WHAT IS MCM?

Memories from the Collapsed Machine (MCM) is an idealist and collectively automated art experiment. Its purpose is to explore new technologies, artificial intelligence and machine learning to help identify, develop and disseminate information about thoughts and actions no longer bound to exploitative and pleonexic structures. Drawing on, and learning from, contemporary resistance movements, conservation organisations, local workers’ struggles, activism, interventionist campaigns and similar forms of human behavior, it aims to crystalize, visualize, articulate and disseminate information about underlying, generic and shared ideals through type examples.

HOW DOES MCM WORK?

Although partly simultaneous, the project can be said to develop in three phases. In phase one, it operates with eight narratives, stories or ideal experiences (with more anticipated). Each narrative or story is adapted into a song, composed by a unique set of contributors corresponding to the number of stories. These songs will be paired with visual art, which will subsequently be deconstructed and animated to produce eight short films integrating text, music, and imagery. In phrase two, these core stories provide the structural foundation for an expansive, fully automated distribution and augmentation-framework executed by an number of AI agents. Utilizing the primary texts, audio, and visuals as its creative constraints, the AI will generate derivative content, including articles, blog posts, video, analytical critiques, etc. The agents are tasked with the broad dissemination of this material through social media automation, event organization, networking, etc. The AI’s dual mandate is (i) content expansion and (ii) strategic distribution. It is expected that the agents will distort or simplify the source material; such reductionist output is a deliberate objective of the project. The process explores how original themes survive or dissolve within AI-generated dilution. All automated activity will be monitored in real-time at geopoetics.org/mcm. In phase three, the original stories or experiences will achieve material realization, i.e., they will be initiated and lived.

WHAT DOES MCM DO?

Journalist are not always reliable, but good journalist are often able to capture both the small details and the general spirit of an event in a very accurate way. As it comes to the MCM, a fairly good journalist might put it in the following way: “Those who refer to themselves sometimes as the Memories of the Collapsed Machine, sometimes the Newly Awakened, the Black-Footed, or the Green Eyes, are often somewhat misleadingly described as the reincarnated ghosts of the hippie movement. To be fair, the aesthetic – at least among the younger members — is strikingly similar, although shrouded in a more concrete haze of stardust and electricity, as is the desire for play and dance. However, the lifestyle choices they share are few, and The Memories of the Collapsed Machine also seem to consider different emancipatory struggles urgent than those deemed important in the 1960s. Regardless, the movement has grown fast over the last years. It is by no means a homogenous group. There are no leaders or formal organisations. It is not tied to any specific place or religion. It has no clear historical roots and does not appear to have emerged as a reaction to any specific event, other than as an antithesis to the general and widespread moral collapse that reached its zenith in the late 2020s. Unlike similar popular movements over the last millennium, it also appears to have no distinct geographical origin. It seems to be active and operational on every continent and possesses no clear ethnic affiliation. Yet it is evident that the movement is cohesive and that those who belong to it collaborate. To understand and, to some extent, depict this unity, we have attempted to gather and record a number of experiences and stories. These accounts all hail from different corners of the globe. They vary in both style and tone, yet they appear to share a kind of fundamental, common experience. Perhaps it is a goal, perhaps a frustration, perhaps a desire to create something new. In any case, it seems to matter little which culture these people come from or the context in which they were raised; the experience appears to be the same. It might be described as a frustration. Perhaps it is an anger at the inadequacy of political systems. Perhaps a longing for freedom. Perhaps a longing for home. Or, at the very least, a longing to return to that dream which was so palpably vivid this morning. It often concerns a kind of escape—an escape away from attention and wealth. But the movement is also a desire to come home to a community where one no longer needs to perform. Most of the stories we have encountered depict a kind of break from the prevailing order. They may concern schooling, the economy, agriculture, or the war machine. But they are, regardless, portrayals of how it is possible to break with an old, destructive lifestyle, begin searching for alternatives, and find a new point of departure. This new starting point is difficult to describe but simple to experience. It is direct and concrete. It is a moral foundation. It is a way to breathe out. It is reliable and secure. And it distinguishes, it seems, the true from the false. Although this is not expressed anywhere or made explicit in any printed matter or on the internet, it is not impossible to identify a number of principles that appear to hold true in at least most contexts. They believe it is acceptable to destroy or sabotage property that devastates the Earth, such as weapons or oil refineries. They seem to believe that borders and states are unnecessary; they ignore them, or at the very least, do not respect them. They believe in inter-species communication and in the research that maps it. They do not trust human language. They enjoy dancing and play. They dislike being professional. They defend all life with their own lives. They do not consider politics a competitive endeavour. They do not trust public elections or aggregative democracy. And they seem to think it is perfectly legit to bring bad leaders into the mountains”.

STORIES & EXPERIENTIAL NARRATIVES

The texts below are ideal stories or fictive experiences developed to capture situations of non-pleonectic thought and action. They are all live ai translated (and may take some time to load). The texts are continuously updated and developed. The original texts (in Swedish) can be accessed here.