The technology is tired
An interactive story prototype
YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE THIS
YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE THIS
‘The technology is tired’ is a story about an entity who tries to surpass the ‘technology of reality’, they attempt to cope with their reality by recreating it. Their ‘love letter’ to the universe is embodied by the act of creation - specifically, Machine is creating the highest, most sophisticated technology possible, hoping to one day, create the universe itself – a suicidal hommage.
꩜ Silly creature, the universe already exists ꩜
1/7
As Ursula K. Le Guin puts it, “technology is how a society copes with physical reality.”
꩜
“A creature named Machine sits, thinking of all the ways it could create the universe. Every hour of every day, Machine is writing its love letter to the universe. Everytime, it goes something like this …… ”
3/7
Goal: reveal something we 'cannot see',
a place we supposedly ‘cannot go.'
But who’s to say what we can and cannot do?
2/7
Tech giants do not want us to disconnect technology from the ideals of the future. They do not want us to see a future void of tech dependency.
Hi-tech or low-tech, how much does it matter? The mundane of yesterday will still be mundane tomorrow and utopia is now.
4/7
Machine fails each time they try to create the universe. “The creature attempts and attempts and attempts. Defeated, they cry, 'AM I YOU YET? IN UTOPIA, I WILL BE YOU.”
5/7
“After an eternity of attempts, the creature pleads to the universe…” The universe responds as it always has and always will: steady, patient, unmoved but not unaffected, and always within reach.
Our actions hurt the earth. People might want/expect to see rage and wrath and fury. They will reject the radical notion that the universe was so kind. But in this story, the universe is kind, in the sense that reality continues moving forward, both punishment and compassion as per usual. “I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly” (Mary Oliver)
6/7
This story explores the idea that we don't have to create or invent a beautiful, epic world in order to be apart of one. We can contribute to one that already exists. There is no need to romanize a utopia, as always wanting a positive experience is a negative experience.
꩜
7/7
꩜ CONCEPT ꩜
A mechanical ‘puppet box’ that only plays
when the viewer’s eyes are closed.
Play audio to begin presentation.
Extended Write Up Info:
‘The technology is tired’ is ultimately an interactive story (with the genre of ‘dystopian fable’) that showcases two sides: (1) a story following a character who’s learning what it means to coexist with the earth and moderate their technological progress, and (2) a harsh mechanical moderator who does not want you to see this plausible future.
This machine works by detecting if the viewer’s eyes are opened or closed. If the user’s eyes are open, the story stops and the moderator sternly tells you to close your eyes. If the user’s eyes are closed, the moderator is satisfied enough, and the play will continue. Servo motors open and close the stage curtains, move the rotating stage, and flip the stagefront, all timed to the audio track playing on a webfile which sends commands (via p5 serial control) to the arduino in order to move the stage.
I was inspired to create this project mainly because I wanted to push the limits of minimal user-interaction (in this case, it’s just opening and closing your eyes), yet still be able to have an immersive experience. I also wanted to explore a storytelling medium as it’s something I have very little experience in. Conceptually, I was inspired by two main essays: Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘A rant about ‘technology’’ and Jacob Geller’s ‘The False Evolution of Execution Methods.’ While they both tackle radically different topics, their commentary meets in the middle: ultimately prompting us to think about trivial technological progression and our infatuation with the future.
References
The script contains excerpts from following:
Frederick Kiesler - Inside the Endless House
T.S. Eliot - Hollow Men
Mitski - A Burning Hill
Greta Thunberg - Fairy Tale of Eternal Economic Growth
Mark Zuckerberg - Meta Connect 2023
Sophie from Mars - AI - Our Shiny New Robot King
Ursula K. Le Guin - Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
Mary Oliver - SLEEPING IN THE FOREST
Other notable references (not directly quoted):
The False Evolution of Execution Methods
Art in the Pre-Apocalypse
The Backwards Law
A Prophet for Our Tech-Saturated Times
The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World
A rant about “technology”
Places with terrible wifi
Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
American SF and the Other
The Failure of the Science Fiction as Social Criticism
Crowds and Technology
A few quotes from these sources:
“Technology” and “hi tech” are not synonymous, and a technology that isn’t “hi,” isn’t necessarily “low” in any meaningful sense. [...]
We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called "technology " at all. As if linen were the same thing as flax — as if paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills, were natural objects, born with us like our teeth and fingers – as if steel saucepans with copper bottoms and fleece vests spun from recycled glass grew on trees, and we just picked them when they were ripe…
-Ursula K. Le Guin
“We excuse the practices of today via the specter of previous barbarism. [...] not only have we found a new solution, but the old solution was brutish, crash, inhumane. This new solution always represents a new era, the most evolved, the most enlightened. That is until, it too is rendered barbaric by the next developmental line.”
-Jacob Geller
“In general, American [science fiction] has assumed a permanent hierarchy of superiors and inferiors, with rich, ambitious, aggressive males at the top, then a great gap, and then at the bottom the poor, the uneducated, the faceless masses, and all the women. The whole picture is, if I may say so, curiously "un-American." It is a perfect baboon patriarchy, with the Alpha Male on top, being respectfully groomed, from time to time, by his inferiors. [...]
Is this speculation? is this imagination? is this extrapolation? I call it brainless regressivism.”
-Ursula K. Le Guin
“Science fiction novels, on the record, have not been measurably effective social criticism [...] The science fiction novel does contain social criticism, explicit and implicit, but I believe this criticism is massively outweighed by unconscious symbolic material more concerned with the individual's relationship to his family and the raw universe than with the individual's relationship to society.
-C. M. Kornbluth
“... In 1954 Ellul saw the beast emerging in infant form. Technology, he wrote, can’t put up with human values and ‘must necessarily don mathematical vestments. Everything in human life that does not lend itself to mathematical treatment must be excluded… Who is too blind to not see that a profound mutation is being advocated here?’”
-Jacques Ellul
Technical Aspects
Technology used:
2 Continuous servos
1 micro servo
P5 Serial Control
Media Pipe Face API
Play.ht AI voice
Garage Band
Materials:
Anything I could get my hands on
As this is a prototype, moving forward future incorporations include:
- Hall monitor sensor and magnet for detecting the start of the rotating stage
- DC motors within the stage sets
- LEDs within the stage sets
- Spotlight, via an LED with a magnifier
- Running program on raspi and USB webcam
- Hologram setup on top of the raspberry pi screen
- Fourth motor so the second stagefront ‘mouth’ closes
- A chair w/ a haptic sensor
- A more revised script
Experience Simulation Video
Freesounds.org Sources
https://freesound.org/people/Cloud-10/sounds/648174/
https://freesound.org/people/pfranzen/sounds/393745/
https://freesound.org/people/medoob/sounds/592848/
https://freesound.org/people/unfa/sounds/215416/
https://freesound.org/people/FALL-E/sounds/713439/