Originally written June 2016.
Consider a near-future reality of making things in which every digital production process, material technique and construction method is fully automated, seamlessly connected and remotely organised. Let’s call this Easy Production.
At the same time the sophistication of our interfaces to control technology starts to simplify another order of magnitude. Machine learning systems graduate from helpful gimmick to becoming fundamental middle management in the way we engage with technology. Interactions become sufficiently ‘intelligent’that our statements and actions are richly interpreted and complex decisions can be made on our behalf – in real time. Let’s call this Easy Communication.
Finally consider a software platform which has a fully semantic relationship to data. Services like Google Images or Facebook and it’s social models are attempts at realising this for specific types of data, but anticipate the extensions of these structures as they become entirely interoperable. Images, sounds, text, news, social profiles, videos, 3D models, networks, faces, products, voices, purchasing preferences, meta-data, time and space become fully interchangeable components. Like a seamless road-trip from Rainbow Road, Mario Kart to Liberty City, Grand Theft Auto – digital descriptions of objects, concepts or the relationships between them flow effortlessly across all platforms – in real time. Let’s call this Easy Data.
The fact that the current state of technology is not too far away from any of these three pitches being realised is fascinating. We must consider though the relationships that develop as all three paradigms begin to collide.
If Easy Communication controls Easy Production fed by Easy Data, our relationship with digital systems - and creative practices which engaged with them - may become entirely conversational. During such a conversation is it clear when are speaking and when we are listening? When does such a system start to talk about itself? When does it ask us for help?
The original text (2016) featured some experimental prose which represented a conversation with a future AI capable of generating video, which would now be referred to as a prompt.
I wanna make my first film.
It’s called - “Peak Practice final ever episode”.
I need 15 seconds of Yolanda Hadid walking the streets of Lisbon with an Afghan hound that’s been shaved from it’s waist down. Both Hadid and the dog wear orange trainers with bearing the word ‘brittle’ in a sci-fi-graffiti-style all caps typeface. Hadid wears a cropped flame style short sleeved bowling shirt over a large yellow WMCA good guys sweater, with golden cat 5 cable for a belt. She walks through a crowd of women who part like an ocean as she gently sways. Everyone else in the scene is wearing all-black Vietnamese religious garments with light rose highlights.They appear to be dancing together reflecting Hadid’s movements.
As she walks,she sings the following lyrics,to the most prominent melody of the most downloaded song of 2013 in the country with the most bees but pitched down an octave:
alaska tell me is it cool to be alone
tennessee hot tub / get me on the phone
aloe vera face task / lonely little lobster roll baby it’s a montage / poochey lover on patrol let’s go get a sandwich / half time advantage maybe not a mortgage / lovely litter fentanyl
The editing vibe should have the pacing of big budget Michael Jackson video, maybe earth song or that one with Janet Jackson. Shoot and grade it like homemade footage on super 8 but like it’s been stabilised in post by a reddit user and uploaded to streamable. She continues:
We hooked some rides, stood side by side and watched cars go by Easy and me and some other guy
In the last seconds the music stops and Hadid turns to the camera and in the voice of Alex Ferguson says:
AFK, JFK, pray they never move the dial - bae you’re listening to the long strong songs of PayDay Radio 21-10-53 Hong Kong’s correct sound. Excellent choice.
Roll credits – take the names of the crew from Errol Morris’third film and match them as closely as possible to the typographic style of the packagaing design of any Legally Blonde porn parody (your choice) except change any name beginning with C to Chris and any name beginning with B to Burman.
Once it’s done, upload it to the torrent sites and start talking it up on the forums under the persona of a man fromVancouver who’s most intense emotion was the discovery of a brief window of sexual attractiveness midway through his journey from weighing too much in 2009 to measuring his BMI too often in 2011. Picture yourself wearing a t-shirt that says:
If you think macros are something you do in Excel... GET OUT OF MYWAY
Picture yourself repeatedly mansplaining‘sudo make me a sandwich’ to OK Cupid first dates and using wild hand movements from YouTube videos about body language incorrectly deployed to draw attention away from your uncomfortably flamboyent neck veins. Happy ending this one thinks you’re kinda cute.
