Things Have Forgotten What the Shapes are For

Background: The quantity of computational systems used within cultural production is increasing rapidly. Specifically, the (sometimes uneasy) human-machine relationships emerging from the deepening engagement with Artificial Intelligence for creative and social processes such as reading and writing, have raised questions around complicit coagency, distributed authorship, and the role of the book in the age of AI. How will language, literature, and their transmission through books, transform in light of assumptions of beyond-human computational capacity, and what might these transformations reveal of the increasing reliance on machine-learning and AI in society? Contribution: Things Have Forgotten What the Shapes are For, (2022) is an automated-art-system consisting of a CNC (Computer Numerical Controlled) laser-enabled machine—driven by our custom-coded computer vision software—that removes (laser-cuts) shapes from any book in order to reveal relationships between the images and texts across multiple pages. Each automated ‘reading’ generates a unique artefact in the form of an artist’s book, while destroying the original. The process permits the exploration of new ‘portals’ through the book which offer new ways to link the human and nonhuman worlds. Significance: The project, first launched at xCoAx in 2022, is an open series of unique artists' books presented as an experiment in post-digital publishing; exploring the differences between the deconstruction and the destruction of knowledge in the age of the mass-digitisation of the book. xCoax is a peak event at the frontiers of digital art, aesthetics, computing and communication. This work was included in the xCoax exhibition in the cultural centre Convento Sao Francisco, Coimbra Portugal, through competitive selection by a Scientific committee of leading practitioners in the field. Curated by Luisa Ribás, Luis Pinto Nunes and Miguel Carvalhais.