Programming for Liberty in Virtual Spaces
Pierre Berger
Digital Artist. Chairman of “Les Algoristes”
Abstract
1. Liberty, a paradoxical ideal
2. Working for liberty : creation Vs. evaluation
3. Creation in graphics and VR
4. Evaluation in graphics and VR
5. Design and architecture
6. No liberty without cooperation
1. Liberty, a paradoxical ideal
At first look, programming and freedom look like a radical opposition. Programming is basically deterministic in scope, and to be human is to prove one’s difference from a robot as well as from an animal.
Are we free, or predestined ? Is even liberty possible… it is an old debate, finding arguments as well in formal logics [Vidal-Rosset] as in psychology. Even Christian denominations disagree on this point. For the classical catholic doctrine, worded for instance par the thomists, liberty is a consequence or reason : "Cum homo sit rationalis, liberi etiam arbitrii necessario est". ([Aquinas] Prima pars, Questio 83, Articulus primus). This point has been several times confirmed by several popes, namely by Léon X (against Luther) by Clément XI (against Quesnel). Going further, Piux IX adds that human liberty can be rationally proved (Sacri collegii decretum, june 1865)… Schopenhauer or Larochefoucauld are famed for their insistence to track mean motivations under the apparently most disinterested decisions.
The question may also be taken as an aspect of the “reductionism” issue : is man a machine ; or, in other words, can we build human beings by technical means ? Western thinkers and general opinion denies this possibility, or at least takes it as a major threat of the present technical evolutions. Japanese culture sees it otherwise, and robots are frequently seen as friends if not saviors of Mankind [Lunning].
We wont here take part in this debate as such, but adopt a radically pragmatic attitude. We shall propose a rather formal model of “liberty” and, being aware that any such model cannot give answer to the deep logical-philosophical problems underneath, we shall show how it may help to “build freedom”, in particular in Art and virtual spaces. We shall use our “painter system ”Roxame” as a concrete to experimentation and development in this domain.
The Liberty space
Let us first observe that liberty is always twofold :
- the possibility several options
- the absence of determination to choose one of these against the others.
We can go further, evoking some quantification of liberty (at our risks)
- the more options we have, the wider is our freedom ; we can describe that as a more or less mathematical space, with more or less points where one can go
- the absence of determination can be taken as an equiprobability of the different options.
In a digital environment (always finite in a real world) we can consider that the different options can be referred to as various values of a string of bits, with a length of the string equals to log2 of the number of options, and an independent equiprobability for each bit to te 0 or 1.
I don’t think that such a model is able to give us really a means of fully and definitely computing the liberty of any being other than digital and abstract. The main difficulty lies in the counting of options : how do we decide that two options are really different ? Even in a digitized model, a difference of few “low valued” bits will be frequently meaningless for any real user.
On the other hand, we can use the formula as a guide to “develop” liberty. When we open “new fields”, or close them, and when we remove constraints and obstacles to a free going there, we augment Liberty. When we close gates and make the travel more difficult, or most costly (in any kind of count), we reduce liberty.
Valuation of the space points
But that is not sufficient, and we must a second time call for meaning. In an infinite, borderless, “flat” universe, it does not matter to be here or there. The move from one point to another one never pays for cost. “There is no good wind for the sailor who doesn't know to which port he is sailing.” (Oliver Holmes). Hence we must have one more dimension giving value to the points of the space.
A simple way of doing that is to consider the move space as a flat plane, and the valuation as a kind of altitude. There would remain no liberty if the agent were obliged to aim always at the highest or lowest point. Liberty remains
- if the subject, for reasons of its own, not modelizable, can always choose go to “up” or “down” (good or evil, for instance)
- if and when, at some places or times, the valuation cannot be computed ; then the subject chooses for reasons of its own, not “rational” ; in a lot of cases, this problem can be solved by putting limits to the space of choices, limits such as the computation of the “good” is possible. The liberty is here in the choice of these limits.
Example of limits : short term rather than long term, nationalism rather than globalism, egoism rather than altruism.
Note that, for any finite metric space, a “natural” valuation can be proposed : the value of one point is the sum of its distances to all the other points in this space ; here the best points are the center, or around some kind of center, and the worst ones will be the border ones.
Examples : the center of a circle is clearly a vantage point ; the center of the chessboard is well known for its strategic importance.
Another interesting valuation way is to consider than the first liberty is the liberty to exist, and to exist as long as possible. Then we can propose a formula for a full life span :
L =
Liberty is relation.
The two maturities
Liberty aiming to an adult-adult relation. [Berne]
Resonance, Larsen.
Adult-adult relation with oneself.
Measurment of liberty. L. instant density of L (decision flow
Information : more messages possible, equiprobability
Digital : number of independent bits )
Games : playability , what the user is able to do, what he is allowed to do
Economics : cash “liquidities”
Politics : separation of powers : legislative, executive, judiciary. Plus : press, economy. The liberty of one citizen ends where it impinges on the liberty of other citizens.
No liberty without “programming”
Personnality :
Politically
Art
Freedom of the artist, of the work of art itself, of the beholder
The artist fights for his own liberty, and
liberty at large (… no pun)
The long walk to Marr. Following photography. The cubist move. : Picasso
looks for a new kind of representation, and ends In a new kind of art work,
playing for itself, structurally independent.
The Marr/Greenberg closure of art on
itself. Duchamp quits.
Personally : an adult/adult relation between the work and the sitter, for
instance.
Art space. Perspective, new beings
art constraints [Leech]
Games
Freedom of the gamer : playability. Freedom vs. moral laws. You can kill (not make love…, in classical morals)
Aims, rules
Evaluation is basicallay : win or lose, and the paths going there
Economy
Retribution/contribution
Low costs/high return ROI
VR, a gigantic space, but not properly infinite, no “natural” laws
Space properly, data, algorithms, agents
Immediate transport
But some limits : resolution (Bailly)
Conclusion : nobody knows exactly what liberty is, not even it is real. But we can act to reduce or augment it. VR is by itself a new opening. But the way we build VR impacts on the liberty of people entering in, including ourselves. Then, how to ?
2. Working for liberty : creation Vs. evaluation
1st side : expanding the space
Creation
affordances, possibilities, space dimension, degrees of liberty (mechanics), resolution
The freedom of creation [Le Meur][Serfati][Moholy-Nagy]
Technology as opening new degrees of liberty
Health, comport, life span, leisure time, travelling and engineering tools, including pigments for painters, etc.
And “finally” VR
(to morrow : B2B ?)
Breaking into pieces open to reconstruction (any kind of science, Meccano)
Dematerialization (space use, costs of moves, of reproduction, etc.)
Reproduction [Malraux][Mac Luhan][Benjamin]
Material/physical constraints
- time, Newton, Heisenberg
Constraints brought forth by technologies :
- the digital problem
- costs, availability
2d side : Valuation
Evaluation
Technogy as introducing new values (?)
Liberty as a value per se. Consequences for harmony and balance.
One could say, about symmetries : a pure symmetry, for instance left/right related to the center, is not much more than a division by 2 of the information brought.
If the symmetry line (not properly a classical symmetry anyway), some difference is conserved. The golden number could perhaps be proven as an optimum on those grounds.
Hence the principe of limited symmetry [Funck-Hellet]
Harmony and balance
3. Creation in graphics and VR
The generators
Random
Sets of functions, colors, moves, models, characters
Space
In VR, space is always finite, albeit enormous.
The space may have constraining contours, restrictions of costs of moving
Geodesics and metrics (the shortest
distance between two points)
possibly even parted spaces with non connected parts
Then freedom is not the same in every plase. Some kind of centroïd.
Sensors on the user, on the general world
and user inputs
Beyond keyboard and mouse, a lot of sensors used. Accelerometers. WII
Vision, also sound recognition
Brain to computer
Web as resource
The “decisisonal bits” as small quantity in the information flow emerging from the player.
But “vision” has precisely as its aim to reduce this flow… according to the decision schemes of the system
It is symmetrical for the player
Then we have two high-level decision making “agents”, communicating through high band-pass channels
As for the human, we have no direct access to some “top level”
In fact one may doubt if there is even a top level
That can be studied in the computer/Program
Since here at last we have (or can have) a strictly mono-processor, or mono-processor centered acting system.
Actuators and user outputs
On the user/player
Controlling the real world (or virtual
worlds)
immersion
Pain station 6196
Possible controlled sex toys . up to now, rather short from expectations !
Agents, characters
Complex features, behaviours
Material generators : Lego Mindstorms
Partial bits/ dimensional independence-orthogonality : here or in evaluation ?
4. Evaluation in graphics and VR
Space evaluation, geodesics.
In games, a final target. In life, indefinite. We build the space while living
in it.
Constructive aspects of the constraints. The transgression possibility [Leech]
Values
Aesthetic
Graphically pleasant
semantic
Pleasure
Playability
Examples : easel painting, mural, film (at home), film (theater movie), gesamtwork (at home, in theater), night club, religious celebrations
The user memory
With paintings, the semantic evocation may be much richer (Aurélie Nemours)
Costs/pleasure (contribution/retribution)
Levels, as in Maslow
Accept to be (or to give) only a part to be remixed, assembled by the beholder [Azuma]
Structure/measure of gameplay
Dissymmetrical effects : important changes In the system with few input bits
If characters in the system, explicit “expressive” approval (visual and oral “you win”, congratulations
The classical retribution in games (and elsewhere : the retribution is an affordance to go further, “higher”)
The book vs ebook
Interaction and playability
The costs of interaction for the viewer, the audience
(some experiments in collective decision, for instance, at Siggraph)
Group effects . build liberty for the group also ? Liberty inside a group …
Internal and external playbability
Eg canvas bought and placed somewhere in the house. Sometimes stores in the attic,
Collection, buying/selling,
Playability is larger if the cost is low
(but less thrilling…)
r
5. Design and architecture
Build
Constructivism
Modernism. Why it did not work in Art
(though Bauhaus is a kind of success).
[Klee][Moholy-Nagy]
Ego, construction of personalité [Kaufmann]
The three levels.
Id quod volo
Ego as a space, to be explored. “Là où est le ça, je dois advenir”
Robotics
Society
Indefinite progress “The human morality, resulting necessarily from his organization, may, as all his other faculties, progress indefinitely” [Condorcet]
Behaviors and memory
- the spectator. Learning.
- the work/system . I can write on a book, annotate it, even spit on it !
Explicit memorization. Just local. The
- player recognition, its psychological
state, his past interactions, level competence, financial assets, tastes,
turn-offs
- for the player in general, for a given profile, for this player as a specific
individual
- the artist
Sequences
Loops. Aseity, self, mirror
The player seeing him/herself
The machin seeing itself
Mirro combination “mise en abîme”, n+1
Haptics
Hierarchies and the debate about centralized/connexionists
Modernist/post-modernist
Japanese. Basis of “elements” (not only data, emotions also)
Will the author accept to be so “decomposed”, “analysed” , and be dissolvec in a global mixing flow, in order to give the player a maximum of playability?
Summa/Encyclopedia
Computer systems centralized, distributed, clouds/grids, neural networks, multi-agents.
Language
The fundamental place of language
Human against animals
Roxame
Constraints are language as well as generators
GesamtsKunstwert Vs. Neuronal networks [Balpe][Azuma]
6. No liberty without cooperation
Profiling of a “programmer for liberty”
The artist, the programmer, the designer/architect
Politician, anybody for oneself
Cost of development
Diversity of competences and approaches
Artist are not driven to the freedom of the beholders. Somehow with interactive systems. They do not study psychology, neurosciences
Not artistic engineering. Designers ?
Scientist in labs ? Teams in cinema and game production.
References
[Aquinas]
[Azuma]
[Balpe]
[Benjamin]
[Berne] BERNE Eric : Games people play. The psychology of human relationships Penguin 1964.
[Condorcet] Jean-Antoine Caritat, marquis de Condorcet : Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain. Editions sociales, Paris 1966. Original edition 1795.
[Funck-Hellet] FUNCK-HELLET Ch. Funck-Hellet : Composition et nombre d’or dans les oeuvres peintes de la Renaissance. Proportion, symétrie, symbolisme. Editions Vincent Réal, Paris 1950.
[Klee]
[Leech]
[Lego Mindstorm]
[Le Meur]
[Lunning]
[Malraux]
[McLuhan]
[Moholy-Nagy]
[Serfati]
[Triolet]
[Vercors]
[Vidal-Rosset] VIDAL-ROSSET Joseph : Les paradoxes de la liberté. Ellipses 2009.