Interview with the drone: experimenting with post-anthropocentric art practice

ABSTRACT

The main idea behind the development of the art project discussed in this artistic contribution, called MNEMODRONE, is to have people share private memories with a drone and then use those memories to create an artificial intelligence. Is it possible for a machine to act based on collective memories? Although there is not a definitive answer, I discuss the ideas behind the project: the problem of quantifying nonhuman forms of consciousness, a model for the drone's artificial intelligence and the advantages of a post-anthropocentric artistic investigation. The second half of my contribution discusses the limits of post-anthropocentric creativity and proceeds more speculatively, proposing a theoretical model of metamorphosis that could be useful for understanding technology and also for artificial intelligent systems to understand humans. My contribution advocates for a creative analysis of future scenarios, both technological and cultural, beyond the boundaries of traditional methodologies. I conclude with a fictional interview that could eventually take place between an interviewer and MNEMODRONE. This fictional interview allows the artwork to speak for itself, and is based on the data collected by the drone in its first year of activities, mimicking its discursive capabilities once the artificial intelligence is fully developed.