becomes impossible
world is immeasurably uncertain
theories are harder to falsify / verify
economic speculation impossible
‘proxy objects’ stand in for unactualised possibles
End of Kuhnian ‘normal’ science
risk becomes (knightian) uncertainty
exist only to refer to what doesn’t exist yet
move away from absolute truth
risk cannot be valued or profited from
create known unknowns
acknowledgement of quasi-events
insurance and hedging become impossible
embrace of uncertainty and complexity
record of metamorphosis
threats cannot be preempted
regions of potential
No spatial-logic, only time-logic
ER
bodies
REDUCTION Occam’s Razor mainframe
PLENITUDE
“The simplest explanation is the correct one” closed
classical physics quantum mechanics
begninning
end
government policy societal norms
predicatable
MODELS normativty
predicted future
medicalisation of abnormality
proxy variables
reductionist simplified models
understood through simplified models
potential ways universe could have evolved from intial state
hidden
bio-psycho-social
simplicity gives illusion of order and control actually exists
small probability of existing possible empty names
fear virtual
exponential increase in processing power
motion capture
succesive, difficult, succesive, difficult,
biomedical psychiatry
actual
time
unquantifiable distress operationalised
existence
subsistence
COMPLEXITY complicated
models determine diagnosis and treatment
algorithms perform brute force automation
aetiology unclear reduction is futile
no quantifiable evidence / biological markers
entities multiply naturally
complex
MENTAL DISTRESS
privatisation of psychopathology
simultaneous ambiguous human corpus
empirical methods make little progress
part/whole uncanny valley
world becomes infintely more complex
mereology
digital models higher fidelity than physical
patient
models operate within complexity
ONTOPOWER
complexity of world is reflected through technology accuracy
threats cannot be monitered or deterred
Bonini’s Paradox
world will eventually contain all possible entities
uncertainty
‘proxy objects’ stand in for unactualised possibles
comfort
proxy stops preemption
threats are preempted usefulness
input
black box
chemical imbalance in individual
constructed through dialogic conversation
Deep Learning Models
no spatial-logic, only time-logic
output ‘regions of potential‘
manifest over a space rather in a specific point
proxy
possible referent
doctor
pharmaceutical medication
Proxy Objects
Owner introduces their dog to a possible future pet
Bathing with possible sea creatures
Proxy Animation Testing
Planting trees with the “hair” proxy fails when gravity is accounted for
Proxy Animation Testing
Hands using a spawner proxy
Proxy Animation Testing
Infinite monkeys with an air particle proxy
Proxy Animation Testing
Growing ducks on tree proxies
Proxy Animation Testing
Applying duck rigs to monkeys and vice-versa
Proxy Animation Testing
Combining the proxy tests into a coherent landscape
Supporting Research
Recipes for Animals
Recipe for Mice Jan Baptist von Helmont 1864 wheat + cloth leave in a cupboard for 21 days = mice
Recipe for Toads Aristotle mud + sunlight = toads
Recipe for Flies Athanasius Kircher 1665 animal carcass + time = flies
The Duck Test & Duck Architecture “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it proabably is a duck.” Like Occam’s Razor, the so-called ‘Duck Test’ claims to be accurate through abductive inference. Using Proxies built into animation software, these clips challenge the duck test, questioning ontological hierarchies. The duck also holds an important place in architectural history, after Robert Venturi coined the term ‘Duck Architecture’ to refer to buildings which are a symbol. Ducks are placed in opposition to the ‘Decorated Shed’ - conventional shed-like structures that apply symbol and ornament. “The sign is more important than the architecture. This is reflected in the proprietor’s budget. The sign at the front is a vulgar extravaganza, the building at the b ack, a modest necessity. The architecture is what is cheap. Sometimes the building is the sign: The duck store in the shape of a duck, called “The Long Island Duckling,” is sculptural symbol and architectural shelter. 1. Where the architectural systems of space, structure, and program are submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form. This kind of building-becoming-sculpture we call the duck in honor of the duckshaped drive-in, “The Long Island Duckling.” 2. Where systems of space and structure are directly at the service of program, and ornament is applied independently of them. This we call the decorated shed. The duck is the special building that is a symbol; the decorated shed is the conventional shelter that applies symbols.”9
Semiotics of Stand-ins Stand-ins, proxies, mock objects, dummy objects, standard objects, metaobjects... Proxies have a certain charm in that they often make no attempt to simulate what they stand for, in some cases to a comical extent. They are low-fidelity, low poly, low-tech. In some cases they are harmless, merely a surface for an actor to focus their eyes on. In other cases they can be more problematic. Most ‘standardised people’ are modeled on men, making women more likely to die in car crashes, or of radioactive poisoning. Proxy objects in science occupy a weird space in that they are not ideal objects or working objects - not an author’s idealised image in specific form/quality, nor a verisimilar record from an actual object. Instead they are specifically non-specific. “By mechanical objectivity we mean the insistent drive to repress the willful intervention of the artist-author, and to put in its stead a set of procedures that would, as it were, move nature to the page through a strict protocol, if not automatically. This meant sometimes using an actual machine, sometimes a person’s mechanized action, such as tracing. However accomplished, the orientation away from the interpretive, intervening authorartist of the eighteenth century tended (though not invariably) to shift attention to the reproduction of individual items — rather than types or ideals. The working objects would be gathered into systematic visual compendiums that were supposed to preserve form from the world onto the page, not to part the curtains of experience to reveal an ur-form.”10
Similar to souvenirs, they exist only to refer to other objects. “Souvenirs are explicitly not the real thing. They explicitly advertise themselves as not being an artifact of historical or archeological significance themselves. Instead they tell us that they are interpretations of that original real thing, a reference to it, multiple rather than unique. This makes them a strange category of object. Not the thing itself but a reference to another. And, in their attempt to distill, they fold into themselves ideas about the thing they are depicting. In other words, souvenirs are meta objects. Things that are ‘about’ something as well as ‘being’ something. Much more than simple representations of the past they layer multiple values and meanings into one thing. It’s their very un-realness that makes souvenirs such potent cultural objects. In the act of recording the past, souvenirs show that versions of the past can be manufactured. And through changes in scale, material and techniques such as framing and editing introduce new techniques into their representation. Each new iteration deforms the original. Copies mutate into unrecognizable new formations.”11
Proxy Variables & Standardised Patient Paradoxically, to minimise assumptions in simplified models, they require ‘proxy variables’ to function. A measured data-set that stands-in for qualitative or unavailable metrics, with an assumed correlation. “Empirical models are often misspecified because the researcher cannot obtain data
for one of the variables in the theory. Consequently, the researcher is faced with the choice of either omitting the variable or including a proxy variable. McCallum (1972) and Wickens (1972) prove that the bias is always smaller when one includes the proxy variable if the resulting measurement error is a random variable independent of the true regressors.1 This rather startling result, while correct, is potentially misleading because, in general, the difference between the unmeasurable variable and the proxy variable is not a random variable independent of the true regressors. There is no a priori reason to believe that the measurement error satisfies these conditions if, for example, one uses the Aaa corporate bond rate as a proxy for the cost of capital or an exponentially weighted average of past rates of inflation as a proxy for the expected rate of inflation. In practice, a proxy variable is usually chosen because the researcher believes that it is highly correlated with the unmeasurable variable. By stating the ratio of the two potential biases in terms of partial correlation coefficients, this note helps to shed some new light on the question of whether to use a proxy variable.”12
The use of proxy variables is reminiscent of the aphorism, ‘all models are wrong, but some are useful.’ In a more visceral display, the standardised patient program that is now a routine aspect of medical training employs actors to stand-in for real patients. An absurd dramatization of the notorious DSM, psychiatric diagnosis becomes self-fulfilling. There is no standardised mental health patient. “A person who has been carefully trained to take on the characteristics of a real
patient in order to provide an opportunity for a student to learn or be evaluated on skills firsthand. While working with the standardized patient, the student can experience and practice clinical medicine without jeopardizing the health or welfare of real, sick patients. The value is in the experience of working with a patient. It takes the process of learning a step beyond the books and away from reliance on paper and pencil tests. It puts the learning of medicine in the arena of veritable clinical practice—not virtual reality, but veritable reality—as close to the truth of an authentic clinical encounter as one can get without actually being there, because there is a living, breathing, responding human being to encounter.”13
Kelly Tribe’s documentary pictured here charts the eerie and at times absurd nature of the standardised patient program.
Presuppositions and Induction The power of models to determine our lives is ever increasing. But these models are intangible and invisible, existing to most of us as black boxes, they are only visualised in their output, we cannot see the corners that are cut, the proxy variables used to input the immeasurable. The absurd, fantastical, cartoon landscape animations, are in reality a reflection of the reductionist models that govern our daily lives. Beyond proxy variables, presupposition permeates all prediction, described by Gregory Bateson: “Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare , and even sleep, is based on presllppositions. It differs, however from most other branches of human activity in that not only are the pathways of scientific thought determined by the presuppositions of the scientists but their goals are the testing and revision of old presuppositions and the creation of new. Science sometimes improves hypotheses and sometimes disproves them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs except in the realms of totally abstract tautology. We can sometimes say that if such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such must follow absolutely. But the truth about what can be perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else again Prediction can never be absolutely valid and therefore science can never prove some generalization or even test a single descriptive statement and in that way arrive at final truth. There are other ways of arguing this impossibility. The argument of this bookwhich again, surely, can only convince you insofar as What I say fits with what you know and which may be collapsed or totally changed in a few years-presupposes that science is a way of perceiving and making what we may call “sense” of our percepts. But perception operates only upon difference . All receipt of information is necessarily the receipt of news of difference, and all perception of difference is limlted by threshold. Differences that are too slight or too slowly presented are not perceivable. They are not food for perception. It follows that what we, as scientists, can perceive is always limited by threshold. That is, what is subliminal will not be grist for our mIdI . Knowledge at any given moment will be a function of the thresholds of our available means of perception. The invention of the microscope or the telescope or of means of measuring time to the fraction of nanosecond or weighing quantities of matter to millionths of a all such improved devices of perception will disclose what was unpredictable from the levels of perception that we could achieve that discovery . Not only can we not predict into the next instant of the future but, more profoundly, we cannot predict into the next dimension of microscopic, the astronomically distant, or the geologically ancient. As method of perception-and that is all science can claim to be--science like all other methods of perception, is limited in its ability to the outward and visible signs of whatever may be truth. Science probes; it does not prove. “14
Models of Mental Distress Biological Distress is caused by biological defect, (genetic, pathogenic, neurochemical). Perhaps a product of modernity/enlightenment, it has historically been favoured by psychiatrists due to their biomedical training. In recent years, it continues to come under scrutiny. But for the overwhelming majority of functional diagnoses – schizophrenia, depression, generalised anxiety disorder, personality disorder and so on – there is no such consistent evidence. Over a hundred years of extremely well-funded research using ever-more sophisticated technologies has so far failed to establish that any of these diagnoses denote biological diseases. In the words of eminent psychiatrist Kenneth Kendler (2005, p.434-5): ‘We have hunted for big, simple, neuropathological explanations for psychiatric disorders and have not found them. We have hunted for big, simple, neurochemical explanations for psychiatric disorders and have not found them. We have hunted for big, simple genetic explanations for psychiatric disorders, and have not found them.’15
Psychological Mental distress is a product of personal past experiences that are often traumatic. (Freudian, Kleinian etc.) Social Mental distress is caused by social and environmental factors, stresses a collective approach. Bio-psycho-social An ambiguous model that has garnered widespread support, possibly becasue it appeases all sides of the fractured field, but is essentially so vague it becomes meaningless. Anti-model “We should strive to understand how distress is produced by the adverse socialization of embodied, biological capacities, rather than by their impairment, disease or failure. The quaint notion that distress can be neatly partitioned into robust categories reflects the mistaken belief that it is caused by organic diseases or impairments. If distress is understood instead as a kind of socially and materially inculcated experience, there is no reason to presume that we should be able to classify it in this way.16
Natural/Pathological Dyad Just as there are many models of mental illness, its definition, or its boundary is equally blurred. Foucault believes that both the ‘great confinement’ in which the mentally ill were excluded and the origins of the ‘medical gaze’ were a result of societies shifting from religion towards rationality during the enlightenment. In both Madness and Civilization, and The Birth of the Clinic he cites this period in the nineteenth century as a major turning point. Modernism is essentially an extension of the enlightenment’s embrace of science. From these technology-driven ideals emerged a psychiatric framework based in biology, a psychiatry that is inherently modernist. Modernism’s totalities and meta-narratives assume humanity as a single entity. This leads to a discontinuous approach to mental illness, a clear boundary that treats people as either sane or insane. This ‘categorical’ psychiatry manifests itself most clearly in the notorious Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This taxonomic bible of psychiatry has included many ‘illnesses’ that have since been discarded as accepted behaviours. “Normality/abnormality: 1 the statistical notion; 2 the ideal notion; 3 the presence of specific behaviours; 4 distorted cognitions The statistical notion simply says that frequently occurring behaviours in a population are normal – so infrequent behaviours are not normal. The notion of frequency in itself tells us nothing about when a behaviour is to be adjudged normal or abnormal. Value judgements are required on the part of lay people or professionals when punctuating the difference between normality and abnormality. Also, a statistical notion may not hold across cultures, even within the same country. The statistical notion of normality tells us nothing in itself about why some deviations are noted when they are unidirectional rather than bidirectional This acceptance of the normal distribution of a characteristic in a population means that in psychological models there is usually assumed to be an unbroken relationship between the normal and abnormal. For instance, in Eysenck’s (1955) personality theory neurosis and psychosis are considered to be personality characteristics that are both normally distributed but separate from one another. The ideal notion - normality is defined by a predominance of conscious over unconscious characteristics in the person. 1 balance of psychic forces; 2 self-actualization; 3 resistance to stress; 4 autonomy; 5 competence; 6 perception of reality. The problem is that each of these notions is problematic as a definition of normality (and, by implication, abnormality). In some cultures, seeing visions or hearing voices is highly valued, and yet it would be out of sync with the reality perceived by most in that culture. In other cultures the hallucinators may be deemed to be suffering from alcoholic psychosis or schizophrenia.”17
Ontopsychiatry The architectural history of mental health has been painted with the biopolitical brush on spatial confinement. Brian Massumi suggests that biopolitics has been succeeded by ‘ontopolitics’, that threats from the future are preempted in the present. While Massumi focuses on war and finance as they are threat-based environments, mental health is also in some ways defined by threat. What are the implications for mental health in the age on ontopolitics? “Fear, in its quasi-causal relation to itself, has become redundantly self-sufficient—an autonomous force of existence. It has become ontogenetic: an ontopower This autonomization of fear is a next natural step from its preemption of action in the sign-response short circuit. Part-concept 1: The world is uncertain and full of dangers. It is nothing less than an all-encompassing threat-environment. Part-concept 2: In an encompassing threatenvironment, you can’t afford to wait for threats to fully emerge, because when they do it is always in an unexpected form. You have to catch them in their potential emergence. Part-concept 3: The best way to catch them in their potential is to flush them out of their potential—to make them emerge and take determinate shape. You have to produce the threats you are intent on guarding against.”18
Could it be, as the proponents of Post-psychiatry believe, that mental illness is ‘preempted’? Are people diagnosed as ‘pre-depressed’, ‘pre-psychotic’ in order to gain wider reach for pharmaceutical companies? In Postpsychiatry, Patrick Bracken and Philip Thomas present evidence that pharmaceutical companies influence national health bodies into pushing for more diagnoses and more medicated patients. They even suggest that increased access to talking therapies is an intentional ploy to get more people onto a systematic conveyor belt that ultimately leads to medication. The study of mental illness is clouded by its multivalency: Anti-psychiatry defectors like Szasz raise important questions but lack sincere propositions for effective treatment. Proponents of the more recent Post-psychiatry like Bracken and Thomas introduce welcome emphasis on the value of patient viewpoints. The introduction of sociological models has led to more rounded notions of distress. We are left with a field that is becoming wider but more rounded.
Non-Medicalising Design How as designers can we prevent becoming complicit in enforcing normalisation and medicalisation of mental distress, without slipping into harmful provocations that occlude suffering? Designs for Fragile Personalities by Dunne and Raby (left) comprises of designed ‘placebo’ objects that seek not to cure anxious personality quirks, but accept them. “In the field of design, users and consumers are usually characterised in narrow and stereotypical ways resulting in a world of manufactured objects that reflects an impoverished view of what it means to be human. This project set out to explore and develop a design approach that would lead to products that embodied an understanding of the consumer/user as a complex existential being. To achieve this the project focused on irrational but real anxieties such as the fear of alien abduction or nuclear annihilation. Rather than ignoring them, as most design does, or amplifying them to create paranoia, we treated the phobias as though they were perfectly reasonable and designed objects to humour their owners. The resulting objects are concrete examples of a very different way of designing for how people really are rather than how they are supposed to be. They explore how psychological realism can be applied to designed objects. 1. Hideaway Furniture is for people who are afraid of being abducted. Each opens in a surprising way without disturbing objects displayed on its surface. The poses encourage the occupant to feel in control, proud and comfortable, the opposite of a foetal position. There are three versions. 2. The Huggable Atomic Mushrooms are for people afraid of nuclear annihilation. Like treatments for phobias they allow for gradual exposure through different sizes.”19
Equally, Noam Toran’s Desire Management (right) which seeks to foment nonconformity “The domestic space is defined as the last private frontier, a place where bespoke appliances provide unorthodox experiences for alienated people: An airline hostess with a unique relationship to turbulence, the owner of a mysterious box which men ritually visit to look inside, an elderly man who enjoys being vacuumed, a couple who engage in baseball driven fantasies, a man who is forced by his partner to cry into a strange device. Based on real testimonials and news reports, the objects specifically created for the film attempt to reveal the inherent need for expression and identity formation in the face of conformity. ”20
Mad Animists History has often labelled the mad as animists. Could this be reclaimed, can animation as a medium be used to explore mental health? “af: One genealogy of animism would be found in insanity, in madness, where it is delegated to this fantasy space of the unreal, full of symptoms, desires, strange mirror effects. bl: Right. Mad people, artists, Others–all of these guys might be animists, but not us. Except that we immediately begin to do all these sorts of things. I believe in the distinction between souls and matter, let’s say. And you are mad, so it’s OK, because mad people or kids, mad people or artists, or savages; in those cases animism is a resource, a critical resource. Now, when you say, “I am making it a topic and not a resource. I’m not going to use animism as a resource, I’m going to use it as a topic”; what you see immediately arriving in the middle of your field of inquiry is agency. Now, you are anti-animist. Does that mean that there is no agency in the world? At all? Your interlocutor would say, yes, of course, there is agency. Atoms have agency, cells have agency, stars have agency, psyches have agency; and then you begin to look at the specificity and the specification of all these agencies, and you realize that you begin to jump from one field to the other, In the case of science, the biggest effect, in my experience, is the doubt it casts on the impossibility of thinking about your own activity as a constructive activity. I mean, the disappearance of efficacy, that is clearly something— you accuse the one of being animistic and then you deprive yourself of any sort of tools to act. You are constantly deprived of efficacy, of the ability to “faire faire” as we say in French, to “make do.” So you enter into a very strange, specifically modern madness about “making do,” which is the source, if we are right in our catalogue of “Iconoclash,” of many of the iconoclastic adventures, because you are constantly trying to break your own tools to act, so to speak. So the modernist “avantgarde” history of art has been doing that for most of the twentieth century; I mean, constantly trying to destroy what makes you able to do. That’s why the twentieth century seems so far away, why it seems like it was the Middle Ages, because we can’t relate to it any more.”21
While typical aetiologies of the mental health crisis trace it to the rapid industrialisation of the industrial revolution. Ethnologists in fin-de-siecle Europe had contrary beliefs: “The age of reason draws a line between ecstatic revelers and pathological victims possessed or unexpectedly attacked by animation. Such form of animation is more often heard than seen. As mentioned earlier in relation to Darwin’s example, early ethnologists would situate the origin of animistic beliefs in auditory effects of inanimate objects in nature, such as the rustling and crackling of tree leaves or the wailing of bamboo shoots. Not only the objects, but also the subjects victimized by such animated environments are integral parts of that phobic cycle. The child, the female hysteric, the “savage,” and the (domestic) animal are the frail victims of a perpetual assault by their surroundings. Such bodies have a “lower threshold” in their defense mechanism, yet a higher degree of sensitivity in their lively exchange with objects and spaces. The “hostile external world” is made for, and in some cases, by them. As much as this study bestows agency on objects, it also tries to restore the traumatic subjectivity of these ailing characters—sometimes through the very objects that have hurt them”22
The Wind in the Trees / The Contingent Image Are the marginal details of cinema more engrossing than the scripted narrative? “Whether it is the gesture of a hand, the odd rhythm of a horse’s gait, or the sudden change in expression on a face, these moments are experienced by the cinephile who beholds them as nothing less than an epiphany, a revelation. This fetishization of marginal, otherwise ordinary details in the motion picture image is as old as the cinema itself. Indeed, as the story goes, many viewers of a century ago who watched the ¤rst ¤lms of the Lumière Brothers were often delighted less by the scenes being staged for their amusement than by the fact that, in the background, the leaves were ®uttering in the wind.”23
Left: The wind in the trees was supposedly more fascinating to early cinema-goers in this Lumiere Brothers film than the people in the foreground. Right: Stray dogs in early Lumiere films were strangely not removed from set or cut from final films. “Most interpretations of the phenomenon tend to explain the attraction as a symptom of a particularly modern epistemology based on chance, ephemerality, and spontaneity or as an effect of cinema’s novel ability to show the autonomy of the world unfold independently of authorial control. In each case, the spectatorial attraction to incidental motion is explained by invoking the contingency of the moving image. What happens, then, when a beautiful view is pinned down and pictured, when it is spatially and temporally framed on film? Converting the contingency of incidental motion into a repeatable temporal object, the moving image becomes a new representational form for viewing a world in motion. We need not restrict the novelty of the moving image to the movement added to the static photograph. The spatiotemporal framing of perceived motion is as much a novelty as the new mobility of the static image. In the words of one early spectator fascinated by “rising swirls of smoke” and “the rustling of leaves under the force of the breeze,” cinema is “nature caught in the act.””24
Meaningful Simulation How can a simulation be meaningful? As humans we tend to find meaning in narrative. Yet scripted narrative is often confined by its artifice, could simulation and narrative be combined? Left: Ian Cheng’s simulation series Emissaries combines characters that follow a scripted narrative and pure AI characters that make autonomous decisions, creating a tension between them. “Emissaries is a trilogy of simulations about cognitive evolution, past and future, and the ecological conditions that shape it. It is composed of three interconnected episodes, each centered on the life of an emissary who is caught between unraveling old realities and emerging weird ones.”25 “Described by Cheng as a “habitat for stories” or “video game that plays itself ”, each Emissaries episode is a computer-generated simulation featuring a cast of flora and fauna that interact, intervene and recombine in open-ended narratives. Like BOB, these plot lines and protagonists utilise complex logic systems, principles of emergence and multiple models of artificial intelligence sutured together.”26
Right: In Harun Farocki’s Parallel films, he takes clips from computer games and overlays them with a narrative that revolves around critical reflections, drawing out meaning which was not originally obvious or intended. “Farocki’s four-part Parallel series explore the boundaries and backdrops of game worlds, and the nature of their digital objects. Parallel II follows characters’ attempts to escape the edges of their animated world by any means, and seeks to reveal what lies outside of these defined spaces and digital borders. Parallel III reveals digital worlds that take the form of discs floating in the universe—reminiscent of pre-Hellenistic conceptions of the universe. The animated worlds appear as one-sided theater stages, flat backdrops revealed only by the movements of an omniscient camera. The objects in the worlds often do not react to “natural forces.” Each of their properties must be separately constructed and assigned to them.”27
The Herzogian Documentary ““Is there such thing as insanity in penguins?” I don’t mean that they believe they are Napoleon Bonaparte or Lenin — but could they just go crazy if they’ve had enough of their colony?”
The project draws upon the the ‘Herzogian’ documentary as a framework through which to investigate the forest. Herzog often pairs seemingly innocuous images with absurdly poignant or dramatic voiceover. Where others see beauty and wonder, Herzog often sees brutality and chaos, his readings of the natural world in particular align with the questions explored by the project. What would it mean to read into a simulated forest I have created, the same way Herzog reads into reality? Left: A penguin filmed walking is overlaid with voiceover that he is walking to certain death, and Herzog muses on the capacity of penguins to commit suicide. “The rules for the humans are do not disturb or hold up the penguin. Stand still and let him go on his way. And here, he’s heading off into the interior of the vast continent. With 5,000 kilometers ahead of him, he’s heading towards certain death.”28 “And what haunts me is that in all the faces of all the bears that treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy, I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me there is no such thing as the secret world of bears, this blank stare speaks only of a half bored interest in food.” “The birds here do not sing, they scream out in pain”
In Lessons of Darkness, Herzog treats the oil fires of the gulf war as if they were an alien landscape on a different planet. He is able to create separation from himself and the image, making the voiceover more jarring, more compelling. The voiceover is used sparingly, giving it more weight when it is heard.
Parallax / Alien Eyes Many forms of mapping are products of narrow human tendencies around perception. Just as the forest will eventually contain everything, perhaps it could also be seen through everything. “The philosophical twist to be added (to parallax), of course, is that the observed distance is not simply subjective, since the same object that exists ‘out there’ is seen from two different stances, or points of view. It is rather that, as Hegel would have put it, subject and object are inherently mediated so that an ‘epistemological’ shift in the subject’s point of view always reflects an ontological shift in the object itself. Or—to put it in Lacanese—the subject’s gaze is always-already inscribed into the perceived object itself, in the guise of its ‘blind spot,’ that which is ‘in the object more than object itself ,’ the point from which the object itself returns the gaze. Sure the picture is in my eye, but I am also in the picture.”29
Left: Cedric Price’s mapping of a landscape based on whether it contains plants or not. This binary view of nature is not something we generally associate with maps of landscapes. Right: Art & Language (Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin) map of an area of the Pacific Ocean, while blank, is perfectly accurate and descriptive. Can seeing the forest through different eyes challenge the modernist totalities of psychiatry and foster a more plural view of mental distress?
Endnotes
1 Willard van Orman Quine, The Ways Of Paradox And Others Essays (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1976). 2 Kendler, K Towards a philosophical structure for psychiatry. American Journal of Psychiatry (2005) 3 Lon Fuller, Legal Fictions (Stanford, California: University Press, 1986) 4 Baker, A “Occam’s Razor in Science: a Case Study from Biogeography,” Biology and Philosophy, 22 (2007) (2013) 5 Erhard Schüttpelz, Akteur-Medien-Theorie 6 Anselm Franke, “A critique of Animation” E-Flux Journal, 59 (2014) 7 Brian Massumi, Ontopower (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015). 8 Massumi (2015) 9 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (MIT Press, 1972). 10 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (Zone Books, 2010). 11 ‘Souvenirs as Starting Points’ <http://strangeharvest.com/wp17/?p=4137> . 12 Peter A. Frost, ‘Proxy Variables and Specification Bias’, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 61.2 (1979), 323–25 . 13 Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime (John Wiley & Sons, 2017). 14 ‘Souvenirs as Starting Points’ <http://strangeharvest.com/wp17/?p=4137> 15 ‘Draft Manifesto for a Social Materialist Psychology of Distress’ <https://www.midpsy.org/draft_manifesto.htm> 16 Draft Manifesto for a Social Materialist Psychology of Distress 17R ogers Anne and Pilgrim David, A Sociology Of Mental Health And Illness (McGraw-Hill Education (UK), 2014). 18Massumi (2015) 19 ‘Designs for Fragile Personalities’ <http://dunneandraby.co.uk/content/projects/71/0> 20 ‘Noam Toran: Desire Management’ <http://noamtoran.com/NT2009/projects/desire-management> 21‘Animism (Volume I)’, Sternberg Press <https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/animism-volume-i/> 22 Spyros Papapetros, On the Animation of the Inorganic: Art, Architecture, and the Extension of Life (University of Chicago Press, 2016). 23 Christian Keathley, Cinephilia and History, or The Wind in the Trees (Indiana University Press, 2005). 24 ‘Beautiful Views, or The Wind in the Trees’, Special Affects <https://www.fsgso.pitt.edu/2015/01/beautiful-views/> 25 ‘Ian Cheng’ <http://iancheng.com/emissaries>. 26 ‘Ian Cheng: Emissaries’, Serpentine Galleries <https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/ian-cheng-emissaries/> 27 ‘Harun Farocki, Parallel II and Parallel III’ <https://www.e-flux.com/video/376397/harun-farocki-parallel-ii-and-parallel-iii-nbsp/> 28Werner Herzog, Encounters at the End of the World, 2007. 29 Slavoj Zizek, The Parallax View (MIT Press, 2009). 30 Latour (2017) 31Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology (University of Chicago Press, 2000).