Feeding the Loop. Exploring Human-Technology-Relations through an Autopoietic Understanding of Hybrid Intentionality.

Abstract

Abstract

This thesis demonstrates how interactive performance installations that make use of artificial intelligence function as an autopoietic hybrid intentional feedback-loop. The term hybrid intentionality was coined by post-phenomenological philosopher of technology Peter-Paul Verbeek and implies the inherently relational way in which humans are being directed in their experiences, choices and actions by technology, while this ‘technological intentionality’ cannot exist without human action.

In this thesis, I add to Verbeek’s notion of the concept by arguing for a revised version in relation to recent developments concerning the relationship between humans and technology due to the rise of artificial intelligence, since this causes a continuous relational aspect to hybrid intentional relationships between humans and technology, which Verbeek has not yet mentioned. I do this through employing a concept based analysis of the case studies Jan by Dutch artist Bram Ellens and Forced Labor: Arena/Simple Machines by Flemish Choreographer Ugo Dehaes, both interactive performance installations that employ artificial intelligence, following the approach by cultural theorist Mieke Bal. Bal argues for allowing concepts to ‘travel’ between disciplines since this offers the concepts a way of reclaiming new meanings within a new context. Furthermore she considers case studies such as performances to be ‘thinking objects’ that respond to the concepts applied to them and further unfold their meaning.

I will first explore the concept of hybrid intentionality in relation to the case studies. Building on perspectives from post-phenomenological philosopher of technology Don Ihde on human-technology relations and sociologist Bruno Latour on the concept of prescriptions, I explain how the AI systems employed in these interactive installations create frame-works of possible choices and actions that direct the participants’ intentionality. However, I also explain why the continuous relationality between the participant and the AI system asks for a new understanding of the concept of hybrid intentionality. Drawing on debates around interactivity, autopoiesis and performativity stemming from the fields of performance studies and robotic and relating to the work of Stroud Cornock and Ernest Edmonds, Oliver Bown, Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders, Jennifer Hall and Erika Fischer-Lichte, this thesis tries to reformulate a new, autopoietic understanding of the concept of hybrid intentionality. Moreover, it argues for the dramaturgical potency of this concept to invite critical reflection in participants on humantechnology relationships.