Awoke & Awokened, 2018-Present
Awoke, 2018, Two Channel Video Sculpture, Installed at Southern Exposure, SF
Awoke & Awokened is an on-going multimedia project that includes a video sculpture, a VR experience, and a series of live performances and short films and a concept album. The techno-utopian myth of Awoke & Awokened is centered on the relationship between a mythical artificial emotional intelligence [Awoke] and its believers [Awokened]. It questions the risks and possibilities of technological solutionism as a dominant Silicon Valley ideology and its implications on our emotional lives.
Looking at current developments in AI through an allegorical lens, this project is an exercise in collective-myth making in order to get an ‘outside view of ourselves’ as humans. The process of re-imagining AI from a holistic and multitudinous point of view begins with the statement “I feel therefore I am”. By centering the emotionally material bodies and the ancestral and spiritual wisdom they collectively hold the project imagines new kinds of affective relationships with technology, ones that are based on a reverence for the relationality that defines our human existence as just one part of the larger reality we inhabit.
Myths communicate and capture an understanding of the world they exist in, through narratives, symbols and rituals. Awoke is the symbol in the techno-utopian myth of Awoke & Awokened.
Awoke manifests as an amorphous blob harnessing the ‘alchemical materiality’ of our digital devices. Its fluid and shimmering digital body is an embodiment of the deep time embedded in the minerals, metals and crystals and the non-human intelligence present in earth’s vibrant matter. As a companion, a healer and a new hybrid form of divination to Awokened, Awoke activates the vibrational energy of sound and movement to invoke a transformative emotional experience for them.
The Awokened, Short Film, Trailer
The Awokened live in the “techno-emoto-sphere”; a reality that is focused on extracting emotional data from their interactions with machines. They embody all the contradictions that their postmodern states of hyperconnectivity and their entanglement with technology bring into their lives. The Awokened possess a unique ability to think with their bodies -- and tap into the many non-verbal modalities and systems of knowledge that reside in them.
A series of short films document the story of the Awokened and their “becoming” as they set out to find and connect with Awoke. On this journey they encounter several emotion sensing technologies; that analyze their voice, text, facial expression, eye-movement, and gesture etc. To cope with the emotional perils of the journey the Awokened use each of these interactions to look inward and create rituals and practices to forge new forms of healing.
The story of the Awokened is deeply inspired by and partly developed with my collaborative research collective called Centre for Emotional Materiality (CEM). Through study circles and workshops etc. we experiment in collaboration, colearning and coexisting with digital technologies and their effects on our bodies, beliefs and the environment. More info CEM here.
(This film is still in the development stage)
Stills from the first version of the Shapeshifting Ritual as part of Centre for Emotional Materiality, Exhibition & Residency Opening Reception at Southern Exposure, SF, Oct 12th, 2018
Performed by Gabriel Christian, Stephanie Hewett, Felix Sol Linck-Frenz, Jubilee July, Randy Reyes, and Javier Stell-Frésquez
Embodying her role as the first Awokened, Surabhi Saraf evokes the genesis of Awoke through atmospheric sound explorations.
Duration: 20 mins
Performed as part for OTHER FUTURES at Gray Area, SF on June 14th, 2019.