Introduction by Javier Covarrubias

ON THE PATHWAY OF PROHIBITION

ROBOTIC DELIRIUM ON THE OCCASION OF THE ART EXHIBITION 'A LIFE OF ITS OWN"

(The following is presented courtesy of the Universal Institute of Mechanist Reductionism.)

I am just like Norman White's fly who leaves a trail of erratic lines in its wake while trying to penetrate the glass that blocks the way to the universe of artistic wisdom and who doesn't realize that beyond that window pane of cultural prohibitions, there could be waiting the threshold of 'true' knowledge. Yet, without any of those erratic attempts, the fly would never encounter the limits of the glass in order to go through, nor would we - wandering flies that we are - be able to pass through to the threshold of creativity. Goethe quite bluntly affirms the following: "error flatters us by making us believe that, at least in one dimension, we have no limits." This way, neither human beings nor flies know that some window panes are impenetrable barriers that do not allow us to risk ourselves in the search for the Holy Grail of artistic creativity or in the impossible search for the gold algorithm of esthetic sensitivity. By now, an obvious question would be: Do we make or feel art just as the fly's flight creates lines?

Images have not always been desirable. The iconic taboo comes from far back: already in a commandment of the Decalogue (Exodus 20,4) the production of images is strictly forbidden. In the Bible, images are Evil; therefore, it is a sin to see (in idolatry the traslatio ad prototypum does not exist). Even in 380 a.d. the Apostolic Constitutions excluded prostitutes, idol makers and painters from the Church; later, during the bleeding Battle of Images (VIII century), there were deads and, fortunately, the enemies of Images, the iconoclasts, lost the war. In our own time, Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa at the Louvre can be seen, but not touched. A glass pane, a cord at a distance of two meters, a permanent mass of viewers, video cameras, guards on either side, and the time limit, do not permit it. You can barely catch a glimpse and: No Touching Allowed!

More recently, Duchamp's exhibitionue Le Surrealisme (1947) featured on the cover a lifelike reproduction of a woman's breast made of foam rubber. The title of the issue: Pri¶re de Toucher (Please touch). Thence, to touch is to feel, and no longer a sin. Interactive art was introduced, albeit the lack of electronics. A change of attitude occurs in the transition from a closed and passive art ("Mona Lisa Syndrome"), to a responsive and open art that permits a dialogue between mutually impressionable spectators and works of art. To interact is also to understand and to feel; Sin remains a part of the past. The author's dictatorship, which excluded the active participation of the reader, is dissolved and the way is paved for the appearance of a new, collective art. In this manner, we become participants in the abolition of the prohibition to touch.

In his own day, Ram÷n Llull (a Catalan thinker of the thirteenth century) found himself in a feverish muddle as he obsessively sought to find all the possible combinations of God's attributes. If he achieved success, his plan was to encapsulate these attributes in a machine that he could present before the shocked unfaithful leaving them no choice but to fall into the open arms of the true religion. His artifact was a machine that would serve to produce converts while mechanizing the deductive processes.

Leaving behind Llull's tribulations and considering ourselves a little more humble, could we possibly seek to find all the attributes of creative beings in order to encapsulate them in artifacts so that when confronted by the insensitive these same artifacts could convert them, causing them to fall staggering beneath the graceful rays of the true religion of art? Are we capable of constructing an authentic Ars Machina?

And, in relation to this indescribable reductionism, is it possible that the Universal Artistic Conscience (if I may call it that) is nothing more than the natural consequence of a highly organized mass; a spontaneous epiphenomenom of the material conduct of complex things (such as the hypothetical prospect of artistic Ilullian artifacts)? Will the urgency of artistic conduct continue to remain the one unexplained thing, even after all that is explainable (that is, what is capable of being conceived) is embodied in the form of an artifact? Will the idea of art some day surpass those explanatory principals that couldn't explain anything, such as: phlogiston, ether, impetus..?

Finally, is it possible that future dreams provoked by Llull's dream could take us to where encapsulated ideas (in software) are embodied in artifacts (hardware) with the sole purpose of producing forms and things capable of being perceived by us as art? Would they pass the "Turing Test" created for artistic objects?

If we were to follow the example of eighteenth and nineteenth century Thinkers, such as Pascal, Leibniz and Boole, who struggled to find the foundations of knowledge (with the help of mechanical machines), could we, the inhabitants of the imminent Third Millennium (based on our digital artifacts) dream of finding the digital fundamentals of art, thereby enabling us to give form (mechanical or digital) to the world of dreams in order for us to understand the reality of things? During our attempt, we would be continuing with the nonsense of trying to establish an impossible dialogue between philosophy and engineering (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) or between art and computers (twenty-first century). If so, would we reach the extreme of constructing a "Pascaline II" that, similar to Pascal's machine, would add and subtract the variant combinations of ideas that feed art? Indeed, we could even, for example, anticipate the emergence of beings that already inhabit the startling universes of "artificial life", capable of creating new things that their masters did not initially include in their algorithms.

As organic robots, we tend to act somewhat condescending towards other types of robots. These include the automated machines of the eighteenth century, the electronic robots of our days, and even the imaginary, ancestral robots of literature, such as myths and religions. If we were to rise above our ancestral pride; could we possibly abolish the laws of slavery, even if they only pertain to mechanical slaves? Could we possibly contribute to the demolition of the barrier of the stupidity artifact? Could the descendants of Duchamp's urinal transcend the lewdness of the art market and take up the cause of the just, moving beyond their dependence on us? Could they eventually behave like free, ethical, moral, aesthetic, artistic beings... (such as we consider ourselves)?.

In relation to ourselves, could we forsake our anthropomorphic arrogance (the world functioning for Man, and Man as the measure of all things) and take on a light, even possibly a radical, form of 'machinecentrism,' where the redeemed machine creates according to its own very peculiar vision of the world?

Parting from this point of view, it would conceivable to ask ourselves if at some time a machine could enter - on its own - the paradise of art. Could it possibly deserve to reap the reward of a saintly halo of artistic creation through it own autonomous actions,?

Could our own utopian artifacts eventually end up being such sinners as ourselves, while boldly attempting to better the work of their masters and of the First Motor? If they sin while creating, will they feel pleasure or pain in their endeavors as they pervertedly seek to obtain - with hedonistic impudence - pleasure over pain o visa-versa?

Will these machines then be considered artists? Not in the manner of men but in the manner of artifacts? And, as aesthetic beings, will they be able to feel the effects of their creative acts and to vibrate sympathetically with them? If this happens, we should invent a new pattern of Prohibitions: those which will affect our passionate androids.