The Terminator Studies

Somewhere between military robots, Amazon drones knocking on your door to deliver a parcel, and the rise in machine intelligence, lies what some call The Terminator Scenario. Jean-Baptiste Bayle has spent the past few years looking at the fear and likeliness that our society is getting closer to the one depicted in the 1984 science fiction film The Terminator. The Terminator Studies timeline, map and news collection propose a reinterpretation of a Sci-fi blockbuster. The picture that emerges from this research hovers between cinematographic prophecy and History contaminated by fiction.

The Terminator Studies is going to be exhibited from tomorrow on in Pau, France, as part of the Disnovation show and the accès)s( festival of digital culture. Until i get there (next month! next month!), i wanted to have a quick online chat with the artist:

The Terminator Studies

Hi Jean-Baptiste! People can navigate the Terminator Studies via news feed, a map or a timeline. Could you explain how they complete each other? Why did you chose this kind of ‘architecture’ for the work?

First of all I stand like an observer and I collect webshots (screenshots of the web) as evidence. So the website is a repository for this collection, an archive which represents a knowledge resource for the project. The feed is curated, all items are handpicked from diverse sources. So the feed and the timeline are basically the same type of visualisation in a different order, but the map is more subjective, and shows relations, factual, subversive or symbolic, in between all the topics, so that it evolves with time and the flux of events.

I actually really like the map. I wish i could see a big print of it. Would that make sense to you?

And when you exhibit the project in festivals, what does the idea set up look like? That huge map i’m dreaming of and then a computer to explore the project?

Yes, the map, printed is really intriguing . It becomes a modern “fresque”. It’s a software generated mashup of screenshots, logos, and portraits. And of course it’s better to have the electronic version to explore fully the links.

The project was first commissioned by the online platform of Le Jeu de Paume in Paris in 2011. It has since been shown during Sight and Sound in Montreal last year and this year it will be shown during Acces-S in Pau, France.

I also present the state of the art of the research in conference/keynote like the one at Gaité Lyrique in May, and completed with a workshop to practice the survival guide of the internet.

The Terminator Studies

When and how did you realize that the “terminator scenario” is becoming increasingly likely to become reality one day?

In fact it is already happening . Exactly what do we call the Terminator scenario? Technological take over? As most of the population is increasingly being used by/or uses computers everyday : we are living it. Technological cataclysm ? What about Chernobyl ? Fukushima ? GMO ? or asbestos ? Ecological doom ? Here we go.. Scientists and experts now talk of existential risk! It’s true if not new, but a major cause of thoses threats is unaccountability, and should be avoidable in theory.

It all started in the 80s during the Reagan era, another Hollywood actor : the software industry, the pc computer, high frequency trading, NSA surveillance, DARPA robots, and the scenario of the Terminator movie (1984) was inspired by those hypes.

In this sense we are already in a worst case scenario a la “Terminator”, and that is probably one of the reason why the movie is such a reference.. It’s even used by government representatives and experts during debates on autonomous killing machine ban at the UN.

Cameron is lucid about this: he’s working hand in hand with the military, cultivates the image of a ecologically concerned filmmaker, but while he’s producing a global warming documentary series for cable tv, at the same times he’s on board with a company that plans to mine resources missing on Earth on other planets..

The Terminator Studies

From what you have discovered during your research for this project, who will be the losers of this terminator society? the whole humanity? Or just the masses? And who will be the winners, if there will be any, in the long term?

It’s important to understand the pragmatic approach of the Terminator Studies. The goal is not to make predictions but to understand bits of contemporary history. It’s interesting that you ask about the “Terminator society” because this concept of extermination is very similar to the capitalist process. In fact the capitalist society is a Terminator society. Terminator is also the name of a technology patented by Monsanto, which is a sterile seeds, also called suicide seeds, to force farmers to buy new seeds every year. The capitalist society is fundamentally suicidal. So for now, we can clearly see losers and winners, but it’s more in terms of domination structure.

In China, the people building ipads and iphone at Foxconn factory don’t have the same perception of modernity as Apple customers do. They don’t share the same everyday issues.

San Francisco is now over-gentrified by the Silicon Valley folks and lots of people face eviction or cannot afford the city anymore. We see that some Californians now see the Tech industry as severely predatory. It creates a lot less common goods than it consumes… The etymology of robot is rooted in feudalistic society. And there is this kind of cynicism in the Californian tech elite, mostly white, that trash themselves once a year in luxury caravan in the middle of the desert, during the Burning Man festival. Think that Megan Ellison, the daughter of the 5th richest man in the world, software industry tycoon Larry Ellison, who is 25, has bought the rights of the Terminator franchise for about 30 million dollars. That also is real.

There is also the information class war. Our biggest enemy is ignorance, the whole domination process is based on the culture of ignorance (or as Robert Proctor coined it : agnotology). The tobacco industry, the deadliest industry , has invented the management of scientific doubt and by so improved its non liability and its sustainability. Now this applies to everything from GMO to global warming, to data retention, bank industry or even the state. That’s why an initiative like Wikileaks is so vital and imperative in this time.

On internet, most of the users are forced into accepting contracts without even reading them, and thus become willingly serfs of google, facebook, or whatever Californian goulag.

Artists can play a major role, if they choose an ethical model of action, in re-infesting the collective consciousness through alternative storytelling. For example Paolo Cirio or Julian Oliver have explicitly directed theirs works towards systems, and make effective proposals to alter their efficiency, even temporarily. But this process of creative resistance must be appropriated by everyone.. Perhaps that was also the goal or the dream of James Cameron to bring awareness when he created the Terminator, though I doubt it.

One of SkyNet’s Hunter-Killer Drones from the film Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (image)

Since you’ve been scanning the press for a few years now, do you think that journalists are doing a good job at weighting in the pros and cons of a world ruled by machines and AI?

Generally the press doesn’t do much journalism, with a few exceptions. AI takeover, as a topic, is quite unclear for a non expert especially with all the science fiction references, which tends to simplify it and make it acceptable. This is also called the James Bond effect, when people are already used to situations they saw multiple times in movies, like war, violence or surveillance..

At the same time it is very hard to talk about robots or our technology without mentionning science fiction references because in fact it all comes from it.. Hugo de Garis and others transhumanists consider science fiction as quasi biblical tell. Activists against autonomous killer robots opted for an opposite communication strategy and avoid any references to distopic science fiction tells (so called skynet factor), to make clear that this is a real threat and not a fictive one.

Thus the figure of the terminator is always ambiguous : it represents the domination but it’s also part of it, in the sense that it has not been fully reappropriated like, say, the Anonymous mask.

Thanks Jean-Baptiste!

Terminator Studies is shown at the DISNOVATION exhibition, on October 8th- December 6th, as part of the 14th edition of the accès)s( festival which will run November 13th -16th, 2014, at Le Bel Ordinaire, Billière + associated venues in Pau & around. The programme was curated by Nicolas Maigret and Bertrand Grimault.