Disintegrator

By: Marek Poliks Roberto Alonso
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  • Summary

  • What does it mean to be human in an age where experience and behavior are mediated and regulated by algorithms? The Disintegrator Podcast is a limited series exploring how Artificial Intelligence affects who we are and how we express ourselves.

    Join Roberto Alonso and Marek Poliks, as they speak to the artists, philosophers, scientists, and social theorists at the forefront of human-AI relations. In-depth contributions from these visionary thinkers will be released in a book entitled Choreomata: Performance and Performativity After AI, out on CRC / Taylor and Francis in December 2023.
    Copyright Marek Poliks, Roberto Alonso
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Episodes
  • 19. Anamnesis & Prosthetic Imagination (w/ Jonathan Impett)

    19. Anamnesis & Prosthetic Imagination (w/ Jonathan Impett)
    Sep 16 2024
    Here’s a gem from our archive, a recording with Jonathan Impett — Director of Research at the Orpheus Instituut.

    Impett has had a MAJOR impact on Roberto and Marek, a kind of intellectual godfather to the two of us. His staggering breadth of knowledge continues to blow our minds. You can find more about Impett's work here.

    A number of references from the discussion include:
    1. Impett's chapter in Choreomata is awesome. Buy our book! :)
    2. Impett references Alexander Nagel and Chris Wood's Anachronic Renaissance an unbelievably ambitious tome that delves into the situatedness of art both inside and outside of the Renaissance.
    3. A few California references -- Jonathan tags in Swarm and references the composer Brian Ferneyhough.
    4. We're all Reza Negarestani fans here -- for more about computational interactionism, check out Reza's epsiode of the pod, Anil Bawa-Cavia's episode of the pod, and Reza's absolutely mondo Intelligence and Spirit.
    5. At the time of the interview, Matteo Pasquinelli's influential The Eye of the Master had not yet been released and is referenced as an upcoming release.
    6. For more information on the "waste product" -- Alain Badiou's Immanence of Truths is actually pretty forthcoming in this respect.
    7. Jonathan also references After Sound, a very timely read by G. Douglas Barrett.
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    37 mins
  • 18. What is a World? (w/ Patricia Reed)

    18. What is a World? (w/ Patricia Reed)
    Sep 5 2024
    Majorly excited to have Patricia Reed on the pod. This is a beefy episode! If I was looking for a major reset in my relationship to the world around me, I'd start here.

    Here’s a list of the references we make throughout the interview:
    1. Here's that e-flux diagram I talk about in the intro, and here's a lecture in which she discusses this diagram. Here's the Diagramming the Common piece, which is older but I really like it.
    2. Here's a must-read interview with Denise Ferreira da Silva where the concept of "the end of the world as we know it" is postulated.
    3. When Patricia Reed refers to the "logics of worlds" in a Badiousian sense, she's referring to Alain Badiou's work on truth and world. Unless you're down for a real rabbithole, you're likely good with Reed's description here.
    4. Reed references Margaret Morrison and the Black-Scholes model in the context of finance.
    5. Reed references Sylvia Wynter's work consistently, specifically her discussion of humanism and of Frantz Fanon.
    6. Check out Beth Coleman's work on Octavia Butler AI, as well as da Silva's "Unpayable Debt" (inspired by Butler's Kindred) -- and if you somehow haven't read the Lilith's Brood Trilogy after we discussed it with Luciana Parisi, go read it (aka Xenogenesis). It's like idk the most important work of fiction in the last 50 years idk!!!
    7. Ofc big shoutouts as always Anil Bawa-Cavia -- this is the book we discuss toward the end of the episode.
    8. If you aren't aware of Laboria Cuboniks and the XFM, stop listening and read it!!!
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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • 17. Computation is Computation (w/ M. Beatrice Fazi)

    17. Computation is Computation (w/ M. Beatrice Fazi)
    Aug 19 2024
    This episode features one of our most anticipated guests: M. Beatrice Fazi.

    M. Beatrice Fazi is a philosopher working in philosophy of computation, philosophy of technology and media philosophy. In this episode we mostly cover some key definitions relating to computation and its onto-epistemology grounded in Fazi’s landmark book, Contingent Computation: Abstraction, Experience, and Indeterminacy in Computational Aesthetics published in 2018. But our discussion doesn't end in 2018.

    Now more than ever, Fazi`s work on computation holds unbelievable importance with wide-ranging implications. Philosophy is becoming a major foil to technocapital and technopolitics, forcing us to seriously (re)consider fundamental questions about technology and correlated fundamentals of knowledge and being.

    Ever wondered what computation actually is? According to Fazi, it exists and unfolds not only as a function, but also as a creative modality forming its own conditions for existence. This episode dives deep into the concept of computation as an autonomous form of thought and creation, that is nevertheless contingent, i.e. not independent from the material conditions of the world.

    We move further into Fazis more recent work in ontology: the triangulation of abstraction, representation and thought. This pushes us into massive questions - what does computation mean for the future of thought? How should we conceptualize the relationship between humans and technology? And why should we rethink the idea of technology as merely an extension of ourselves?

    Relevant Links & References:
    • Fazi’s landmark book, Contingent Computation: Abstraction, Experience, and Indeterminacy in Computational Aesthetics—still essential reading for anyone interested in the philosophy of technology. About the fundamentals of what computation does and what material, ontological and epistemological consequences this holds.
    • Brian Cantwell Smith’s essay, “The Foundations of Computing” (2003)—a text we explore, even if Fazi offers a different perspective on the nature of computation.
    • Oh, also, look to Anil Bawa-Cavia's (life changing) episode of Interdependence, where he enumerates further on computational functionalism, computational realism, but more importantly for more color on the paths to incompleteness traced in Gödel and Turing -- to which Fazi builds her main thesis: these incompletenesses are actually strengths and not limitations of computation.
    Pls like and subscribe or leave a review or whatever we're a baby podcast that's doing huge things!
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    51 mins
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