THERE IS NO POINT OF NO RETURN

Artwork by Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, for the Ninian Stephen Law Program Oration: New Legal Thinking for Emerging Technologies?

“Every living thing has two bodies. To be an animal is to be in possession of a physical body, a body which can eat, drink and sleep; it is also to be embedded in a worldwide network of ecosystems. 
When every human body has an uncanny global presence, how do we live with ourselves?”

- ‘The Second Body” Daisy Hildyard ( 2017 Fitzcarraldo Editions) 

As artists, we are now immersed in an uncanny reality; of local confinement and an outpouring of remote global connection. We are driven to engage with the question “how do we live with ourselves”, which speaks to critical global emergencies, and hybrid, carbon-negative ways of working.

We are asking ourselves what is our uncanny global presence? What are the impacts of our actions on the ecologies we inhabit; what are our responsibilities; how do we act ethically within the complex intersections of our technologies/bodies/environments?

This work is the beginning of a series of sonic visual investigations into the artistic, technical and ethical implications of having two bodies:  a living breathing, eating and sleeping body, and a body of impact- a supply chain technical trail embedded into a worldwide network of ecosystems.

This work uses an accretion of tech: from the 70s- the EVI wind controller, the 80s- a Pure Data open source generative software, a Moog synthesiser from the 90s, audio DAW Reaper from the 2000s, GAN (generative adversarial network) imagery trained on plant textures from Wurundjeri Woiwurrung country,  ambisonic audio software  and an AI generated voice we generated using resemble.ai with a family member as embedded audio description, and embedded text captions.  These are only available in the last couple of years and come with the full spectrum of concerns re listening softwares.

We hope to create a space of dissolving boundaries where new thoughts can emerge for the listener/viewer that we have no idea about.

Thank you to CAIDE for the opportunity to begin this process and for us to be able to share it with you today. This work has been decoded for a binaural experience, best heard on headphones.

Our connection with CAIDE arises from our artist in residency at Science Gallery Melbourne in a collaboration with ArtsHouse CultureLab.

Our practice is documented at http://madeleineandtim.net