Technoculture
Technoculture: Culture as Living TechnologyA research-driven practice, expanding the science of information through the technology of culture.
Technoculture is a neologism that is not in standard dictionaries but that has some popularity in academia, popularized by editors Constance Penley and Andrew Ross in a book of essays bearing that title. It refers to the interactions between, and politics of, technology and culture. By positing that technology, culture and biological life are in fact inseperable, I distinguish my approach to the field of research and practice by recognizing a non-anthropocentric, post-human view of technology & culture; reorienting Technoculture as having roots in the behaviors of non-human animals and nature more broadly.
Watch: Kevin Kelly - Technium Unbound
Another World is Possible: Race & Gender in the
Age of Transhumanism (Branden Collins 2015)
A discussion and reflection on intersectionality as a topic of immediate relevance
and as a continuation of an ongoing historical dialogue. We seek to explore the
various facets of identity as they relate to gender, race and sexuality within the
context of an advanced society approaching technological singularity. Ethical
questions that arise in the discussion of the development and advancement of
artificial general intelligence (computers or robots capable of unaided self-improvement)
bring to mind similar questions of ethics as they correlate to human
rights issues. These mechanized beings, from an anthropological standpoint, are
modern day “masks”; serving a similar purpose as the costume in antiquated civilizations,
extensions of ourselves that are greater than we.
Racial injustice, sexual exploitation and suppression: the fault lines of our society
as reflected in our individual biases. Through sculptural work, masks, and written
dialogue, The Young Never Sleep studio intends to provide it’s own response, an
investigation into the occasional comfort found in the furrows of our personal
spectrums of identity.
Objectives:
Through interdisciplinary research, experimentation
& design I am working to develop regenerative, contextually aware,
embodied & empathic technologies.
Part of my core aim is expanding the understanding and applications of the vast & varied fields of information systems/science. Technoculture (culture as technology as culture) is a word I use to label this body of ongoing research, development and design.
The key methodologies:
- Proposing new questions
- Experimenting with cultural codes
- Developing new technologies
- Outlining & developing new frameworks
- Designing new products & systems
- Archiving
Past Work
Things that I would condider finished. Abstracts, research experiments, case studies... Some may be worth revisiting.Another World Is Possible (2024)
Another World Is Possible
Community Time Capsule (2024)
Playable Memories: Exploring the Possibilities of Mixed Reality Gaming
The Emergence of Hyperreality: Community Reimagined (2020)
Museum of Contemporary Beauty (2020)
Cosmosapiens: Imagining Trans-digital Pandrogenous Futures (2019)
Inspired by the Voyager Record & artist/occultist Genesis P’Orridge, I worked with several of my favorite people to send an important message about the spectrum of human experience and love out into interstellar space.
Another World Is Possible: Race & Gender in the Age of Transhumanism (2015)
A video essay examining the social condition posed by a world that hasn’t been able to agree on universal human rights when what it means to be human is a central question of our time. This was a critial point in more deeply examining the possibility of other worlds and eventual journey into information theory.
Pandrogeny (2014)
In 2014 I unveiled myself as a shrouded, everchanging, shapeshifting black figure whose distant ancestors lined the parallel corridors of Nelson Street gallery in Atlanta, GA.
Our Strange World, The Human Soul Project (2009)
In 2009, I made a 3-way “choose your own adventure” storybook archive filled with bunch of personal artifacts. I displayed this book in one of my first attempts at immsersive, interactive set building, at the Human Soul Show that same year. What was then an exploration into the subconscious through archiving, poetry and surrealist art, I now understand to have been an exploration into concepts like extended embodiment, cryptography, combinatorics, knot theory, machine learning and more.