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Qatipana: cybernetics and cosmotechnics in Latin American art ecosystems

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Abstract

In this essay, we explore the philosophical and theoretical resonances of the artwork Qatipana from the perspective of some key insights of Gilbert Simondon’s information processing system approach. Qatipana (Quechua word that means flow, sequence, transmission) is a hybrid ecosystem of information flow which, even though not the kind of dispositive systems theory was designed to read, offers some valuable empirical insights to test some key aspects of Simondon’s information processing systems. In particular, we are interested in observing how Simondon’s becoming and individuation play out in an algorithmic cycle performed by the cognitive system of an Artificial Intelligence agent: how does mono-technology and computerization of cultural techniques influence the nature of knowing the affection of being with others (people, things, animals)? We contrast Simondon’s contributions with the work of Norbert Wiener and Stafford Beer on information in cybernetics and the cosmotechnics and Technodiversity of Chinese philosopher Yuk Hui. Furthermore, we offer a provisional assessment of the reach, limits, and possibilities this kind of symbiotic crossing of technologies and arts: it is a field filled with challenges and unresolved complexities that should encourage us to recognize the urgency that is implied in the disruptive (and creative) we can see unfolding in social and political life. The already pervasive (and growing) presence of computational systems has become both a tremendous risk and a vertiginous deployment of liberating opportunities. Latin America and elsewhere are desperately calling for an insightful and imaginative engagement.

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Notes

  1. Individuation, for Simondon’s terms, does not produce only the individual, but also the associated environment. The individual is, then, a certain phase of being that possesses a pre-individual reality with potentials that individuation is unable to consume. Being is in becoming and therefore has the ability to become out of phase in relation to itself and to resolve its tensions, understood as the change from one state to another, that is, becoming (Simondon 2015).

  2. For Stiegler (2020a, b), the anthropocene is presented above all as an “entropocene”, combining thermodynamic entropy, biological entropy, and informational entropy, and destroying all libidinal economy, leading to a capitalism based purely on drives, because it is purely computational. Thus, from his pharmacological proposal, he observes that reconstituting a political and libidinal economy means to rework an epistēmē and an epistemology that is equivalent to a neganthropology (and neganthropocene) of the automated human.

  3. Simondon describes transduction as “an ongoing individuation”; it is “an interval” that is a substance in its modulation with matter. Based on this premise, the individuation process is uncertainly “metastable”, but for that reason, it is also inventive, as is the case of the processes that emerge from the contingencies deploying biological and algorithmic entities, as is the case of Qatipana.

  4. For Stiegler, the concept of epiphylogenesis “recapitulative, dynamic and morphogenetic accumulation (phylogenesis) of individual experience (epi), designates the appearance of a new relationship between the organism and its environment, which is also a new state of matter: yes the individual is an organic matter and therefore organized, its relationship with the environment (with matter in general, organic and inorganic), when it comes to a who, is mediated by this organized but inorganic matter that is orgonon, the tool with its teaching role (its role as an instrument), the what is in that sense, the what the who invents and the what as well as that one is invented by the latter”(Stiegler 2002).

  5. By introducing us to some lesser-known episodes in the deep history of digital machines and art, Qatipana attempts to address technology as the driver of today’s world and the people who bring these machines to life in relationships/operations. With an eye on both the computable and the incomputable, Qatipana shows how computing emerges or does not emerge, how digital thrives but also atrophies, how networks interconnect while also fraying and falling apart. By rebuilding outdated technology with current software, this project shows how the past is brought to light in new ways, from intricate algorithmic patterns similar to weaving on a hand loom, to astonishing simulations of artificial life. As an update on the past, this project is also an assessment of all that remains unquestionable as we continue to live in the aftermath of this long digital age.

  6. As Derrida (reading Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages) points out, metaphysics consists in excluding non-presence, determining the supplement as simple exteriority, as pure addition or pure absence. What is added is nothing, since it is added to a full presence to which it is external. The paradox is that the addition is annulled because it is considered as a pure addition. The concept of origin or nature is then nothing more than the myth of the addition of supplementarity annulled by the fact of being purely additive (cf. Derrida 1971).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Renzo Filinich Orozco

  2. Escuela de Arquitectura, Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana UTEM, Santiago, Chile

    David Maulén de los Reyes

  3. Santiago, Chile

    Benjamin Varas Arnello

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  1. Renzo Filinich Orozco
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  2. David Maulén de los Reyes
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  3. Benjamin Varas Arnello
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Correspondence to Benjamin Varas Arnello.

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Orozco, R.F., de los Reyes, D.M. & Arnello, B.V. Qatipana: cybernetics and cosmotechnics in Latin American art ecosystems. AI & Soc 39, 53–63 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-023-01765-3

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