New Canterbury Tales

My studio is moving slowly, as it always does, being a part of The Roundabout the circle of moving buildings in the centre of New Canterbury. Officially I cannot call it my studio as it is not owned by me. The idea of ownership has changed tremendously over the past decades and nobody in the city centre can claim single ownership over any of the buildings. But let us not dwell on that too long. I like the moving building and the slight changes of perspective it gives me every day. But at the same time, I detest the idea of sharing my workspace with other artists, I like to share my thoughts and idea’s and don’t even mind sharing my living spaces. But not my workspace, this place should be mine and mine alone, surrounded by my materials, my equipment, my drawings, my mess.

‘Not now Yoshiko.’ I feel a tug on my leg.

I look out of the window, waiting for one of my favourite moments, leaving the Farmscrapers behind me and giving me a good view of the huge statues on both sides of Loch Brora. The huge one and big zero mark the place of the underground master data server. Some people like to write it as the Master Data Server, serving us all, but I am not one of them. I like to think the one and zero represent a deeply felt desire to get a grip on things you can’t get a grip on, like Andy Scott's kelpies in Falkirk, near Edinburgh.

‘I just told you Yoshiko, don’t! Not now!’ The tug on my legs becomes a demanding grip.

If I am perfectly honest, I still try to wrap my mind around quantum mechanics and the way the quantum computers work in general and in the master data server. The myth of the kelpies, creatures that are shapeshifters and can both be water creatures living under the sea level and human beings is a rather good metaphor for these computers where a zero can be a one or has a probability of being both at the same time at least. But of course, I don’t have to fully understand it, in theory, to be able to work with them. It keeps intriguing me.

‘Yoshiko!’

It is almost there, the moment in which, from my point of view, the zero and the one overlap and seem to be interlacing. They merge only as an optical illusion, the one piercing the zero. Because of this, the statue has been named the conception, or ruder equivalents of it, by the inhabitants of New Canterbury. This is the moment you can really see the one and the zero becoming one and the same thing. Of course, this moment is not really a moment but a place, or even better a line of places from the right point of view. But for me, working in this moving building, the place has become a moment. So everything is relative, right.

‘Yoshiko, you are really annoying right here, right now!’

Relativity, being two things at the same time, is not just quantum theory, that is what defines most of the inhabitants of New Canterbury. My story is like many of them, with roots in one culture, mine being Japanese, merged with the life in the Scottish Highlands and many roots of both of these cultures vividly alive and celebrated. This melting pot of cultures has worked wonderfully well for New Canterbury, in both science and art.

Yoshiko has managed to climb up my leg and is now clawing its way to my shoulder while its transparent head shows persistence in a certain brain area by lighting up the small coloured lights I have inserted there. I look at one of the maps on my wall, I am still learning to read the coded signals of Yoshiko’s brain. Of course, the attention centre, Yoshiko feels neglected and as I see a shift in the lights, it starts to feel annoyed. Well, that makes two of us Yoshiko.

I pick the creature from my shoulder, no bigger than a handful of furry muscular limbs with a transparent head. No intestines as power is directly fed into its muscles, brains and sensors. When Yoshiko’s brain indicates hunger I just have to put it in the sun or stroke its furry pelt.

‘Am I ignoring you, Yoshiko?’

No reaction.

‘Do you want attention?’

A hesitant nod, and a small light indicating I almost guessed right.

‘Do you want to play?’

A definite yes!

‘I am not sure we have time to play Yoshiko, I still have to make some adjustments to you.’

Now Yoshiko starts to wriggle in my hand. It does not like to be adjusted any more. When I started to work on Yoshiko I never thought about these implications. Maybe a bit ignorant and not very well thought through. But I felt so honoured when the Institute for Brain Development asked me to work with them on one of their research projects. As a female artist, working on duality, they told me they considered me the perfect fit. I was a bit dumbfounded why me, being female mattered, but who cares. Later it turned out it was not so much my artwork they were drawn to, but the fact that I studied medicine before I turned my career to art. As a bio-technical medical student, I learned a lot about how to make adjustments to a human body, make it perform better in many ways. I also learned how to use equipment to enhance and influence muscle performance. Some of that skills are still part of my artwork, building muscular little creatures performing all kinds of silly tasks, driven by simple computer programmes, made in all kinds of colours. They are rather popular amongst children.

The Golspie Institute for Brain Development told me they were interested in researching how Virtual Reality influences muscular memory, the way the body remembers to perform complicated tasks when the mind does not.

So we made Yoshiko out of one of my former creatures, giving it a rudimentary brain in a transparent skull. I worked together with programmers of the Golspie Institute to define the functions of this brain. Together with the programmers and researchers, we mapped out certain area’s for certain activities and rudimentary feelings. I came up with the idea of building in the lights that can emit different colours, based on the range of activity. It should help reading the brain activity more directly. The mapping is still complicated to read however and I am working on a simpler interface, so I won’t need the map on my wall to interpret what is happening in its brain. It should be simple to read before I have my next meeting with the Institute. I hope to get it done before tomorrow, as my building will be in perfect alignment with the Institute. I am a bit superstitious about time and place. We want to start building more GIBDIE’s as Yoshiko is officially called. Those Gibdies are to be tested on a wider scale, not only by me. Having a more intuitive interface is essential for that purpose.

‘Yoshiko!’

She managed to wriggle out of my hand and ran to a corner of my studio. The lights in her head are turning red in the panic centre. Now I have to go after her, and she is fast! All those muscles did not yet deteriorate, no matter how she likes to play in VR, she seems to enjoy running and climbing in my studio much more.

I look outside, the sun is going down behind the highland mountains. The zero and the one are two again.

When did I start to call Yoshiko a she instead of an it? Is she a test object or a pet? Or can she be both at the same time? I think of all her muscular little brothers and sisters, stored away in dark boxes without a brain yet. Should I leave them like that? Maybe I should ask Yoshiko if she feels lonely.

‘Yoshiko! Come, time to play!’