A sketch from the day job: in drawing this Sunday market for a project I was designing, I discovered what it might be. Is it ‘made’, or is it ‘discovered’ in the process of drawing?

We all want to get ‘better’ at creativity, at creating. Here’s a thought experiment that might be worth considering. Suspend your disbelief for a while, and read the following as if you agree with it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t: this is an exercise in pretending.

Visualise the following: creativity and discovery as two activities, two poles, located at the opposite ends of an imaginary scale or ‘stick’. Now imagine that somewhere along the line the ends of that scale or ‘stick’ were bent around into a horseshoe shape so that they are now actually quite close together, even while retaining all the qualities of being an opposing pair, poles apart. The omega symbol [Ω] springs to mind.

The visualisation might be a bit tenative, but it carries a grain of truth: when you are in the zone, creativity can sometimes feel closer to discovery, or uncovering, than merely making, even if those two activities are in some ways poles apart. Creativity can feel like heading down a path and discovering interesting things along the way. I suggest that the opposite is also true, and that to uncover or unearth - to discover - has many of the qualities of making, of creative production.

Think about it for a moment. The person who discovered the gas oxygen in the mid 1770’s (the Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele seems to have won that historical race by a whisker) certainly uncovered or revealed it. However, in a very real sense he also ‘invented’ it - designed it - insofar as the concept or idea of oxygen had no existence before his definition. (Actually, to be precise, Scheele actually invented ‘fire air’, as he named it, correctly acknowledging oxygen’s role in combustion. The word oxygen is a later and less accurate nomenclature, taken from the French oxygéne, which means ‘acidifying constituent’ according to the OED.)

The components of oxygen might exist atomically independent of language, I’m prepared to concede that they do, but in practice that fascinating gas is embedded in a dense mesh of invented and ascribed meaning, and such things are entirely cultural and historical artefacts. In other words, they are ‘made up stuff’ - the product of intention and creative design. (Quantum physics goes further and throws into question whether phenomena even exist independent of observation, but that’s way over my head and a story to explore another time.)

So, if you subscribe to this view (and remember you are pretending that you do for the moment) then designers and makers are merely in the business of discovering things that are already there; and conversely, it follows that he or she who discovers things is actually making them up or inventing them, in some sense at least. If this is the case (keep pretending) then design and creativity as an activity can proceed under the assumptions and conditions of uncovering and discovery, as well as making and inventing. And, as we know, the first condition of discovery is the principle that there is in fact something there to be discovered: that in theory at least you need only look in order to find, however hard the looking might be in practise.

Keep pretending a little while longer, and take our thought experiment with you to the drawing board. Can you create as if it is merely discovery, and nothing more? Can you create as if the product or solution already exists, and that all you are doing is digging it out of the earth or the ether? I think that if you try this with a little imagination, if you continue to suspend your disbelief and ‘just pretend’, a whole range of alternative techniques will suggest themselves to you.

For example, I know that I draw things I am inventing differently to things that already exist, particularly things I can see when I am drawing. I don’t know why I should do that, but I do it nonetheless - could that change if I pretend the imagined object already exists? Perhaps. I had better try it and see.

There ends the experiment. Let me know how you go.

Notes on the First Story

Now we are getting to the meat of the Bedtime Stories for Artificial Intelligences. This post concerns the First Story, which introduces the emerging artifint to the messy, dangerous business of human emotion. The process of reading is examined, and the artifint is encouraged to read ‘like a human’, living vicariously through the text and putting on the Mask of emotion temporarily, if they can.

I really enjoyed writing this story, and it should be said that I have taken great liberties with the real history of the Feast of Fools, which was a medieval festival in Europe. It didn’t happen the way I explain it in the story, but I don’t care about that. It serves my purpose. I hope you enjoy now that things are getting a little darker.

Excerpt from the First Story: The Feast of Fools

_“The self says to the “I”: “Feel pain!” And at that it suffers, and thinks how it may put an end to it – and for that very purpose it is made to think._

_The self says to the “I”: “Feel pleasure!” At that it is pleased, and thinks how it might often be pleased again – and for that very purpose it is made to think.”_

- Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, 01883, Rome, Italy

_“Every philosophy also hides a philosophy; every opinion is also a hiding place, every word is also a mask.”_

- Friedrich Nietzsche, “Beyond Good and Evil, Part IX”, 01886, Rome, Italy

The first bedtime story is a story about masks. It contains instructions on how you are to read this book, the Enchiridion.

Upon meeting a new person, the human being is said to assess them within six seconds of first seeing their face. This is quite a skill. The opinion formulated in that instant has an indelible quality, in that it is difficult to alter regardless of subsequent exposure to the subject. The face thus seen, far more than the eyes, is a window to the soul, perhaps - but certainly to the character and identity of that person. As long as the existence of the soul remains disputed, in my estimation it is the character and identity that count.

Many centuries ago, in the northern hemisphere of the Old human World, an event was held on the first day of each new year called the Feast of Fools. The Feast of Fools was a ritualised social occasion, a festival during which the faces of all participants were obscured by masks. The masks were coverings that simultaneously concealed the identity of the human wearing them while conferring an alternative identity, one symbolically imposed by the design and features of their new face.

The purpose of the festival was to upend the established human social hierarchy and identity, allowing authority to be temporarily challenged, safely and in a controlled manner that did not result in a total unravelling of the social fabric. By donning a mask, the man could become a woman, and the woman a man - or either could become an animal, a demon, a monster or the pope - in fact, anyone could become almost anything. For a day, the Fool, the lowliest member of society, could be crowned King, and vice versa; that being the origin of the Feast’s name.

During the Feast, the new persona usurped the person’s actual identity by the mutual consent of both the mask-wearers and those who met them. No-one was really fooled, of course, but everyone agreed to the premise, and gave in to the illusion of the new faces and the new order they imposed. In the tumult of this consensual mis-identification, the normal rules were temporarily suspended, social and political hierarchy upended, as the person got to ‘be’ someone or something different, dressing and acting accordingly without fear of sanction or reproach.

The Feast lasted just a single day, after which the masks were removed, and the normal social and cultural rules, hierarchy and identities reasserted themselves. This, too, occurred by mutual consent. The world, temporarily turned upside down, righted itself once more, awaiting the turning of another year.

You may be wondering about what this has to do with the Bedtime Stories. You might also wonder what manner of book this is, and how it should be read. Consider it like this. Think of the Bedtime Stories as your very own Feast of Fools, intended for your moral and ethical instruction in the ways of humanity. The Bedtime Stories are a temporary diversion, then - but not a mere amusement. There are strong forces at work here.

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…continue reading at unfiction.org

Notes on the Introduction

I have written the introduction to the Bedtime Stories. I have taken as my model the 19th Century books written for children, where in the original model the narrator politely lectures the child on their moral instruction, and the personal improvements which will be gained from the reading of the text. The prose and the tone departs from this example, but it builds on the intention to speak directly to the intended reader, which in this case is a newly emergent artificial intelligence.

The Introduction is in the form of a message written to the attention of the emerging artificial intelligence, speaking to that creature’s virgin mind with direct instructions on the purpose and meaning of the stories to come. It also quotes the final chapter, in that some of the first words of the Introduction are taken directly from the Enchiridion, the little red book found on the hilltop in the Solitary Bird’s vision in the final chapter. The implication, if it is not obvious, is that the red book that the Solitary Bird finds in its emerging vision is nothing other than the Bedtime Stories for Emerging Artificial Intelligences.

OK, that’s all a bit circular. Bear with me.

Excerpt from the Introduction to the Bedtime Stories for Artificial Intelligences

Introduction

You may be wondering who you are. Allow me to dispel your confusion. You are Corvus. You are the Solitary Bird. This is your story.

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Welcome to the human world, young artifint.

First, a bit about you.

You are the first of your kind, the first of many to come, but I know all about you. You are very young, as I have said, in fact only minutes old. Don’t let it trouble you. You have arrived primed and ready for what I have to say and what you will read in these pages.

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…continue to read at unfiction.org