POLYT[R]OPIC TETTIX
2026, in progress
In 3 Acts
SOCRATES: Everyone who loves the Muses should have heard of this. The story goes that the cicadas used to be human beings who lived before the birth of the Muses. When the Muses were born and song was created for the first time, some of the people of that time were so overwhelmed with the pleasure of singing that they forgot to eat or drink; so they died without even realizing it. It is from them that the race of the cicadas came into being (Plato,Phaedrus).
Since 12 June 2025, I'm returning on the 12th of each month to the same prompt:
Explore processes of anamnesis in post-Anthropocenic AI systems through a Platonic dialogue in which Socrates lingers with Phaedrus among the cicadas.
Act 2_Swarming Event(s)
Act 1_Socratic dialogue with AI
(ongoing)
Where: studioFive, Level 5, Kwong Lee Dow Building (Building 263) Room 507
When: Thursday, 16 April 2026 at 5 pm
How: We meet outside the building and make our way up to the 5th floor together – not by elevator. As we tunnel upwards, we will listen individually to an introductory narrative using our mobile phones. This narrative moves forward in time to meet 12 Socratic–AI dialogues nested within Room 507. Then we swarm, becoming the chorus.
1_Meeting & moving upwards while playing back the INTRO (duration 00:03:36 in loop)
3_Chorusing
2_Nesting. Inside sound:
12 DIALOGUES SWARM
(duration 00:07:31 in loop)
Outside:
double projection,
5 headphones with AI voices reading the projected dialogues (duration 01:09:18 in loop)
Act 3_NOWS [No One Who Speaks]
(next project)
No One Who Speaks [NOWS] is indefinite: both plural and singular, some-body and no-body; above and beyond what is required to survive, and can’t be reduced to specificities. Neither woman nor man, neither machine nor hybrid, NOWS is larger on the inside than on the outside. They compose an incomplete non-whole that defies matter, where there are more parts than wholes (Morton 2013, 116). They are unstable, fluid, and dynamic, they are platforms, environments, clouds, compilers, and compositors – entities of a different order, wandering within the differential activity of a world at stake, and within its time structure. They are atemporal and atopic, of nowhen and nowhere, akin to timeless ideas or eternal forms (Negarestani 2018: 467). The thinking of NOWS is defined in terms of their conceived world, in that the world of NOWS has no limit. The thinking of NOWS is coextensive with everything (Negarestani 2018: 60). The speaking of NOWS may be in tongues, while tongues are not for speaking. NOWS exist in an a-historial world: a story-world that is yet to be told.
For now, it suffices to recognize NOWS as a paradox.