“Over the last century, technological acceleration has transformed our planet, our societies, and ourselves, but it has failed to transform our understanding of these things.” James Bridle

For evolution to be successful — adaptation has to be collective.

"As the human species scales the most perilous, self-made global crises it has ever experienced, we are called to evolve beyond the old paradigm, the ‘business-as-usual’ forms of structure and behaviour — across politics, culture, economics and ideology — that have brought us this far, but now threaten to destroy us, by our own hands.

In the same way that we have evolved throughout history, we are called to continue to adapt — but today, to meet the unprecedented challenge we see ahead, this requires an unprecedented capacity to collect and process information about our operating environment as a collective, and to translate that into effective civilizational adaptations on behalf of the human species as a whole. If we are unable to develop this capacity for collective intelligence by which to inform species-wide adaptations, we will simply not be able to avert the current trajectory." Nafeez Ahmed

Technical Aesthetics Experimentations

In addition to the notes previously submitted on using machine learning to teach AI about editing patterning and montage —a stretch goal that may or may not prove viable under budgetary constraints —  find below notes on other, simpler and easily attainable preliminary experiments to explore for editing structure and voice over/narration.

  1. The use of shot analysis of various experimental and art documentaries from Godard, Marker, Adam Curtis, Johan Grimonprez  to use as structural frameworks — sampling their editing patternings and applying those structures to the assembly of Citizen Planet via a pre-labeling of material and matching/generative selection. (This would not entail any machine learning or AI algorithms)
  2. The use of Google cloud text-to-speech beta high-fidelity speech synthesis as voice over. Code able for intonations and emotional elements. See: https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/
  3. Experiments in using lyrebird.ai — a machine learning voice system that emulates and synthesis human voice (developed out of Montreal). With the permission of the McLuhan estate it would be possible to have Marshall McLuhan narrate the entire film.       See: https://lyrebird.ai/
  4. Experiments in melding voices from two different VO people — David Odhiambo and Sarah Butterfield utilizing Google’s NSynth: Sound Maker —NSynth is built using Tensorflow, Tone.js and a Wavenet-style autoencoder.
  5. The elements of the piece are interviews, varied archive material and archival questionings, graphics, set mini essays/polemics — I do want to introduce simple abstract informing dramatic directions/scenes — a strategy I have previously enjoined success with and I find enlivening in other films.
  6. Deep Fakes

Recent Interviews

Parag Khanna, Author | Political Scientist

What the Hell Just Happened to Our Democracy?

A former KGB officer running an expansionist kleptocracy.

A psychotic, greedy fool born to wealth, addicted to gold — the useful idiot.

It is first of all a crisis in ethics and civility and secondly a crisis in how we engage with the immense collective data of the digital and AI world.

We are being presented with our personal and our collective data in a way that mirrors a misunderstanding of that data. An error that can be conceived as a willful, strategic ignorance fabricated from a thoroughly callow response to the value of our social commons.

Data is, and always is, a container within a much larger container — and yet there is a base, a foundation which it rests upon.  That foundation is the certainty of the singularity of existence itself, the oneness of life and our personal responsibility to acknowledge our debt to life.

Upcoming {Hoped for} Interviews

Nora Bateson — Founder of the International Bateson Institute, Sweden.

Feng Xiang | Professor of Law | Tsinghua University

Garry Kasparov — Chess Grandmaster | Strategist | Author

Gary Lachman — Dark Star Rising

Prof. Ian Robertson — Trinity College, Institute of Neuroscience —

This film should be made and should be made ASAP.

I started pitching this idea in 2014. Still seeking funds. Someone needs to make this film or a film on this subject ASAP.

You can get a hold of me and support me @ paypal oliver.hockenhull@gmail.com

 

TERRITORY

vancouver media arts, experimental film, hockenhull, alternative cinema, experimental film, canadian film, documentary, avant-garde cinema,

Remember when the W3 first started there was zero ads, it was devoid of such commercialism and was the domain principally of academics and artists (and the US military). A new consensus seemed possible, one that prioritized study of the potential of the new tools as they related to the evolvement of human civilization —away from war and exploitation towards individual and social creativity and collective solutions.

We are now faced with our individual and social pettiness. It would appear that a percentage of Americans are now lost in a bubble made up of manipulative (is there any other form) memes designed as neurological Pavlovian pathogens.  Control and profiteering, the great con.

Psychographics are out the bag and proving to be a powerful force for psyops — from those wishing to disrupt communities and those wanting to enslave your real and digital life.

PSYCHOGRAPHICS and PSYCHOHISTORY is envisioned in the great sci-fi series — FOUNDATION by Isaac Asimov. David Brin completed the series in his FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH

Psych fed feedback loops are the horrifying hallucination we need to see through to arrive again at communication. 

Computational | algorithmic engines, possibilities of harnessing collective intelligence, cybernetic advancements and egalitarian demands are informing a renewed tomorrow of cultural, institutional & productive possibilities.

The following individuals have agreed to be interviewed and have included their names in this effort:

Peter Norvig is a Director of Research at Google Inc; previously he directed Google's core search algorithms group. He is co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, the leading textbook in the field. He is a fellow of the AAAI, ACM California Academy of Science and American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Natasha Vita-More, transhumanist philosopher and member of Humanity+.  In 1983, Vita-More wrote the Transhuman Manifesto, which discussed the possibility for radical life extension in the future. In 1997 she created an artwork entitled Primo Posthuman, which depicted how a human may look in the future with technological enhancements such as colour-changing skin. From 2002 to 2006, she was the president of the Extropy Institute.

Lucy X Wang, Senior Data Scientist, BuzzFeed. Lucy’s work involves machine learning tools for optimizing audience reach and engagement. She holds an MS in Computer Science from Columbia University where she performed research on social networks and information diffusion.

Stephen M. Omohundro is a scientist known for his research on Hamiltonian physics, dynamical systems, programming languages, machine learning, machine vision, and the social implications of artificial intelligence.

Douglas Rushkoff is the author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now as well as a dozen other bestselling books on media, technology, and culture, including Program or Be Programmed, Media Virus, Life Inc and the novel Ecstasy Club. He is Professor of Media Studies and Digital Culture at CUNY/Queens. He lives in New York and lectures about media, society, and economics around the world.

Other luminaries who have consented: Vernor Vinge, Nick Bostrom, Matteo Pasquinelli, Mark Buchanan, David Brin, Erik Brynjolfsson, Kevin Kelly, Howard Rheingold, Francis Heylighen, Charles Eisenstein, Howard Bloom, Michael Chorost, Christopher Steiner, David Pearce, Natasha Vita-More, James J. Hughes, John Mayfield…more yet to be contacted & confirmed.

Citizen Planet — MindMap of Conceptual Inclusions — Open Image in New Tab To Explore Details

Self Critique

(generated best by listening to others.)
Need to fulfill the hearing of the title, the trailer doesn’t do that.  Voice over will not be my actual voice.
This critique and commentary from a friend, Sarah Butterfield, follows: >>>”…the most interesting idea about interbeing (ed.from watching the trailer) is McLuhan’s references to pattern recognition and the electrical field – it is the only way to break through fake news and constructive ambiguity that populists are using so powerfully at the moment – this deliberate dissemination of chaos provokes wild outrage, noise and fear, just as it is designed to do – interbeing must be a serious political act of connection, to almost create a force field of resistance together, an act of turning our back figuratively, through language and respect, to break re-action. It has to be utterly contemporary and forward-looking, to shatter the gaze of nostalgia.”

World Won : Radical Transparency & Democracy In The Information Age

A futurist proposition of global, rational governance by means of cybernetic processes of a world informed by pervasive computing.

A concentration on the emergence of a new system of world governance that will rely primarily on thorough transparency, rationality rather than ideology, and the power of current communication, information and data collecting technologies grounded in an awareness and commitment to the care of and fostering of the real and virtual commons, human rights, statistical and scientific evidence and efficient, ecological stewardship of resources.
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What are the algorithms of direct democracy in a global age, what are the politics of a transparent government? What are the drawbacks? The personal and privacy issues at stake? What kinds of creative applications and social experiences can be developed using information technologies that rely on the principals of direct democracy and transparency?

The issue of open source governance is still a fairly new one and it’s actualities and possibilities still quite unexplored. “E-gov, digital government, online government, or connected government is digital interaction between a government and citizens (G2C), government and businesses (G2B), and between government agencies (G2G).” At present in Canada and elsewhere in the world there is little use of the web for citizen involvement other than as accessing selected government data as an electronic publishing venture. The complexities and still developing possibilities for citizen involvement in the governing process, an open source to governance through the tools of the evolving informatics technologies is an area rich for exploring.

Our efforts are to put into context politically, philosophically, technologically the origins, contradictions and incredible potentials of the emerging symbiosis of citizen, government, ubiquitous computing power and information.

Fundamental to a real democracy is the existence of a public informed about government actions. This requires government information to be open and accessible to the public. What would a transparency model for government look like, how could it be implemented, what are the models, practices, tools and structures that promote transparent communication practices by and for the people?
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In describing technological advancement Aldous Huxley wrote: Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right.”

We wish to make seamless the relationship between democratic, citizen involvement and the actions of our governments. This is a tremendous goal but we believe that by relying on the old technologies of the persuasive documentary and of the new and emerging tech of software tools and apps and of the current interwoven power of the net we will be able to further, substantially, awareness and import of the open source governance movement.

I can discover facts but I cannot change them.

Does Technology Favor Tyranny? Artificial intelligence could erase many practical advantages of democracy, and erode the ideals of liberty and equality. It will further concentrate power among a small elite if we don’t take steps to stop it.

We have the tools to envision and create not only a livable future but one that is respectful and that furthers all of life — by becoming responsible to the boundless creative visions and compassionate caring of an awakened humanity — woven as an intersecting alive patterning of our collective will, empathy and co-evolution. We are not immured from the dire straits of the planet, of the dismal situation throughout — however for the purpose of this project we have decided to circle our intent on the orchestration of answers available in applied communication sciences and design — informed and guided by the web of forces called holism.

Citizen Planet is to leapfrog out of the current of obstacles and to harness the decisive leadership of the imagination powered by network love & computation — inviting in the tomorrow we have looked forward to — forever.

A not yet future holding our momentous dreams is gestating outside the edge of our peripheral vision and an extraordinary birth is at hand.  The agony we hear all around us, that we have heard for many generations, is the struggle cries of this birth. Whether it is yet another false hope, a dystopic collapse of justice and democracy or the actualized radiance of dawn is yet an uncertainty and much depends on you and I.

“All the systems which explain so precisely why the world is as it is and why it can never be otherwise, have always called forth in me the same kind of uneasiness one has when face to face with the regulations displayed under the glaring lights of a prison cell.”  Ernst Jünger, “The Glass Bees

This is an information war. These operations are ongoing and the adversaries will evolve.

Citizen Planet: The Cybernetic Global Rising

is a speculative documentary project to focus in on the positive promise of what a responsible governance would be like in an enlightened global networked civilization; the primacy of environmental integrity, the supreme valuation of life itself & the wealth of human creativity vitalized and activated upon. It’s to be cinematic, imagistic, enjoyable reading — it’s possibility research & speculative projections.
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What if we treated governance & economy as a philosophical & aesthetic creative project, a matter of solving technical issues rather than warring clans fighting over the remains of the rapacious and absurdly imbalanced system?

What if we lived, worked and contributed in the reality of one decentralized planet rather than the programming of the corporate state?

What if we demanded much more from our political culture than a choice every four years between that which is sufferable and that which is worse?

What if we took ideology, religion, ego and even personality out of governance?

Say — what if we rid ourselves of politics entirely and conceived governance, the management of resources, as a plumber might a toilet system, a farmer might a compost pile, a network theorist a web of relationships or a composer a symphony?

 contact: oliver.hockenhull(at)gmail.com
 That "what if" and that "as if", and the open mindset of speculative science is to illuminate the enquiry as to what we may achieve in the world we find ourselves in.

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 This Project Is About Helping To Prepare Human Civilization and Individual Minds For Managing And Appreciating What

Super Human Artificial Intelligence Means for Life on Earth

Depending On Rational Rule Based Compassionate Governance

& Co-Evolutionary Culture

"Today a new planetary scale of computation demands, nevertheless, a new planetary scale of politics. As the current debate on the Anthropocene points to, no political agency is possible without the recognition of a new cognitive perspective on the whole planet."Matteo Pasquinelli

 

We intend to create a passionate advocacy film essay | media project; a manifesto, and a code of action, a history and a future about our duty to our home and to ourselves and the means psychological, cultural & technical that will allow us to do so.

It is to feature the tailoring of interviews with the world's edge visionaries, network scientists, cyberneticians, artists, ethicists, philosophers, blockchain evangelists, theoretical evolutionists, neuroscientists, historians, Buddhists and Earth activists who are proposing and working towards a world utilizing our collective intelligence, our computing power and the elegant solutions of interdisciplinary-based holistic sciences — including ecological fundamentals (the "end ecocide" movement as an example), the principles of emergence, and computational intelligence technologies to reset the very idea of governance.                                       

The following individuals have agreed to be interviewed and have included their names in this crowdfunding campaign:

We have the tools to envision and create not only a livable future but one that honors and that furthers all of life — and we do so by becoming responsible to the boundless creative visions and compassionate caring of an awakened humanity — woven as an intersecting alive patterning of our collective will & co-evolution.

We are not immured from the dire straits of the planet, of the dismal situation throughout — however for the purpose of this project we have decided to circle our intent upon the orchestration of answers available in applied communication sciences and design — informed and guided by holism.

____________________________________________________________________________

Ignorance is the principle cause of suffering — our project is about the ground of knowledge, knowledge of the self, knowledge of our collectivity, knowledge of our responsibility and the importance of accurately defining our problems and using (and knowing how best to use) the extraordinary tools at hand — not solely for our survival but for our sustainable flourishing.

In stark contrast to the intellectual content of the interviews, the image work is to be — on occasion — a bejeweled expression, at times refracted meaning will become baroque, ornamental — facets will become piercingly, fully abstract.

To include startling, precise, clean b-roll material (some of which will be CGI built) that yes furthers the premise of the comments, that illustrate the verbal content, but in a way that is not as conspicuous as what is usually done in the documentary form.

It’s to be a patternist work and to be constructed as a virtual documentary — one where immersion, interactivity and the dynamism of the web and code are used as an aesthetic and delightful engagement.

Importantly this work is to be more than a documentary — it is to be an art piece — one versioning of the information content is to be distilled into a VR interactive aesthetic space — a Gibsonian cyberspace coded as a gravity less matrix/mandala/morphic reference that will be informed by the content of the film essay and fed with choice live data streams off the net.

“Evolution is a process of creating patterns of increasing order. I believe that it's the evolution of patterns that constitutes the ultimate story of our world. Evolution works through indirection: each stage or epoch uses the information-processing methods of the previous epoch to create the next.” Ray Kurzweil

The project is a timepiece, a configuration of an object of time with the perpetual enquiry as to what time/history itself is and what meaning is — to further the simple of the singularity of life brightened by subjective interjections.

 

R&D & production at the same time — Citizen Planet is to create a thorough and inclusive work resonant in historical, critical remembrance and concurrently futuristic. Buying the time and aligning the resources to make it so is the first hurdle.   A rummage through obscure film and video archives, a reading of a library or two of books, review and analysis of current institutional initiatives aligned with the intention of the project and further necessary preparations for the interviews is the ground from which we will move forward from.

It does take time to synthesize the research into questions that bring clarity and precision to the interviews and the subject under review.  To do a great interview the interviewer must have a handle on the knowledge base of the interviewee and of the subject area itself. That requires extensive research and reading to form the scaffolding for the opportunity of the interview.

I am not wanting simply to rehash the known but to pull from our interview subjects their most inspiring & most syncretic thoughts — concepts & premises that can make differences that make a difference.  

Research is also to be done concurrently on structural possibilities and on design and aesthetic team building and production direction.

INSTIGATOR

Oliver Hockenhull —  media artist, documentarian and writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia.  

Western Conventional Bio: His many films and media installations have shown at such film festivals and venues as—The Museum of Modern Art, NYC, The International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam,  The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., The Sao Paulo International Film Festival, The Melbourne International Film Festival, MIT/Boston, The Contemporary Cultural Centre of Barcelona, The Vancouver International Film Festival, The San Francisco Cinematheque, The International New Media Festival, Seoul, The Chicago International Film Festival, Festival Internacional de Arte Experimental, Bilbao, Spain, etc.

He has concentrated on pivotal subjects; the social and intellectual import of the eminent writer, Aldous Huxley; an experimental film essay on evolution featuring Richard Dawkins (and the gorillas of the London Zoo); an essay on architecture extending from the early works of Mies van der Rohe to the steps of the Burning Ghats of Varanasi; a hyper media installation that questions ‘chance‘ — as quantum indeterminate noise — to edit video.

As a member of WebWeavers Network Society, he contributed to the first cultural websites in Canada, and with Thecla Schiporst he initiated a premiere online gallery & curated festival for digital media arts (digital earth foundation 1994 — 2000). His early groundbreaking hypertext documents have been used in courses at: the University of Virginia Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities; “Tech-Sci Culture” at the University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Iowa; Victoria University (NZ); the Rensselaer Tech. Institute, New York State; and at the Institute for Social Theory at Keele University, UK. He studied at Simon Fraser University, concentrating on communications, phenomenology and cinema & is an alumni of the Canadian Film Centre. He has previously taught at Northwestern University in Illinois in the faculty of Film & Video.

The most recent documentary, Neurons to Nirvana packed in audiences at the Seattle International Film Festival in 2014, the Montreal Nouveau Cinema Festival and @ the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2013 — it has been versioned for mass release on iTunes, Google Play, Youtube & Netflix. See ratings on IMDb. Much more about his various aesthetic, political and intellectual intentions can be found on his website. 

 

 
 

to reset the very idea of governance

We want to realize a passionate advocacy film essay | media project,  — a manifesto and a course of action and paean about our duty to our home and to our selves and the means both psychological, cultural & technical that would allow us to do so. It will feature the tailoring of interviews with the world’s edge visionaries, network scientists, cyberneticians, artists, ethicists, philosophers, blockchain evangelists, theoretical evolutionists, neuroscientist, lawyers, historians, Buddhists & Buddhas & earth activists who are proposing and working towards a world utilizing our collective intelligence, our computing power and the elegant solutions of interdisciplinary based holistic sciences — including complexity theory, ecological fundamentals (the end ecocide movement as an example), the principles of emergence, and computational intelligence technologies to reset the very idea of governance.