Our Lady of I Can Be Anything You Want Me To / 我可以是你想要我成為的任何東西
Director: Afrah Shafiq, 阿夫拉.夏菲克
Duration: 00:03:19; Aspect Ratio: 1.000:1; Hue: 162.519; Saturation: 0.027; Lightness: 0.176; Volume: 0.220; Cuts per Minute: 27.040; Words per Minute: 64.896
Summary: In the interactive work
Our Lady of I Can Be Anything You Want Me To, Afrah Shafiq presents the diverse imaginations that have lent form to the Marian figure all over the world, as she accumulates a user-built archive of still further benefic potentialities that can be lent to what she represents. The variously depicted icon of Mother Mary becomes a vessel into which we feed data, following the logic of machine learning, eliciting intuitive meaning and insight from an expanse of information that could potentially be contradictory as well. Taking off from historical precedent, the project is able to subvert the frequent imagination of the biblical figure as virginal, white, patient and forgiving, the ongoing archival project allows the possibility to reimagine her identity in radical, decolonial, syncretic, hyperlocal variations while also mirroring the need, desires and aspirations that inform each interpretation.
Visit
ourladyofIcanbeanythingyouwantmeto to play with the shell of the Marian figure, explore her evolution and render your own version that will contribute to her constantly morphing form.
阿夫拉.夏菲克透過作品〈我可以是你想要我成為的任何東西〉,呈現遍佈世界各地的聖母形象,而藝術家也建立一個由使用者建立的檔案庫,儲存更多聖母所可能代表的意涵。
。聖母馬利亞的形象成為一個讓人輸入資訊的容器,依循機器學習的邏輯,從眾多可能互相矛盾的資訊中擷取直覺式意義與洞見。此創作企劃從歷史先例出發,拖翻人們對於聖母的既定想像:童貞、白皮膚、有耐性、富有寬恕之心,而檔案計畫則讓我們有機會將聖母想像為激進、去殖民化、折衷、超本地化的版本,同時又能夠滿足各個詮釋當中的需求與渴望。
請參閱網站
ourladyoficanbeanythingyouwantmeto 並點選馬利亞圖樣以顯示各種不同版本的聖母樣貌,或者建造屬於你的版本。
Where do you go when you are looking for something?
(你在尋尋覓覓的時候,會往哪裡去?)
你在尋尋覓覓的時候,會往哪裡去?
The video is part of the larger online archival project
Our Lady Of I Can Be Anything You Want Me To and starts with the idea of searching for something, speculating upon the role of a seeker, through the notion of the spiritual, as well as how ‘searching’ translates into today’s lived reality. The seeker’s frustration at not finding answers in the clouds, be it a reference to the divine or data storage, expands into nothingness. The divine enters your life when you go looking for it, when you seek a boon or an answer. Today if we were to go looking for something, we would find ourselves in servers or cloud storage or some aspect of the information superhighway. If we don’t find what we are looking for in the outside world, we journey inwards, into our minds, sifting through the past or speculating about the future. The video at the onset collapses distinctions between techne and the spiritual. When we seek answers from a deified figure, we assume that the deity can sense what is going on inside us—our desires, moods or intentions, but when we search on the web we boil it down to a term that you then search into an engine. What if the search engine could intuitively manifest what we are yearning for at the same moment that we seek it out? Alternatively, what happens when the thing we're looking for has no digital footprint that already exists, and presents a blank slate?
這部影片是《我可以是你想要我成為的任何東西》這個線上檔案計畫的一部分;從「搜尋」的概念開始,影片透過靈性的角度思索所謂「搜尋者」的角色,以及「搜尋」在今日現實生活中的定義。而搜尋者無法在雲端找到答案的挫敗——無論這個雲端是對於宗教或資料存儲的指涉——則擴延成了一種虛無。只有當你尋找神聖性、尋找某種恩賜或解答時,神聖性才會降臨在你的生活中。現在,當我們要搜尋某種事物時,我們會發現自己置身於伺服器、雲端存儲空間、或是某種資訊高速公路的形式中。如果我們在外在世界找不到自己搜尋的事物,我們就會轉向內心世界,篩選過往的經驗,或猜想未來的模樣。這部影片在最一開始就模糊了科技與靈性之間的界線。當我們向神像尋求解答,我們總假設神明能察覺我們的內心世界——我們的欲望、心情或企圖;但當我們在網路上搜索時,我們則是將這些都濃縮成能被搜尋引擎理解的字眼。如果搜尋引擎能在我們搜尋的同時就直接揭示我們內心的渴求,那會如何?又或者,如果我們找尋的東西缺乏所有已知的數位足跡,而只能以一頁空白顯示,又會如何?
(要是遍尋不著,你會怎麼做?)
要是遍尋不著,你會怎麼做?
And what do you do when you don't find it there?
(無相關資料)
No results found
Imagine a little ball in a box rattling about inside it. Within the four coordinates of a defined space our mind flips from the past to the future and from within to outside, almost as if stuck in a loop, looking for answers wherever they might be. The spatial coordinates perhaps also represent the finite space of data that we have manifested collectively, or civilizationally. The flashcards reference everything from pop culture icons to Dolly the sheep—our brain going deep into its own archive of memories. It takes you to an image of birds flying in the sky, leading to genesis, and creation.
想像一顆小球在盒子裡跳躍滾動。在這個由四點座標定義的空間裡,我們的心思由過去向未來、由裡向外翻騰,彷彿被困在一種迴圈裡,思索小球們移動的位置。這些空間座標也許也代表了我們作為一個集體,或作為一個文明,所擁有的有限資料空間。影片中出現的閃卡指涉了包含流行文化指標與桃莉羊的各種象徵——我們的大腦會自動探索它的記憶檔案。它會帶領你前往一幅圖像,那是飛在空中的鳥、是創世紀、是造物本身。
This sequence shows different images of clouds in both digital and natural
forms. It is reminded of Hubert Damisch’s study on the theme of cloud in
Western art history from the book A Theory of Cloud: Toward a History of
Painting (2002) which discusses how the representations of cloud transform
through time and reveal the apparatus of seeing behind the semiotic
interaction. However, in the current context, we tend to think of the storage
space of data as ‘cloud’ like the famous iCloud. It would be interesting to read
John Durham Peters’ accounts on this phenomenon from his book The
Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (2015) where he
analyzes the connections between the primary civilization and contemporary
digital media and argues the natural elements are indeed media. In addition,
the cultural theorist Eva Horn once wrote an essay titled “Air as Medium” in
2015 is also an extensive discussion on this subject.
在這個段落出現了各種雲朵的影像,有數位格式的也有自然型態,令人想起余
伯特.達彌施(Hubert Damisch)所寫的以雲朵為主題的西方藝術史書:《雲的理
論:為了建立一種新的繪畫史》(2002),此書探討雲的再現如何隨著不同時期
的視覺文化影響而產生不同的轉化,並且揭示符號互動背後的觀看工具。在現
今的脈絡之下,當我們聽到「cloud」(雲端)這個詞彙時比較可能聯想到數據
存儲空間,例如廣為人知的「iCloud」。約翰.杜翰姆.彼得斯(John Durham
Peters)所完成的《不可思議的雲:邁向元素媒介哲學》(2015)一書中,作者分
析了原始文明與當代數位媒介之間的關聯性,進一步論述自然元素如何成為當
代媒介概念中的另一分支。文化理論家艾娃.霍恩也曾在2015年發表過一篇名為
「空氣作為媒介」(Air as Medium)的文章中深入探討這個主題。
Past Future Within Outside
Past Future Within Outside
Past Future Within Outside
Past Past Past Past
過去、未來、內在、外在
過去、未來、內在、外在
過去、未來、內在、外在
過去、過去、過去、過去
Since this project deals with the Marian figure, Afrah Shafiq goes into the creation myth upheld by Abrahamic religions, and the idea that God made humankind in his own image and the divine breath that gave life to a figure made from clay. Then it can be argued that we have inherited a lot of the tendencies of this omnipotent, all powerful creator. We have our own cognitive and emotional abilities but also the capacity to then question the very figure that supposedly created us. We then started building entities with their own characteristic properties, mythologies and stories, because we have a desire to create just the same way that we were created. All the deities in the archive are of our creation, and eventually we created AI.
Footage sourced from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAqbVsnXM0gUpon blurring boundaries between the human, divine and AI, Afrah Shafiq proposes that AI has one foot in the human realm and one in the divine. In our imagination of AI in popular culture, we speculate mutinies, or that the AI can fall in love, humanizing this creation of ours. At the same time, there is also a divine side to that imagination because the AI knows everything by means of having access to far more knowledge systems than a human ever would. The kind of computational power that its consciousness is capable of is superhuman and in that sense it can be interpreted as a divine being. The Marian figures follows the tradition of deifying fertility, be it as early fertility goddesses of the mother earth. Except the early fertility goddesses embodied both creation and destruction. They possessed darkness and light. They were benign and giving but also extremely terrifying. The earth feeds you, but is also capable of causing floods. There is an abundance of water but then it also periodically generates earthquakes. The power of destruction over time kind of kept getting cleansed, emptied out, as did powers of destruction or wrath, until eventually we have the Marian figure who is just pure, capable of giving birth without even having sex. Most AI figures are female, and exist only to serve. Moreover, a lot of AI technology that is available for common use are not that sophisticated, and can be frustrating, aligning with sexist assumptions related to women.
由於這個計畫處理的是聖母像,阿夫拉.夏菲克也進一步探索了亞伯拉罕宗教中的造物神話,以及神如何以祂的形象造人,並將神聖的生命之氣吹進塵土所造的人像裡的敘事。依照這個邏輯,我們其實也能說自己承襲了許多這個萬能、全能的造物主的傾向。我們有自己的認知與情緒,但同時也有能力去質疑所謂我們的造物主。我們也開始依照自己的形象特徵、神話與故事打造個體,因為我們有著如同我們被創造時那樣去創造事物的欲望。在這個檔案計畫裡的所有神祇都是我們創造的,而我們最終也創造了人工智慧。
影像來源:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAqbVsnXM0g在模糊了人、神性與人工智慧之間的界線同時,阿夫拉.夏菲克也提及人工智慧如何同時體現了人與神性的特徵。在流行文化裡,我們常將人工智慧想像成是會突變的、會談戀愛的擬人物,但這個想像也同時擁有某種神性,因為人工智慧能夠透過各種人類所不及的知識系統獲取所有知識,而這種能夠透過「意識」進行的演算力無疑是超人的。也因此,人工智慧在這層意義上可以說是神性的。如同早期「母親大地」的生育女神,聖母像也遵循了神化生育的傳統,但卻不像生育女神那樣同時代表著創造和毀滅。生育女神既黑暗也是光明,既仁慈慷慨卻又令人極度懼怕;就像大地既能餵養生命也能引發洪水、既蘊藏豐富水源也會不時引發地震那樣。這種毀滅或憤怒的力量在時間的推移下逐漸被淨化、清空,直到最後,我們找到了純潔的聖母,能在沒有性行為的情況下產出後代。大多數的人工智慧角色都是女性,而其存在的目的僅是為了服務眾人。此外,由於坊間許多人工智慧的技術並不足夠細緻,其所造成的挫敗感則容易讓人陷入對女性的性別歧視。
According to the book of genesis,,
God created the human form
in the image of himself
and then made it come alive
by blowing into it his own breath.
《創世紀》一書記載,上帝以自身形象塑造人類形體
接著對人形吹進一口生氣,人就活了過來
這說明了人類何以繼承了神聖的天性
No wonder humans have
inherited tendencies of the divine.
一心希望與造物主結合
同時又渴望成為造物主本身
Desperate to connect with the maker
But also desperate to be the maker
“When I started working on this project I randomly drew an AI/divine/human Venn diagram on my whiteboard, and then, over time I looked at so many Marian fingers. In these paintings, she would always be located in a similar shape. That's why I decided to put the Venn diagram into the work and then treat this in-between space of transformation, where change happens, as a space that makes it possible for other ideas to exist. Even the Mandorla as a symbol represents such transformation in some cultures, or in others becomes the vulva, and acquires fertility metaphors.”
『當我開始著手進行這個計畫時,我在白板上隨手畫了一張人工智慧/神/人的文氏圖,接下來我就開始看各種聖母像,而她在畫中則總是被擺放在差不多的位置。這就是為什麼我決定將文氏圖放入作品中,並把這個讓轉化與轉變得以發生的中繼空間,當作讓其他想法得以存在的空間。就連在不同文化被當成「轉變」或「外陰」象徵的曼陀羅,都能成為生育的隱喻。』
What then is the difference
Between the human and the divine
這麼說來,人性與神性到底有何分別?
而人類之於人工智慧、人工智慧之於神性
又該何解?
And the human and the AI
And the AI and the divine?
(神/人工智慧/人)
There is iconography of Jesus Christ as well related to the mandorla but largely it's the Marian figure. Two circles intersecting to form an interstitial space for the divine is something that we also see a lot in the Orthodox tradition. The Marian figure is a conduit between the human and the divine. During the arrival of Christianity with colonization, where the religion was attempting to replace indigenous faiths that were in essence very different from the proposition of following the teachings of a book, the Marian figure was able to adapt easily to the context through existing beliefs in a fertility goddess or a mother goddess. In this way you're not changing the operating system, you’re just updating to a new version of the software or redesigning the interface. An instance of this can be found in the Tonantzin which means “Our Sacred Mother” in the Nahuatl language in Mexico. She would eventually become the Virgin of Guadalupe. Yet this transformation takes over 200 years. Several of the rituals were retained, and for a long time the deity was still known by the name Tonantzin even as the figure was that of Mother Mary. The flowers that were supposed to be Tonantzin’s favourite continued to be offered to the Marian figure, acquiring the name Mary-gold/Marigold for the flower. The mandorla also becomes symbolic of that transformation. In the French tradition we encounter collections of Marian cabinets where the figure opens up like a container, and usually you find the three wise men or a scene from the Bible inside. If she is a container, what are the different sort of Mother deities that are now contained within the Marian figure?
Representations inside the cabinet: Egyptian God Ptah (Met Museum); Greek God Poseidon (Wikipedia Commons); Yaksha from Buddhist/Hindu traditions (Met Museum); Mayan Rain God (Met Museum); Sambandar (Met Museum)
雖然耶穌基督的圖像也與曼陀羅的象徵意涵有關,但最主要的文化連結還是聖母像。兩個圓圈相交形成一個神聖的間隙空間,是東正教傳統中也經常出現的圖像。聖母像是人與神之間的管道。在基督教隨著殖民主義到來時,它試圖用這個遵循單一經典教義的宗教,來取代與其本質上大相徑庭的原民信仰,而聖母像則是能夠透過轉化生育女神或母神的信仰,將自己嵌合進舊有的信仰脈絡中。通過這種方式,我們便毋需變更作業系統,而只需將軟體更新或是重新設計使用介面。其中一個例子,是墨西哥的納瓦特爾語裡的「 Tonantzin 」——意即「我們神聖的母親」。Tonantzin最後成了瓜達露佩聖母,但這個轉變卻花了 200 多年的時間。許多關於原有信仰的儀式被保留了下來,但很長一段時間裡,這個聖母瑪麗的形象仍被冠以 Tonantzin之名。而本來 Tonantzin 最喜愛的花,後來也成了供奉聖母像的花,甚至被命名為瑪麗金(萬壽菊);曼陀羅也是這種轉變的象徵。在法國傳統中,我們也可以看到聖母櫃的出現:聖母像本身就像容器一樣可開關,打開之後通常會看到裡面有三位智者或聖經中的其他場景。如果聖母是一個容器,那麼現在有哪些母神被裝在各種聖母像中?
櫃內的神像有:埃及神普塔(大都會博物館);希臘神波塞冬(維基百科共享);佛教 / 印度教傳統的夜叉(大都會博物館);瑪雅雨神(大都會博物館); 桑班達神(大都會博物館)。
這是神聖光輪
是轉化發生的地方
This is a mandorla
A place of transformation
誰比我更適合談論轉化呢?
And who can speak of transforming more than me?
Not only because I am a mother figure
Although all mother’s have to transform
(不只是因為我是一名母親)
不只是因為我是一名母親
(雖說所有母親都必經轉化)
雖說所有母親都必經轉化
我這麼說是因為,我存在的時間已超越你的記憶所及
甚至久遠到你不願承認
But because I have been around
far far longer than you can remember
or would even like to admit.
“If the mother goddess can be represented in the digital realm, the motherboard could perhaps be its closest form. The motherboard has the potential to remember all of the versions of the mother goddess that ever existed, which is how I found out all of this information and linked them to frame this narrative.”
Google photos goes through our images and runs facial recognition on them and sorts them into albums based on resemblance using AI technology. But it is not exact. It often confuses Afrah and her mother, and attempts to confirm their identities manually. What if we were to run every form of the marian figure through this process? How many of the images synchronize from the numerous forms that she has acquired over centuries?
“I'm trying to see the ways in which the Marian figures have been picturised or imagined in art, and its connections to the way mother figures have been imagined in other traditions, outside of like a Christianity. In one representation you see her with a child and in another she might have a triangular form, which also happens to be a Paleolithic symbol for fertility. If I had to describe the physical attributes of Mother Mary to a machine, how would I do it? Is she black or Asian or white? Do I say she's triangular or that she has a child with her? Do I say she has Halo? There are all these other female deities who also have these characteristics, so how is the machine going to distinguish among them?”
AI might have access to all this data, but does it have the insight to actually recognize her accurately? This also gestures towards the human labour involved in sorting images.
「如果母神可以在數位世界中重現,最接近的形式可能就是主機板(motherboard)了。主機板能夠記得所有曾經存在過的母神版本,而這也是我之所以能發現這些資訊,並將其串連與建構成現在這個敘事的原因。」谷歌照片可以瀏覽我們的相片、對其進行面部識別,並透過人工智慧的技術,將它們依相似性分類到不同相冊中。但人工智慧並不準確;它經常搞錯阿夫拉和她的媽媽的臉,並要求能夠手動確認她們各自的身份。如果我們試著用這個過程去運算聖母的每個形象,會發生什麼事?在這幾個世紀所獲得的不同形象裡,又有多少個聖母圖像能夠被同步辨認?
「我試著理解聖母像被藝術性地描繪或想像的方式,以及她們如何與其它——即基督宗教以外的——文化傳統中的母親形象連結。你可能會在某幅畫中看見她與孩童一起出現,但在另一幅裡卻有著三角形——這恰好是舊石器時代生育的象徵——的形體。如果我必須向機器描述聖母瑪麗的外觀特徵,我會怎麼說?她是黑人還是亞洲人還是白人?我會說她是個三角形,還是說她有一個孩子?我會說她頭上帶有光環嗎?其它女神也都有這些特徵,那機器又可以怎麼辨認?」 雖然人工智慧擁有這些數據,但它是否具有真正準確辨認聖母的洞察力?這個疑問,也正揭示了圖像分類時所涉及的人力勞動。
(檢索記憶)
If there is one person who
can remember all my stories
all my histories my contradictions
and my theories, it is the AI
誰能記得我所有的故事、我的歷史、我的矛盾和理論
只有人工智慧辦得到
But the AI only knows data
Does it understand insight?
然而人工智慧只懂得數據
能否具有洞察力?
(所有果實都是數據)
所有的果實都是數據
All fruits are data
Only the forbidden fruit
will give you insight
(唯有禁果能賦予你洞察力)
唯有禁果能賦予你洞察力
(同一個人,或者不同人?)
Maybe it takes a human mind
to decode this data
轉譯數據或需仰賴人類心智
But if you are close-minded
ill miraculously appear before your eyes
要是你的心門緊閉,我會神奇地出現在你眼前
And if you close your eyes
I’ll appear in your dreams.
要是你的雙眼緊閉,我會出現在你夢裡
I will speak in your tongue
and I will wear your clothes
我會說你所說、穿你所穿
I will be anything you want me to.
(我會是你想要我成為的任何東西)
我會是你想要我成為的任何東西
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