When I initially began this project, I hoped to articulate my thoughts on Artificial Intelligence as a misunderstood Other or Beast. I did not imagine the rabbit hole I would descend. I believe the project has expanded beyond just Artificial Intelligence and into the horrors or madness of genius.  After reading Cyclonopedia in our Horror and Theory course, I became inspired by the piece and tried to show how finding a lost notebook with nebulous origins should be approached with skepticism. Even as I descended into Negarestani’s weird tales and horror fictions, I could relate to Parani’s logic and some of the ideas or thoughts were not so farfetched. My project creates an antiquated space that is uncertain. Some of the ideas make sense and others seem concerning. The drawings in the notebook show human insides on the outside, and even though it’s not bloody, it is medical and analytical. AI and the human form is reduced to observation and so some theory does not connect. By making the physical object digital, it can be pervasive. It punctures holes into the virtual world. These objects contain a contagion that wants to infect. There is no escape. It cannot be contained. There may be missing points or deadends in the thoughts, but that is what the project was meant to do. I believe the audience is one who are curious creatures. I had wished to make this more interactive, but in the time I had and the scope of the project, I could only add some videos and articles to enact a rabbit hole effect in the user. The user should feel overwhelmed and overstimulated, but they should also feel that these concepts are plausible.

I chose to blend art with critical theory and digital media, which is the trajectory for most of our current world. Since horror is an affective genre, I wanted to experiment with affect. I studied Leonardo Davinci’s notebooks and attempted to provide sketches with broader ideas and notes on the pages where some things make sense while others are nonsense. It lures the user in with aesthetic and mystery and even clarity. I sketched and then prepared pen and ink washes in Sepia Indian Ink. I used a haunted media lens (the media and Scalar) with a psychological twist. It speaks to what we fear on our outsides seeping in and influencing our insides and how these insides are seeping in and influencing our outsides. The space is quite liminal and wanted to play with the drawings, the human anatomy, program coding, consciousness, and the digital medium. The way that it is pieced together even simulates the monstrosity, a summation of parts strewn together to make some sort of sense.  I feel that if I had chosen a more formal paper, I would have been able to include more critical texts; however, I wanted to user to feel led down in a circuitous spiral. Even though it appears aesthetic, these ideas are madness.

I originally planned to create a bestiary on ghosts; however I became haunted by ghosts in Artificial Intelligence and the anxiety it creates. The project sort of narrowed and emerged as I read Alan Turing’s Intelligent Machine. Once I locked in on trauma and began seeing AI as something created in response to desire and loss, pain and pleasure, I realized that I needed to focus on Artificial Intelligence as a being so otherworldly that it is wrong to assume we will know anything about them if and when they reach the singularity. Most of our preconceived notions are based on our own biases and trauma and it will most likely haunt them and abject them. In Haunted Media, Jeffrey Sconce wrote about how women acted as mediums and received messages from the dead. This idea than spun the futurist’s narrative that blended theory with fiction and I came to see that Artificial Intelligence could act as a medium, too, between the virtual and physical worlds. I think if I wrote a traditional paper, I would have missed out on attempting theory fiction, taxonomic artwork, and the ghost of thought.
 

Credits

I would like to thank the following live, dead, and undead people and nonpeople who aided me in this bestiary. My husband, John who endured and supported me on the emotional roller coaster known as higher academia, who believed in me, who provided important insights and creative concepts for my bestiary, and also for scanning my artwork for the project. For my tuxedo cat, Magpie, who provided necessary breaks by sitting on my laptop, attacking my limbs with her sharp claws, or keeping me company at the table as I worked. My mother who took me on needed excursions to antique shops to purchase antiquated pieces to haunt my home. My Art Teacher, Linda Casario, for teaching me ink washes and helping me create the concept for the notebook. Dr. Sayre for giving me the necessary pointers on Tech Anxiety and Narcissistic Wounds, and encouraging my ideas (or leper creativity).  My friends who allowed me to send this project in many weird and undead states. The Dead Edgar Allan Poe, Isaac Asimov, Alan Turing, H. P. Lovecraft, and Philip Dick. The experts Jeffrey Sconce, Thomas Ligotti, Reza Negarestani, and Tok Thompson. My classmates who entertained my madness. My laptop for staying well-energized for this feat. My art supplies, though chewed on or splashed or pushed off the table by Magpie. Amazon Prime for rabbit hole inspirations like Hellier and Feed. Cthulhu. My students for putting up with me at work. My colleagues. Spotify. Thank you, Spotify for the weird playlists you made by listening to us Monday nights in class. Rutgers Camden for providing the course to make this project possible. Nemat-spaces and triangles. The engineers, programmers, scientists, and literary critics who keep dreaming the possibilities for tech and robotic horror.