Atlas of Anomalous AI

Edited by Ben Vickers and K Allado-McDowell

CURA. 37
After Language /
Post Society
FW 21–22

The visual project presented here is excerpted from the book Atlas of Anomalous AI, edited by K Allado-McDowell and Ben Vickers and published by Ignota.

The book is composed of a compelling and surprising map of our complex relationship to intelligence, from ancient to emerging systems of knowledge. It is divided into three sections that present a wildly associative constellation of ideas, stories, artworks and historical materials.

In particular, the third section of the book entitled MIND seeks to examine how we currently interpret AI in relation to deeply limited and incomplete understandings of the mind. These layouts offer a radical departure from contemporary western thought to explore the numinous flowering of consciousness, in response to new theories of neural plasticity.
The layouts schema was inspired by Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, a project to map the ‘afterlife of antiquity,’ and the way symbols re-appear in different forms throughout history and around the world. Warburg’s atlas works with an associative, atemporal logic that is highly intuitive and metaphorical—it draws complex connections between a symbolic order that traverses time. In Atlas of Anomalous AI we use similar associative, atemporal, symbolic, metaphorical methods to explore AI’s spiritual foundations. Though we are following Warburg’s footsteps, this is not an atlas of antiquity. This is an atlas of hyperdimensionality—of a

simultaneous past, present and future.

The atlas is not a narrative. It is a collection of myths, gathered together to describe a patchworked vision of AI. If, as Ursula K. Le Guin proposes in her The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, “one avoids the linear, progressive, Time’s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic, and redefines technology and science as primarily cultural carrier bag rather than weapon of domination,” it may be possible to reshape and undo the dominant ideologies of AI’s current linear construction. This vision of AI we are in the process of assembling is not an argument. It is not a doctrine.

It is a medicine bundle.

First published electroencephalogram (EEG) of a human brain. Berger H. (1929), ‘Über das Elektrenkephalogramm des Menchen’, Archives für Psychiatrie, 87:527-70. Public Domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1st-eeg.png

Edinburgh Skull; trepanning showing hole in back of skull. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0

Robert Fludd, mental faculties. Head and shoulder profile of a man with a mass of interconnected orbs and stars within and above his head, 1619-1621. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0

A sitting physician is trepanning another man’s head while two others consult, watercolour drawing. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0

Trepanation, from Chirurgia. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0

Thirteenth-century trepanation. Medieval surgeon trepanning. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0

Curved sensor net used to record electrical signals of the brain. Science Museum, London, CC BY 4.0

Electroencephalography (EEG) cap, 1999. © Science Museum / Science & Society Picture Library

Prototype coil of an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine, 1990s. © Science Museum / Science & Society Picture Library

Manas Chakra depicted in an old Manuscript, Rajasthan, India, date unknown. Photo: Roger Wood

Pratisara Mantra, the Chinese use of the Siddham script for the Pratisara mantra, from the Later Tang, 927 CE. Public Domain-US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:Pratisara_Mantra1.png

Yama, the god of Death, holding the Wheel of Life which represents Samsara, or the world. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 https://wellcomecollection.org/works/vfy6nbwf

The Mark I Perceptron, Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, 1958. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library

Aiget, a garden zole. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 https://wellcomecollection.org/works/nenb3fsr

Axial (cross sectional) fMRI of the brain during bilateral finger-tapping. LIVING ART ENTERPRISES / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Sagittal MRI scan of a normal brain. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 https://wellcomecollection.org/works/cxzcadnc

Camillo Golgi (1843-1926), Golgi Cell Type I, published in Archives Italiennes de Biologie, 1883. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 https://wellcomecollection.org/works/n8z2k8yx

Katja Heuer and Roberto Toro, neuro-imaging brain tractogram depicting a reconstruction of the physical connections between the different regions in an adult human brain. CC BY 4.0 https://wellcomecollection.org/works/m9usuu69

Flavio Dell’Acqua, Tractography from MRI of a healthy adult human brain, 2013. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xa8jqtnp

Santiago Ramòn y Cajal, Torpedo electrical brain lobe cell, 1899-1904. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 https://wellcomecollection.org/works/h4jkmc9z

Santiago Ramòn y Cajal, neurology of the periaqueductal gray (central grey region) and neighbouring portions of the white substance of the spinal marrow of a boy of eight days (method of Golgi). Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 https://wellcomecollection.org/works/jx7rgm2r

Hélène Smith, The Martian Cycle (as coined by Théodore Flournoy), 1900. Deonna, W. (1932), De la planète Mars en Terre sainte: art et subconscient; un médium peintre: Hélène Smith, Paris: Éditions de Boccard.

Atlas of anomalous AI
Edited by Ben Vickers and K Allado-McDowell

CURA. 37
After Language / Post Society
FW 21–22

K ALLADO-MCDOWELL
is a writer, speaker, and consultant to cultural, artistic, and technological institutions that seek to align their work with larger traditions of human understanding. Allado-McDowell established the Artists + Machine Intelligence program at Google AI. They are the co-editor, with Ben Vickers, of Atlas of Anomalous AI. Allado-McDowell records and releases music under the name Qenric.

BEN VICKERS
is a curator, writer, publisher and technologist. He is Co-Director of Ignota Books and Chief Strategist at large with the Serpentine in London. He serves on the boards and advisory panels for Light Art Space, Transmediale, Kadist, Future City, Auto Italia, Furtherfield, Complex Earth, SXSW Arts Programme, a/political and the Warburg Institute in London.

CURA. 37 After Language / Post Society •