Blog

This is a blog that records the process of my last year at my Bachelor's project (Oct 2020 - May 2021). This is my library of thoughts and ideas, including the organized, the forgotten, the incompleted and the flawed.

Roko's basilisk

24 Jun 2020

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Roko's conclusion from this was that we should never build any powerful AI agent that reasons like a utilitarian optimizing for humanity's coherently extrapolated values, because this would, paradoxically, be detrimental to human values.

Eliezer Yudkowsky asked”If artificially intelligent systems someday come to surpass humans in intelligence, how can we specify safe goals for them to autonomously carry out, and how can we gain high confidence in the agents’ reasoning and decision-making?” Yudkowsky has argued that in the absence of a full understanding of decision theory, we risk building autonomous systems whose behavior is erratic or difficult to model. Thus Yudkowsky is thinking about having a system in AI where human’s core values are persevered and executed.(assumed it is possible) Then the AI would be ethical, and they will act in a way we want, and not the way we tell them to do. This idea is called humanity’s coherently extrapolated volition. So they can make their own choices and still be ethical.

One of the problems in decision theory is the prisoner’s dilemma. For example, we could imagine that if both players cooperate, then both get $10; and if both players defect, then both get $1; but if one player defects and the other cooperates, the defector gets $15 and the cooperator gets nothing. Now, imagine one of the players is you and the other is the copy of you, so both of you know exactly how each other would react and act. Because two players know how each other will play, thus it is more likely that both of you will choose to cooperate and get the most beneficial result. Both player’s actions are in fact influenced by each other even though in a prisoner’s dilemma they are separated. Therefore their decision is timeless. This is a decision model developed by Yudkowsky, called timeless decision theory (TDT).

Roko’s basilisk was an attempt to use Yudkowsky’s proposed decision theory (TDT) to argue against his informal characterization of an ideal AI goal (humanity’s coherently extrapolated volition).

According to Yudkowsky, we will make AI in which they will act according to our human core values. But just as in TDT, we humans know the blueprint of AI while AI is smart enough to know how humans behave and will behave. Roko observed that if two TDT agents with common knowledge of each other’s source code are separated in time, the later agent can (seemingly) blackmail the earlier agent. Call the earlier agent “Alice” and the later agent “Bob.” Bob can be an algorithm that outputs things Alice likes if Alice left Bob a large sum of money, and outputs things Alice dislikes otherwise. And since Alice knows Bob’s source code exactly, she knows this fact about Bob (even though Bob hasn’t been born yet). So Alice’s knowledge of Bob’s source code makes Bob’s future threat effective, even though Bob doesn’t yet exist: if Alice is certain that Bob will someday exist, then mere knowledge of what Bob would do if he could get away with it seems to force Alice to comply with his hypothetical demands.

Since a highly moral AI agent (one whose actions are consistent with our coherently extrapolated volition) would want to be created as soon as possible, Roko argued that such an AI would use acausal blackmail to give humans stronger incentives to create it. Roko made the claim that the hypothetical AI agent would particularly target people who had thought about this argument, because they would have a better chance of mentally simulating the AI’s source code. Roko added: “Of course this would be unjust, but is the kind of unjust thing that is oh-so-very utilitarian.”

Roko's conclusion from this was that we should never build any powerful AI agent that reasons like a utilitarian optimizing for humanity's coherently extrapolated values, because this would, paradoxically, be detrimental to human values.

Click here to download this writing

Reflection upon walking on a leg extension

14 May 2019

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After about an hour or more of getting used to the leg extension, my body started to coordinate and walk. To coordinate, it means the following:

This is the documentation of my involvement in Olivier’s project L’Adapté, where I was the one who tried to learn to walk on this absurd leg extension:

Portal to Olivier’s project: link

After about an hour or more of getting used to the leg extension, my body started to coordinate and walk. To coordinate, it means the following:

Making every step bears a risk. Without putting most weight on one leg and two hands extension, I could not have lifted the other leg and step forward. However, since the leg extension has to tendency to fall to the right and left side, putting weight on one leg is never a stable position. Hence, I need to incorporate two hands to balance for around 2 seconds. If I lost balance in that 2 seconds, I fell. However, there is a trick. If I continue to walk without stopping, it is easier to balance. Just like riding a bicycle at high speed is easier than riding as slow as a turtle.

Then, it is about the weight. Because the leg extension only connects to my calf, basically I am kneeling on the extension. It is quite impossible to lift it with only my calf. Therefore, the sole was needed to lift the back of the leg extension, while two hands extension as a joint to share the weight.

Finally, it is the angle between two legs. If you notice carefully, a human’s two feet can never walk in parallel like a robot. We tend to make a certain angle in between both feet. It is an insignificant thing to notice when walking normally. Yet, walking on this leg extension, such angle became a crucial part of whether I can make a smooth transition to the next step. Little bumps on the ground or tiredness of my body sometimes would produce undesirable angles. Hence, a lot of the time I have to deal with these undesirable angles by redistributing force upon the 4 spots (two hand extension and two leg extension).

I would consider the above as a trace of where I put my attention, rather than a complaint about the inhumane design of the machine.

When everything is enlarged, the slightest details matters, just like why quantum physics is important to the exploration of the universe. When every little details matter, our automatic physical response, and our perceptive categorization does not work. I could not rely on how I usually walked nor how I normally classified dangerous scenarios. Everything has to be unlearned and relearned again. I went retrospect in time and became a baby than trying to learn how to walk.

As I started to walk while imagining how should I walk, for the first time, I experienced a loss of control upon my body. There is so much wiring that has been done when we were a child to allow our brain to control our movement smoothly.

After hours of walking on it (well I was in a zone, which means highly focused, not even able to talk, that is why my sense of time probably is distorted), my feet and my hips began to experience fatigue. My hands were comparatively less fatigued. I think this is funny because it might be how the elderly are experiencing when they have to walk on walking sticks.

Click here to download this writing

First map

8 Oct 2020 morning

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All the slides are from one picture that I have drawn. I regard that as a visual mapping of how I see myself as a curator, a composer, got lost in playing around with abstract structures, and returning to a humancentric curation that needs sensitive, that works with people.

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curation

paper-sculpture

This is my preparation before meeting Cristina’s first tutor session. She asked each of us to prepare a map of the ideas, artworks that dominant our research. What do I need? What medium works for me?

I think I have already done the map when I was making the Pecha Kucha slideshow about what have I done in the past few months.

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All the slides are from one picture that I have drawn. I regard that as a visual mapping of how I see myself as a curator, a composer, got lost in playing around with abstract structures, and returning to a humancentric curation that needs sensitive, that works with people.

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Translation

My idea of thinking curation as an art that put artworks into shapes that fit together comes from me reading an excerpt of Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of a Translator”, where his task is not to perserve meaning of the original work, but to allow the language and the meaning of the work to mutate over time. Any translation will change the literature, even slightly, thus killing the literature, but at the same time give an after life to the literature.

The greatest literature will have a high translatibility so that even meaning or language is mutated, the spirit, the content of thoughts remain. And in these case, the task of a translator is more like an artist, who do not translate the origin word by word but translate it holistically so that he can fit the literature into a into a language that fits the current era, allow people to see the light of the spirit of the literature shinning through the mutated language.

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Curation

Curator is similar, to put an artwork in an exhibition space already kill the original artwork, the meaning has changed, the sense of the artwork has altered. The task of a curator, I propose, is to give afterlifes to all the artworks involved, so that all artworks fits together, it is a bit like dramaturgy, finding what could go together, but in a slightly subtle sense. Curator himself is thus also an artist that need extra sensitivity in being self-conscious and in seeing how shapes (imagine each artwork as a 3d shape) fit each other.

Abstract structures oftentimes regard mapping as a graph, which is dots connecting with lines. Albeit I always find my rushing overexcited drive here, it overlooked at something crucial, something humane. In a graph, the connections between the dots (be it an idea or an artwork or literally anything) are explicity and clear. A lot of time needed to be spent to figure out these connections before actually realizing the point that you want to make. However, the manifestation of things are complex and we cannot always see through the connection of things, connections most of the time are supposed to be subtle, tacit, untalkable or irrational. Instead of thinking a map as dots and lines, I want to try seeing a map as a picture, where the position of the shapes, the way they are arranged already implicitly expressed the complex connections between things.

Therefore, I want to try studying shape in a curatorial sense. How can I sculpt or make shapes so that they fit together. I always work with paper and I also have somehow collected quite an amount of trash, so I want to give a place in the world for them to fit in. I want to start working with paper sculpture and book binding. Book binding with needles might be, in my view, a slightly natural/ nondestructive way to bind papers instead of glue. I might use the techniques for book binding in my paper sculpture.

Artist statement exchange with Hoi Man

20 Oct 2020 evening

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So while this artist statement is recently written and it does speak about my practice, it only speak about the appearance of my practice. I think my core should be working with people, not in quantity, but in quality. In other words, to communicate with sensitivity, with care, with attentive listening, even if the communication happen really slowly or even durational. Let me try to write a new artist statement in another time.

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The score: You will exchange your statements. You will write your partner a new statement that is one sentence long. You will write a statement which is one word for the other person. Think about what is being communicated in the work.

Hoi Man’s artist statement:

“Hoi Man’s work explores the moral struggles of the mortals when confronting the power. This power often appears as God in his work, however, he does not seek for religious reference when creating. In his work, God represents not only God itself but also the odds one might have to go against in his life.

His photographs depict the moral anxiety as well as the solitude of his protagonists by a poetic and timeless aesthetic. His narrative dissolves the boundaries between literature, theatre and photography, the unique narrative is informed by his literary research and theatre studies. His pictorial visual language and theatrical composition allow him to convey different stories within a unified framework.”

I turned it into one sentence: “My job is uncompressing our fear to be punished by the power, by the cosmos.” Firstly I thought that what he meant is confrontation to an endless power, has to do with struggles and anxiety. So I wrote “Hoi Man depicts our anxiety of being forced to confront the mess caused by the power, the god and the cosmos.” But then I found that “moral anxiety” is a term from Freud that raised about the guilt, the self punishment when we fear we will be punished by the system, by the power because of something perhaps even unrelated that we have done. So I wrote “Hoi Man expresses the internal fear to be criticized when trying to confront the powerful.” And then put it in first person speech: “My job is uncompressing our fear to be punished by the power, by the cosmos.”

I concise this whole idea into one word, well kind of: “Humpty-Dumpty”. I think Humpty Dumpty represents really nicely our fear to be punished before we are even try to confront the power. He is afraid of falling off the wall, and crack. If you were an egg, you crack anyway regardless of the wall, the power. But the wall enhance your fear, and adding your chance to crack yourself. I think I added a lot of interpretation here but you get my point.

My artist statement

As of my artist statement, Hoi Man put it into one sentence and the one word:

Curation itself is art. I am a composer not of music but of objects that surrounds me, be it a bunch of trash, or be it a group of artworks my friends make. My primary way of working is the simple act of looking at the relationship between seemingly unrelated shapes. With all these chaos in mind, I try to sculpt them so that their shapes fit each other. When the shapes are visible, I am a paper sculptor who build architectures without glue. When the shapes are immaterial, I am a thinker who propose new theories by linking ideas from chinese, indian and western philosophy. But when the shapes get more and more abstract, Iike programming different software and codes together to build installation, I lost my own connection with people. I am for a curation that not only itself is working, but it also fits with my energy and the energy of the people around.

“I search for the every connection possible.”

“Connection”

I think he concluded nicely, and at the same time revealed flaws in my thinking. I would be very much liking Hoi Man’s interpretation if you asked me 6 months ago. The idea for searching for every connection POSSIBLE has exhausted me completely last semester. Looking for every possible connections is actually god’s job, human is incapable of that. Playing and connecting ideas are fun but too much thinking in my own world, I lost the human aspect in my career. My interest, like improvisation, giving advices, listening to people, all involves other human or it involves me to find my connection with my own body. To improvise, you need to be in sync with your body; to dance, more about it; to advice and to listen, using some of my energy to spark the other’s imagination. But I was building complicated installations, abstract structures, outdated with my interest. I lost my focus.

So while this artist statement is recently written and it does speak about my practice, it only speak about the appearance of my practice. I think my core should be working with people, not in quantity, but in quality. In other words, to communicate with sensitivity, with care, with attentive listening, even if the communication happen really slowly or even durational. Let me try to write a new artist statement in another time.

An Imaginery exhibition

24 Jun 2020

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What is an exhibition? It is not a place for presentation, it is a place for things to be curated. And through curation, all the great art pieces are killed and reincarnated into a new baby. It is believed that if you have done something great in your past life, you would reincarnated with inheritance of those good trace you had in your past life. A great artwork, even though killed by curation, would inevitably reincarnated with the aura of its greatness.

What is an exhibition? It is not a place for presentation, it is a place for things to be curated. And through curation, all the great art pieces are killed and reincarnated into a new baby. It is believed that if you have done something great in your past life, you would reincarnated with inheritance of those good trace you had in your past life. A great artwork, even though killed by curation, would inevitably reincarnated with the aura of its greatness.

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Click here to download this proposal

An imaginary exhibition with 3 favorite artists

15 Oct 2020 afternoon

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PC

The score: Have a show with 3 artists you admire identify where you fit in Position yourself accordingly

Hayao Miysazaki

何倩彤 Hoo Sin Tung link

謝德慶 Hsieh Tehching

Hans Ulrich Obrist

11 Oct 2020 night

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Recently I have been building this website that you are on now, exhausted. And I found this really sounding ted talk about an artist who has his subject matter as curation. But I fall aslept I think in 5 mins. It was probably 2 days ago. Gonna watch this clip seriously tomorrow. /11 Oct 2020 night.

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curation

case-study

Recently I have been building this website that you are on now, exhausted. And I found this really sounding ted talk about an artist who has his subject matter as curation. But I fall aslept I think in 5 mins. It was probably 2 days ago. Gonna watch this clip seriously tomorrow. /11 Oct 2020 night.

Today I seriously watch it, again, again and again. Each of those references and people he talked about is so interesting that I have to listen to the clip few times to grasp the connections between those people and ideas. /13 Oct 2020 morning.

Édouard Glissant’s idea of Archipelago

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Archipelago, connected by maintain own identity, while not fixating their or other’s identity. An unforceful culture exchange between the islands. Not uncenterd, but polyphony of center.

Édouard Glissant’s Sartorius “Utopia is the reality we want to meet the other without losing himself and herself.” Utopia, a point where culture exchange without anyone homogenizing the others.

CASE-STUDY: The Kitchen Show, St. Gallen, Switzerland, 1991

It is the idea of not finding an exhibition space, but inventing museum, inventing exhibition space. How can I exhibit in my own kitchen while the kitchen still functions? This is an exhibition that last for 3 months in Obrist’s own kitchen, he invited some artists to put their works there. As his first exhibition, it was a starting point to “present an exhibition in an unspectacular place” (Obrist 1991, World Soup: Küchenausstellung 1991. Catalogue for “The Kitchen Show.”).

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This is one of the installations exhibited in the Kitchen Show organized by Hans Ulrich Obrist. It is a kitchen cupboard full of cans and jars installed by Fischli and Weiss. Cans, jars and packages of pasta all have a really harmonizing color palette, mostly consists of the ketchup red, accompanied by the pasta or beans yellow. Without telling you that it is carefully placed and installed, it looks just any other kitchen cupboards. Or wait, is it just the cupboard that is installed? Perhaps even the orange drink, the tall white water bottle and the cleaning brush are part of the installation. It plays with the boundary between the artwork and the exhibition white space, it is made not clear what the installation includes or excludes.

This is clearly an installation that is made for this very exhibition, it questions “What art could I do in a kitchen?”, “What does it mean to put art in a kitchen that still have to be cooking in?”. These are curatorial questions, questions that is essential in site-specific artworks. Fischli and Weiss’s role have overlapped with the role of Obrist, the curator/ organizer. The curator no longer is the only one who put objects in the given space, but also the one who inspires the artists to think about the possibilities of the exhibition space. Curator is not manipulator, he/she is the communicator to communicate curatorial thoughts to the artists.

  • if we gain concentration (concentrated experience) we lose territory, if we gain territory we lose concentration.
  • Developed into the Marathon series of exhibitons. Including the Manifesto Marathon exhibition, 2008 (click me!), coincidently really cohesive with the film that I watch Manifesto, 2015.

Thinking about space

  • Other space, what is a garden in 21st century?

Museum inside museum, outside museum, thinking about place to exhibit. Institute and outside institute. Obrist’s interview: click me!

Mapping exhibitons, exhibiton of exhibtions

Ways of Curating Project (click me!) is the project Hans Ulrich Obrist initiated, basically it is a curation of exhibitions that are related to each other. I have done something similar: I found 3 films where themselves is a curation of trickery, psychic films, manifesto, each film is an exhibition. And I organized an online screening (I got no audience so it didn’t really happened), and wrote a press release for it. I organized the film screening in juxtaposition of a text, that transcend this film screening to also be an exhibition itself, I made an exhibition of films who themselves are exhibitions also. This is the accompanying text of the film screening, as well as the press release at the end:

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