“Technical Life” for human and computational aesthetics: the performative use of game engines in LU Yang’s work

We argued previously that the study of digital creative technologies, such as game engines, should go beyond just viewing them as neutral tools (Charrieras and Ivanova, 2016). Instead, we advised to inquire into how game engines are concretised, that is, how the context of production (including cultural, political and normative contexts) enables the concretisation of game engines through the ingression of a variety of elements accounting for anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric forms of creativity.

The concept of the technical individual from Gilbert Simondon draws our attention to the relationship between machines, their associated milieu and their human operators. A technical object becomes an individual when it is concretised: “In the beginning, the objects are considered abstract or artificial for not having an internal cohesion and by the constant need of man to intervene upon them to guarantee their functioning. As long as this evolution occurs, the necessity of human participation diminishes.“ (Andrade 2008, p.10). Through its process of concretisation, the technical object establishes an open-ended relation with its environment and does not need the intervention of human operators to ensure its functioning (the intervention of the human operator is what used to make that technical object artificial)

The development of game engines as technical individuals is especially highlighted by the contemporary development of automation in game engines (Chia 2022). Through automation, game engines gain autonomy from the direct manipulation by human operators, and they can interface automatically with a range of associated plugins or software. We noted elsewhere, drawing from the work of Beatrice Fazi, that “Computational machines functions on another “order of intelligibility” and they have their own “modes of thought” based on abstraction, discretization, symbolism and incomputable data, distinct from human cognitive and affective modes of thought” (Charrieras 2023)

Simondon contrasts the craftsman to the technician: “s/he interprets and invents machines. The machine shouldn’t be for him/her a “black box” whose input and output are known but whose functioning remains mysterious: A real technician understands the functioning of technical objects and invents new ways of functioning.” Lindberg 2019, p.301). Simondon contends that “[t]echnical life, however, does not consist in overseeing machines, but in existing at the same level as a being that takes charge of the relation between them, capable of being coupled, simultaneously or successively, with several machines.” (Simondon 2017, p. 140, in Lindberg 2019, p.301). Whether the new media artists are considered as a craftman or as a technician, their use of digital creative technologies presupposes that the machines’ functioning manifests itself ‘phenomenologically’ to its human operators to allow human operators to manipulate it - otherwise we would have “operational real time 3D environment” in the same way that we have “operational images”, that is images produces by machines for machines, eluding the necessity to be phenomenologically perceivable by humans (see Paglen 2014). We illustrate this tension between computational aesthetics and incarnated use of computational technologies by analysing the work of Chinese artist Lu Yang and her incorporated and performative use of game engines (Heinrich, Monnet, & Remy-Handfield, 2022).

Biliography

Chia, A. (2022). The metaverse, but not the way you think: game engines and automation beyond game development. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 39(3), 191-200.
Charrieras, D., Ivanova, N. (2016), “Emergence in video game production. Video game engines as technical individuals”, Social Science Information, Vol. 55(3), pp.337-356, Sage Publications
Charrieras, D., (2023) “Towards a New Computational Aesthetics of Creative Software,” Balkan Journal of Philosophy 15(1) pp. 53-60
Heinrich, A., Monnet, L., & Remy-Handfield, G. (2022). Lu Yang: An Artist in Transformation. Screen Bodies, 7(1), 1-12. Retrieved Dec 1, 2023, from https://doi.org/10.3167/screen.2022.070101
Lindberg, S. (2019). Being with Technique–Technique as being-with: The technological communities of Gilbert Simondon. Continental Philosophy Review, 52(3), 299-310.
Novaes de Andrade, T. (2008). Technology and environment: Gilbert Simondon’s contributions. Environmental Sciences, 5(1), 7-15.
Paglen, Trevor (2014) Operational Images, E-Flux, Issue #59, November 2014