Degeneration of Character, Aesthetics of Origin, and Augmented Absence in Posthuman Cinema
Savaş KeskinThis article attempts to perform a sociological, anthropological, and especially philosophical analysis, critique, and constructive aesthetics of the artificial intelligence-assisted performer/character that has emerged in the cinematic universe of the post-human age or post-anthropocene, often referred to as posthumanism. Computers, which have evolved from merely assisting humans to becoming ‘social performers,’ are recontextualized in this article as ‘cinematic performers’ thanks to their artificial intelligence, and are evaluated solely based on their structural presence. The concept of the performer is used as a conceptual measure against the inequality effect of the masculine and gendered use of the term ‘actor’ in cinema. Since the transition from conceptualizing Computers as Social Actors/ Performers (CASA) to conceptualizing Computers as Cinematic Actors/Performers (CACA) cannot be limited to the McDonaldization approach—which includes the technomaly of an artificial intelligence that completely replaces humans—, the post-McDonaldization approach, which finds the integration of human-artificial intelligence more plausible, will prevail. This integrated hybridization results in a new mode of existence characterized as ‘augmentedness,’ an ‘excess,’ ‘expansion,’ and ‘quantitative concentration’ observable in all codes of reality, human and cinematic narrative. This intriguing entity allows us to discuss the problem of degeneration, the trans-aesthetics of origin that becomes inevitable with the marginalization of the aesthetics of origin, and the absolute absence and omnipresence of absence behind the claim of augmented or extreme phenomena to represent everything. What does cinema mean as the product of a character created as codes (computer code) in a trans-image form that transcends characters created as modus in the form of an image? Discussing this question is more than reducing the future of cinema to the present. Understanding the new performative identity of the character will help generate points of critical resistance to be added to the linear of expectations and hopes.
İnsan-Sonrası Sinemada Karakterin Soysuzlaşması, Köken Estetiği ve Artırılmış-Yokluk
Savaş KeskinBu makale, post-hümanizm olarak da duymaya alışık olduğumuz insan-sonrası çağın ya da ‘post-antroposen’in sinema evreninde peyda olan yapay zekâ-destekli eyleyicinin/karakterin sosyolojik, antropolojik ve bilhassa felsefi bir tahlilini/ eleştirisini becerebilme denemesidir. Bu sosyal bilimsel ve felsefi tahlilin genel çerçevesini hermenötik bir yaklaşımla ifade etmek mümkündür. İnsana basitçe yardımcı olan enstrümantal bir konumdan ‘sosyal eyleyici’ konumuna yükselen bilgisayarlar, yapay zekâları sayesinde bu makale içinde ‘sinematik eyleyici’ olarak yeniden düşünülmek üzere bağlamından koparılır ve yalnızca yapısal varlığı ile sınanır. Eyleyici kavramı, ‘aktör’ kavramının sinema bağlamındaki eril ve toplumsal cinsiyetçi kullanımının eşitsizlik etkisine karşı bir kavramsal tedbir olarak kullanılmıştır. Sosyal Eyleyiciler Olarak Bilgisayarlar (CASA) kavramsalından Sinematik Eyleyiciler Olarak Bilgisayarlar (CACA) kavramsalına geçiş, elbette insanla tamamıyla yer değiştirmiş bir yapay zekânın teknomalisini (‘teknolojik anomali’ anlamındaki kavramsallaştırma denemesi) içeren McDonaldlaşma yaklaşımıyla sınırlanamayacağı için insan-yapay zekâ tümleşmesini daha makul bulan postMcDonaldlaşma yaklaşımı geçerli olacaktır. Çünkü öyle bir tümleşik melezleşme söz konusudur ki, ‘artırılmışlık’ olarak karakterize edilen yeni varoluş biçimi, gerçekliğin, insanın ve sinematik anlatının tüm kodlarında bir ‘aşırılaşma’, ‘genleşme’ ve ‘nicel yoğunlaşma’ gözlemlenebilir. Bu ilginç mahlukat, yalnızca ekranda söz konusu olan varlığının gerçekleşmediği tüm alanlardaki kökensizlik ve yokluk durumu nedeniyle bir soysuzlaşma sorununu, köken estetiğinin marjinalleşmesiyle birlikte kaçınılmazlaşan köken trans-estetiğini ve artırılmış ya da aşırı fenomenlerin her şeyi temsil etme iddiasının ardındaki mutlak yokluğu ve yokluğun her yerdeleşmesini tartışmak için bize koz verir. Sinema, artık bir imge biçimindeki ‘modus’ olarak yaratılan karakterlerin de ötesine geçerek imge-ötesi biçimdeki ‘codus’ (bilgisayar kodu) olarak yaratılan karakterin mahsulü olarak hangi anlamı ifade eder? Bu soruyu tartışmak, sinemanın geleceğini bugüne indirgemekten fazlasıdır. Çünkü karakterin yeni performatif kimliğini anlamak, beklentiler ve umutlar doğrusalına eklenecek eleştirel direnç noktalarını imal etmeye yardımcı olacaktır. Doğal olarak bu makalenin amacı, insan-sonrası sinemanın karakter ontolojisini köken estetiği ve kimlik ilişkisinde yeniden düşünerek ‘artırılmışlığın’ neden olduğu dejenerasyonun argümantasyonunu yapmaktır.
Certainly, the entirety of the collaborative production processes involving human and artificial intelligence could be a focal point of this article. However, this article is limited to the context of the new configuration of the performer. It is important to understand the performer because today they are a performer, and tomorrow they may be a director, producer, screenwriter, and all other roles. We can begin by developing an idea on the most basic subject of the film industry. A performer is much more than a human being; it is a human creation. Hall (2017), in his definition of cultural representation, starts from the expressions “imagining” and “something else taking the place of something else” and brings the word to the work of intention. “Taking the place of” is meaningful not in terms of social position but in terms of representation. The Augmented Performer is not a replacement for the original performer and human being. They are the ones who will become performers alongside human beings. However, they will inevitably take the place of the human beings they represent. Because their purpose is to evoke, imply, intend, and take the place of what they intend; this is the essence of representation. So, how can this performer, who will replace the human being in the dimension of representation, break the boundaries of the aesthetics of origin with what kind of creation? Because it has been understood that the aesthetics of origin refers to the social capital value of the historical, social, cultural, economic, and racial contexts of our identities. Artificial intelligence, created by humans, appears to be rootless. However, within the framework of a creation myth, anyone can have an aesthetic of origin.
In relation to this theoretical background, the originality of this article lies in addressing the performer effect on visual thinking skills in addition to the artistic and communicative debates on AI’s visual thinking skills. Moreover, it considers this within the aesthetics of origin of a trans-aesthetic and trans-identity structure, interpreting augmentation as a dimension of excess that marginalized identities use as a compensation system. Marginalized hybrid identities transcend the absence to compensate for the double absence experienced. Augmentedness (augmented reality, augmented human, and augmented aesthetics) ‘sophisticates’ the cinematic screen as the experience of excess of the new performer created by human-artificial intelligence integration. This aesthetics of marginalized identity is at the root of this article’s problem identification. While social inequalities at the center of the famous ‘sustainability’ struggle threaten the future for the entire world, we have no reason to believe that further and irreversible divergences/inequalities will not result from the continuous reproduction of the essence and origin that humans have sufficiently fueled with the power of representation by the ‘great thinker’ artificial intelligence, thought to be independent of space, identity, and ideology. Artificial intelligence, which thinks visually at unpredictable speeds and in unpredictable quantities with almost unlimited human data, works in films as popular consumer commodities, as an ideological performer that mainly perpetuates and magnifies inequality, despite being the most likely force to have a restorative effect on humanity’s problems and inequalities. Moreover, AI can also be identified as the apparatus of a hegemonic performer by transforming into a teleological action directed by what Habermas (2019) describes as instrumental reason. In short, in a world where a marginal identity will envelop cinematic screens, the proposal of computers as cinematic actors/performers (CACA), intended to encompass augmentation, aesthetics of origins, and trans-performances as new variations of extremism, is the point of discussion of this article.
The last word in this work, Augmented Absence, is about a vast Augmented Absence. Something that does not exist does not exist when it is perceived as existing by an excessive amount of images. It is, therefore, possible to search for absence in all augmented planes. This is the possibility of a system of compensation and the crisis in which the post-modern subject and the characters of post-humanistic cinema collaborate. These characters, with all the images they put in our eyes, do not remind us of presence or draw attention to the image; they actually make us forget absence. As a means of ‘putting us to sleep,’ cinema gives its agents the task of ‘making us forget.’ For this, a sleepwalking audience is needed. The reason why it is called a sleepwalking audience, not a sleeping one, comes from the fact that sleep is a state of inaction. However, a subject must act but forget the entire frame of the absence of its action, fabricate gaps in the time left to absent, and fill the memory of this gap with the illusion of the lived experience of absent things, absent places, and absent realities.
