The Real Office in Conversation with Douna Lim and Théo Pesso

What sparked your interest in the story of Mario Tchou? How did you come across this story which is sometimes mystified in connection with the developments of Olivetti after the engineer’s death? Was it important to depart from a real historical event to test the ‘artificiality’ of the system you worked within?

We discovered Mario Tchou's story by chance. In July 2019, we were doing a residency at the Ratti Foundation in Como (Italy), within a program curated by Nora Schultz and Ei Arakawa. They had organised a visit to the former Olivetti headquarters in Ivrea. It was there that in the early 1930s Adriano Olivetti commissioned Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini to build a kind of “industrial utopia” for his company. His project aimed to organise all aspects of workers’ lives. A sort of autarchy supporting an industrial development, with canteens, leisure rooms, and even nurseries for childminding. It was an experiment in management that must, of course, be understood in the context of the polarised ideologies of the time, but it is interesting to relate it to contemporary modes of management, particularly in the well-known large IT companies. Later, we decided to investigate further and we discovered that Olivetti had developed the first personal computer with a research team he founded.  Let's say that the vision and drive behind the development of the personal computer at the time were quite similar to those producing the AI virtual assistants of today. This mindset somehow belongs to a Western Judeo-Christian imagination that can be traced back to the figure of the Golem for instance, and which dictates a certain relationship to the world that definitely needs to be questioned. This is why we chose to move away from the traditional narratives of myths such as Kaspar Hauser or the Wild Child, wherein the question of language is predominant. But at the moment of writing, we had to start from a simple and comprehensible situation, with an enigma and a given power structure. We had to place Mario Tchou in a fiction where his unconditional desire to create a replica of himself could fail. Thus, the enigmatic circumstances of Tchou’s death was a perfect starting point. It helped us to get rid of the boring historical events in favour of a much more entertaining critical-paranoiac approach.

The script was partly produced with Cloud Natural Language/machine learning. What kind of texts did you use? Did you have any expectations concerning the outcome of the Natural Language Processing? How did you proceed with the text: was there any selection or did you just use the text produced by the AI? 

Many different texts were involved in the writing process. It would be difficult to list them all here, or even to rank them in terms of relevance. But to give you an idea, on the one hand, the NLP process requires inputs in order for the program to constitute its pattern based on text materials. For that, we used some of the texts we collected through our research: these are either press articles that offer a kind of commentary on the current development of cybernetics, or interviews with people who have had NDEs (Near Death Experiences), and also texts by authors who have used collage and expropriation. Michèle Berstein or Chris Marker, for instance. On the other hand, we sought clues in texts that could better inform us on the context of our research. Matteo Pasquinelli’s work on Romano Alquati was very helpful. All of the texts had to have a resonance, whether contextual or methodological. Regarding our expectations, as we had previously worked with such software, we kind of knew that the results would be quite disappointing. Let's just say that if you expect the machine to write for you, you'd be better off going to see a good SF blockbuster. Rather, we were trying to divert the tool from its intended use. But we haven't found a way. NLP dictionaries are pre-constituted and belong to the big IT companies. These systems are built for a specific purpose, for a specific use, from the basis of computer language, that is to say, a binary language. The rot has set in, so to speak. In order to make a real misuse, you need to be able to create your own dictionaries. So, to answer your question, yes! We made a selection from the results, we organised them according to the narrative structure we were using, and also rewrote many sections.

The project is based on your performance “Mario programma 101”. Can you tell us more about this performance and the development of the video concerning your aim to edit sound/image and text in a pattern-based sequencing?

The basic idea was to make a filmed performance written as a play, for which a set was created. We had thought of a huis clos featuring Baptiste Pinteaux as Mario and One-o-One, whose physical presence was materialised by a POV camera. The performance was supposed to take place in March 2020 but never happened for reasons you know. We therefore refocused on the film. This greatly impacted the final work because the images were produced far from the conventions of a usual film shoot. On the set, when Baptiste was acting, we had to do long shots and we also had to produce additional material. In the play, the car crash scenes were screened were generated with a virtual car crash simulator. We used them in the film afterwards. We also chose to confront our footage with found-footage pointing directly at contextual clues. Indeed, when you edit a film, you always ask yourself about the viewer's gaze. Usually, you look for ways to make your story as coherent as possible. In a way, that wasn’t our aim. We were seeking to offer a sensory experience that could escape these injunctions of storytelling. We therefore had to abandon some of the editing techniques that are often used for storytelling. We studied our texts’ patterns and applied them to the time structure, with its own recurrences, distortions, and ruptures. Because there is no story per se but rather the processing of the textual material by the machine. And we have tried to make this mutation tangible.

The Real Office in Conversation with Lawrence Lek

With Geomancer, you decided to look into the relationship between notions that are often considered as opposing: human and AI, creativity and technology, the virtual and the real. By situating the story of an AI who becomes an artist in the ‘real’ world within a computer simulation, all these layers become intertwined. Can you describe how you see these fields and why you decided on this specific framing?

It's a complicated story! Geomancer is the middle part of a trilogy which began with the video essay Sinofuturism (1839-2046 AD) (2016) and was followed by the feature film AIDOL (2019). I wanted to fuse together all the complex layers I had been dealing with for the last few years – from the questions of technology on a personal and political level, to the representations of East Asia in a globalised cultural context, to the more medium-specific questions about how we can deal with simulation as both a medium and a subject. In other words, since the so-called 'virtual world' had already been extensively explored from a philosophical perspective, as well as a pop cultural one (e.g., The Matrix, gaming culture), I wondered how I could make it more relevant to my own interests. The 'trilogy' began with Sinofuturism (1839-2046 AD), which I actually made almost by accident while writing the script and making the soundtrack to Geomancer. To put it briefly, during my research into AI, I noticed parallels between the portrayals of Chinese technological development and AI; the hopes and fears that related to both fields were really mirror images of each other. So, while Sinofuturism is a video essay made using found footage downloaded from the Internet, Geomancer was made from the 'ground up' using 3D animation and video game engine rendering, and I wanted to wrap in the observations of Sinofuturism within an explicitly science fiction context.

The layer of Sinofuturist imagery, again, blurs conflicting ideas: How did you connect the anxiety of the economic rise of China, questioning the Western art ideal of originality, and overcoming the boundary between artificiality and human?

I want to point out that my definition of 'Sinofuturism' is only one possible interpretation of the phenomenon, which is why I have the '(1839-2046 AD)' suffix at the end of the title: it indicates that I want to deal with memory and futurity simultaneously. Of course, as a filmmaker, and moreover as somebody who uses CGI a lot, you can't ignore the aspect of imagery and the visual culture that already exists. However, I'm interested in questioning the ideas and histories that I've inherited and in thinking of the complexities hidden within them. For example, since imagery drawn from East Asian metropolis is so pervasive in both cyberpunk literature and science fiction film worldbuilding, there's a pre-existing idea of what is 'Sinofuturist', which arose long before the twenty-first century. So when I was researching and learning about the geopolitical discussions concerning AI and technology, I came across – again and again – a dynamic which is often oversimplified into a conflict between the 'rise of China' and the corresponding 'decline of the West'. I think it's much more complicated than that, of course. With the recent films, I wanted to look into the complications of all of these influences, something that could exist at the messy, chaotic intersection of conflicting ideas.

The Real Office in Conversation with Valerie Wolf Gang

In Vanishing Act, the layers of what AI contributes and what you do are closely tied. How have your perception of the relationship between the physical features of the world and so-called ‘virtuality’ change since working on this project?

In the past, I have always considered the limits between reality (materiality) and virtuality (non-material world) to be very strongly defined. The rules were somehow simple and straightforward for me, but while I was researching deeper and producing the latest artworks, I realized that the delineation is not so simple. The virtual and material worlds are often intertwined, and their limits can be blurred. I often compare this with the mind and body connection – it has to be balanced for us to be complete and healthy human beings, for genuine psychophysical harmony. With the popularization of new media technologies and various digital elements we use in our daily lives, these spheres are even harder to distinguish. Still, I don't necessarily mean it's a good or a bad thing. We must raise these questions and be aware of our surroundings and the intense impact of media in our daily lives. By media, I mean all the tools we use in communication with ourselves, society, our work and life. We can live in a non-material world, but it is often difficult to avoid all the factors that influence contemporary society. I was surprised how my recent weight loss affected my identity and my personal life: family, friends, work, dreams, and desires. What I cherish the most at the moment is the element of time. For me, it's a value that money can't buy; it's the element that keeps on going no matter what, and it's the only factor that can move mountains and change the world. Time heals all wounds, and time lives in both worlds: in reality and virtuality.

In the description of your work, we learn how training AI – by reading texts about healthy lifestyle for your project FLUID – affected and changed your own body. But you also let another AI learn from your body scans and create new images. What was the idea behind this double alienation?

Through FLUID, I realized that while I was teaching the computer how to be creative on its own and, therefore, write poetry, I realized that the experience was also impacting me. In a way, I was “brainwashing” myself through the process because I constantly read about healthy lifestyles and filled the computer database with the information. In the process, my brain started to pick up the details and told me I have been making many mistakes in my life and that it could harm my health in the long term. I had been obese all my life, I didn’t pay too much attention to it because it was the way things had always been – I just accepted the fact and learned how to live that way. Through the art piece's production process, I have somehow realized that I need to assess my lifestyle choices. Later on, it made a significant impact on my body – physically and mentally.

Similarly, the process continues in Vanishing Act, where I continued my research on the body's physical changes and their impacts on mental states and the question of identity. In a way, the AI was a playground for me, as I used its processing power to be creative with different data on healthy lifestyles, but in another way, my body became a playground for the AI. And while my body was changing, I was documenting the details of my skin with various scanning processes, and later on, I processed the scans through neural networks and deep dream generators. So the scans of my bodily changes became a playground for the AI to reinterpret the data and show its creativity. AI was impacting my life, and my life was influencing AI. “Cyborg-influencer process.”

You compare your body changes with the descriptions from the Apollo astronauts. What is your interest in the astronaut’s experiences, and where do you see the intersections with your own personal experiences?

While I was at an artist residency in New York last year, I reached a point where I finally stopped with my body transformation – I had finally obtained my ideal weight and started focusing on maintenance and reassessing my future lifestyle adaptations. Actually, after all those months of losing weight, the most challenging part was to stop the process and finally find the right balance to continue my life healthily, without falling into the traps of anorexia or bulimia. I was not aware that this turning point is the most difficult, once you reach your desired weight. So, while I was at the residency, I finally stopped the process. In the apartment, there was a huge mirror in the bedroom. One night I woke up and went to the bathroom, and suddenly I looked in the mirror – still half asleep, I didn't recognize myself, and this scared me. I experienced a strange out-of-body experience, and it confused me. Later on, I read some studies of astronauts' experiences in space, and I realized that astronauts often experience similar emotions and feelings when they gaze down to Earth for the first time. It's a weird out-of-body experience that they can't explain. While I was reading the details of these experiences, I realized that there are many similarities between my mirror experience and that of astronauts in space for the first time. This interesting parallel inspired me to continue my research in this direction and focus on topics of body, space, and identity.

Curated by The Real Office
(Birgit Gebhard and Maximilian Lehner)
Design by Levin Stadler
Proofreading by Giuliana Racco