Hey there-- if you're still with me after such a long break, thank you!
Life has been extraordinarily busy since the end of last year, going right from giving talks at the Occulture Conference and AstroMagia to an intensive in Palm Springs studying the asteroids with my astrology hero Demetra George. And then... it was all of a sudden the holidays!
Since early this year, I've been on the road again– I'm writing this as I fly back home after spending a few weeks in Madrid. I was there for a short residency at Medialab Matadero where a really wonderful and talented group of interdisciplinary people got to spend a few weeks exploring the concept of "Synthetic Minds" and the ways that AI and other emerging technologies impact consciousness and our understanding of it.
I was in the group EAT ME, which explored ideas of consumption, transformation, and intimacy through the lens of vore and the internet cultures that surround it. Led by writer and performer Brittany Newell and artist/filmmaker Jenkin van Zyl, our group members each brought different experiences and backgrounds together to research vore and adjacent concepts, ultimately culminating in a 12-minute video piece.
My contributions to the project were largely in the realm of technology and AI. After collecting research on the community, I decided to try my hand at writing some speculative fiction pieces. These sketches explored potential post-human futures with murkily-benevolent AI characters who would often consume humans or their identities in order to protect, enhance, or transform them completely.
These ideas stemmed from a recent interest in stellar witchcraft (Big thank you to Sasha Ravitch and Meag of Third Sister for their work and teachings on the subject) and the monstrous characters that shine ever-coldly as the fixed stars. The qualities I perceive from many of these stars share the alien intensity and brutal lack of regard for moral perils that I feel in my interactions with current AI.
To bridge these two worlds, I created a custom GPT (based on ChatGPT) trained on some speculative fiction texts and sci-fi short stories. Then, giving it a system prompt of a collaborative brainstorm partner helping to develop the next Ursula or Octavia, we chatted back and forth to develop a few different worlds and potential plot lines. While it was a helpful exercise, most of the descriptions and plot devices felt a little too canned and cliché to directly use as a basis. This GPT partner was most helpful in trying to weave together really disparate plot elements, keeping track of all of my ideas and editing out the things that weren't catching me.
In the end, I decided to blend the AI characters with this idea of the "fixed star" voice and wrote a monologue from the perspective of a god-like AI that represents all of non-human consciousness. While I'm quite skeptical of claims of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and have many concerns about what seems to be the inevitable atrophy of human creativity and desire for originality, I challenged myself here to think of an AI that might do things differently.
You can watch my snippet here:
With Pluto moving into Aquarius again and settling in for the long-haul later this year, I'm very curious to see what power shifts might come with it. Aquarius' concern for the collective, and its ability to effect collective change through shared ideas, points toward AI being a major player in this transition-of-power story.
I've been doing a lot of research and writing on AI and how it relates to technology's quite spiritual beginnings. Look out for more writing on these topics soon, more podcast episodes, and more snippets of in-process work.
Thank you for supporting my work, even in my dry spells. Especially to those of you who have subscribed to my paid tier. Every penny helps!
Yours,
Jove
