We have managed to automate ourselves into an artificial heaven or hell. It must be heaven for some. Automated digital products clearly make it possible for some to achieve what seemed like complete science fiction not so long ago.
We use machines to measure our steps, connect us to others, sell us stuff, help us sell our stuff, advise us on how to think what to look at and this list could go on and on.
In the morning we often look at a screen long before we look into another person’s eyes. And we often look at a screen as the last thing we do on some evenings.
We use machines to guide us when we are driving other machines on roads that were often designed and built by machines. From a machine space to a machine space we go. Either virtually, or in some cases in person.
Our brain creates with us the reality we experience for us. We stitch it all together as we go. And so at some point machines and the layers of algorithms begin to feel like the real. But they are just projections of ideas that have been crushed and optimised and reshaped to serve a purpose. Not often one we like.
Maybe good for some. Not always for us.
When I was a little boy, I was horrified when some children in our yard pushed sticks through living frogs they would find in the grass. Perhaps it is better for frogs and for children when they do not get close to each other. But there are fewer of both out in the wild at this point.
And when a bee died stinging me, many years ago, because I didn’t see it while I was doing something on the old engine of my car, then this was also a real nature encounter from which I still have a mark on my arm. The bee long gone, of course.
So nature and the encounters with nature are not all wonderful and romantic. But they are somehow healing when they do not involve violence? Just minutes of walking through a wild forest can heal a lot of the damage done by screen-time and algorithmic obsession with the negativity bias powered doom scrolling.
I would not have found so much in my life without screens and forms of digital communication. But I would not feel life is worth living is that were all I had.
Perhaps that’s why a lot of my work is an attempt to reimagine the forces of nature. Even if it is in a kiln that has wifi. Even when the pollution I use for my drawings has been collected in a plastic bucket.
As humans we at some point must have strived to be kinder to each other, so create a space where life with each other would become easier or at least less painful. Is that what was then called culture?
At the moment it appears that a lot of this was thrown away and replaced by a greed for winning. Or if not winning, then at least the greed for harming others, making it more difficult for others to succeed? In metrics also often digested by machines.
At least by some? And not just individuals. Entire groups of people seem to be choosing this path, large groups too.
I recently saw the idea of some cultures communicating in what’s described as a “low context environment” while others operate in a “high context” environment. I know too little about this to really say something profound about it. But the idea seems to be that in some cultures, communication can work quite well when it is passing through one channel, like language for instance.
It is a bit like a machine method of communicating, since then certain expressions are like programming the other person to think or do something in a certain way. “Truth” becomes an absolute thing in an environment like that too. Something is either true or it isn’t. Someone is either good or bad. Friend or foe. Yes or no.
One could easily connect the dots here and see how such a way of communication is perfectly fitted for digital methods of getting points across. How this way of communication is also wonderful for large language models and AI.
Clearly this is a very successful way of getting some things done. From making large amounts of profit to killing many people.
Some other cultures (and I am sure this is not a black and white division), are considered to be “high context”. And that means that there communication relies on so much more than words. There is no total clarity in anything that is said or done. And sometimes a tiny move of an eyebrow can mean more than a thousand words. Truth is also a concept that is broken into many shards. And it might be okay to not tell the “truth” to someone if it keeps the relationship harmonious or if it protects. But if it is not all clear anyway, then it’s all just not clear anyway.
I look back at all the different places where I have worked and lived at different times of my life and it appears that the high context cultures might not look as successful perhaps (though some are incredibly so). But the experience of being with other humans in a high context environment feels much more calming to me. It is more like a walk in the forest I do not understand, and a bit less like staring at a social media feed that has been tailored based on dada collected about me to keep me scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
And I feel lucky that we have now landed in Lisbon, of all places because not only do I not understand the language (yet) which makes me more aware of the non verbal cues people give. But also because every day I am surprised by the human flexibility and the somehow more kind way of dealing with each other.
I might be completely delusional, of course. But I can’t count how many times someone has done something unexpectedly positive for me and how it has inspired me to be much more lenient with others too.
Driving in Lisbon is a literally crazy experience, but even just getting to the studio this morning was made possible by a stranger who let me pass in front of them because otherwise I would have to wait much longer or that lorry driver who not only stopped all traffic behind him for me but also watched out to let me know when it was safe for me to join traffic. I will never see that man again. But for a few seconds he was my best friend I could completely trust.
Then there was the cafe owner who did not want to be paid this morning. I just didn’t have more than a few small coins in my pocket and he would rather have me come back another time and bring the few Euros than having to pay some faceless company for me being able to use my plastic card. I really appreciate this man.
Just like many other like him who literally didn’t want my money.
Some things take much longer when everyone is somehow floating in a more contextual space with others: The renovation of the staircase in our building has been delayed by a full 12 months at this point. And the water pipe from the roof has not been properly connected since 1858. Yes, there is a job waiting to be done for almost 170 years.
But we have the most wonderful neighbours who are brilliant and creative and full of everyday support.
I am not delusional enough to think that the advances of technology can somehow be stopped. Nor that specifically the digital world will suddenly return to carrier pigeons.
Unless some catastrophic event occurs we will also not choose to return to hunter and gather days, of course.
Until then, it is a global arms race of unprecedented proportions.
But perhaps there is a chance for some of us humans to realise how important it is to understand ourselves as part of a larger organism? Perhaps some of us can again look at objects and ideas and appreciate them and feel their soul, rather than trying to crunch them into some profitable dust?
Mental wellness, and the exposure to the windows of perception and emotions might be the next big secret needed for some of us surviving.
Or it’s maybe the well guarded secret of those very ancient cultures that are still around? Those cultures where a vulnerable stranger makes us want to help them, not to turn away from them?
The arts and nature, in any kind of combination seem to be one of the many secret keys which we must guard and share as much as possible at the same time perhaps?
I just feel incredibly lucky to be where I am at the moment. And I feel so incredibly lucky to be surrounded by those who are still around me.
My work is about the interconnectedness of everything. And it feels like it has brought me here to Lisbon so I can see how incredibly much of it fits into the fabric of life here.
Maybe I am completely naive about it. But I do not think I am.
The sounds on the outside are reminders that the city operates and functions as a machine, of course. But then the neighbourhood cat which visits the studio in disbelief is the opposite of that. Or the many neighbours who seem excited that we have moved in here. And the rosemary bushes and the papaya trees and the nice pink building on the corner which must have been abandoned for years, give a different kind of context of comfort.
We humans seem so obsessed with the artificial and with machining the world around us. I love how some of us are still able to make beauty from literal dirt and how a level of mental wellness is slowly creeping into our life despite of the world so enamoured with horrors and destruction.
We have managed to automate ourselves into an artificial heaven or hell. But maybe we still have some choices left.
I personally pick beauty and creation over efficiency and destruction.
(Someone ordered a freshly pressed orange juice in the cafe upstairs. I can hear the juicer spinning into the freshly cut sweet fruits.) Where on the scale of artificial and natural is that?