Remediating the Individual and the Collective

Abstract

In his Artist’s Note in this issue, Raphael Arar shares how his installation An Ecological Oracle engages participants with real-time data experiments to expose the tension between the individual and the collective underlying a critical tipping point of climate change—the thawing of permafrost. Likewise, this tension surrounds other critical tipping points confronting the planet, species, and vital intersecting systems of earth. Ultimately, the recognition of our inherent interconnectedness may be what remediates, if not reconciles, our individual and collective interests, perspectives, and behavior.Moriba Jah [1], Chief Science Officer and cofounder of Privateer, emphasized in his remarks at the AI for Good Summit [2] (July 2023, Geneva, Switzerland) that one of the key potential benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) is to “help humanity see evidence of interconnectedness.” “We can’t achieve sustainability … in the absence of machines. Machines are here to help!” says Jah. Indeed, AI is essential to decipher causal and correlative relationships indicated at scale within otherwise impenetrable and massive aggregate data blocs that defy unassisted human capacity. Jah’s call to action: “Empathy, empathy, empathy! Think like a species and embrace interconnectivity and stewardship!”Following this call for interconnection by AI-driven data visualization, artists and advocates are trailblazing paths that give legibility and meaning to what Andrew Zolli, Chief Impact Officer of Planet.com [3], describes as the “data deluge” that defines, if not overwhelms, human society today. While we need to close the digital divide for the 2.7 billion people who are not yet online, the other nearly 5.5 billion of us are at risk of being lost in a sea of data. The central challenge is not only data access for individuals but also a way to make sense of it for the collective. Seeing data as a creative medium, artists unlock on-ramps for an AI participation revolution. Experimental data art can help visualize and sonify patterns, create entry points, and chart new trajectories for all to engage with data in a meaningful, legible way. AI artists also introduce data encounters with human playfulness, humility, and empathy, reinforcing essential qualities of humanity and humanness.Integrating individual aspiration with collective manifestation, the Our Future Life (OFL) project, a global, futurepositive movement, aims to create “the world’s most inclusive brainstorm” [4], inviting participants around the planet to imagine and upload digital visions of a shared future for humanity. OFL, employing AI to sift, sort, and synthesize individual submissions, aims to reveal a collective vision of how humans might thrive on the planet, allowing us to see the change we want to be in the world. Through its partnership with Leonardo and Arizona State University, OFL is demonstrating that the future of hope is an iterative process, one that begins with each and all of us and that is already underway.Breath of Light (by Pinyao Liu, John Desnoyers-Stewart, Ekaterina R. Stepanova, and Bernhard E. Riecke) offers another creative collaboration illuminating interconnections between the individual and the collective. As an immersive breathresponsive installation, Breath of Light highlights the potential of technological mediation of breathing, an inherently and intimately individual experience, to “revive connective connotations of shared breathing and cultivate interoceptive awareness, reflection, and interhuman connection” [5].In experimenting with AI data, artists and innovators are finding novel ways to expose and embrace the fundamental interconnectedness between human and nonhuman systems, ecosystems, and all beings. Through this creative work, scholarship, and practice, we can help remedy, if not dissipate, tensions between the individual and the collective, breaking through to face the critical tipping points of our time.