aité des sensations, an 18th-century text within the Lockean tradition of empiricism. For empiricists, the world around you can only be described and experienced through your senses. This text describes, in a phenomenological way, the different experiences that you can have through smell, sight and hearing, and how you develop your personality and identity through memory of these. I thought that story had an interesting resonance with what we are doing here. These machines allow the general public to experience another capacity and go beyond the five senses that are tied to the physicality of our world. We can project ourselves into a machine using only our brain activity, which goes beyond anything that an empirical philosopher of the 18th century could have imagined.
Jonathon Which is not to say that our exhibition would have been completely unfamiliar to an 18th-century visitor. One of the inspirations for Mental Work’s machines in terms of their design was the Industrial Revolution. I started with 507 Mechanical Movements, a catalogue published in the 1880s showing many of the machines designed during the Industrial Revolution, from which we chose a few that were modified to operate in a more sculptural way. I based the designs on slider cranks: mechanisms that undertake calculations through their movement and geometry. These were the first mechanical computers and so they connect historically to the computers of the present.
Michael These slider cranks were used to help calculate ballistic trajectories so as to find better ways to eliminate the enemy. After the Industrial Revolution came industrialised warfare and one of the bloodiest centuries in history. We’re now seeing the same dangers surrounding warfare with artificial intelligence.
Jonathon Most technology has at least some military use, historically and in the present, and artificial intelligence is one example. Exploring military history was not really at the front of my mind while developing Mental Work, but it does seem in retrospect that the exhibition can provide a way to reflect on the power inherent in technology and the responsibility that we have in terms of implementing it and determining who and what we leverage it against. That is also a point that needs to be considered as we confront the Cognitive Revolution if we’re to find our way to a better future than the future wrought by the Industrial Revolution. Any technology can either dehumanise us or make us more human by enhancing our abilities and focusing our bodies and minds. The hand axe, for instance, really made us who and what we are today, but there are many ways in which technology can get out of hand and become a controlling factor. Once again, the smartphone comes to mind.
José We are already in a realm where artificial intelligence is taking up more and more space in our daily lives. Now, imagine that we are capable of replicating all our brain and cognitive processes – one day those machines will be here, but will we allow them to become independent? I am not afraid that they will become superhumans, because our brain is only what it is because of the bodies that we have, with all of the body’s attendant limitations. We make a number of decisions in determining what form a machine takes, so what I am putting on the table is that it is up to us what kind of cognitive revolution lies ahead of humankind. During the Industrial Revolution, everything was driven by money – who can build the biggest machine in order to produce more and faster than anybody else – and we now know what that brought: many good things, but also very many bad things. Now, we face very real threats, so we need to design not only with the bright side of the coin in mind, but with the dark side of the moon too.
Jonathon When designing the machines, I was thinking about the long history of the orrery, an instrument which was a model of the universe as it was understood in the 1700s and 1800s. Orreries not only allowed for scientific study, but also for philosophical contemplation of the universe as a clockwork mechani