{"id":1971,"date":"2015-05-15T15:09:03","date_gmt":"2015-05-15T05:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1971"},"modified":"2015-05-15T15:39:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-15T05:39:47","slug":"death-and-the-maiden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1971","title":{"rendered":"Death and the m(AI)den"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The following is the abstract for a paper I’m hoping to deliver at the upcoming inaugural conference of the Australasian Death Studies Network: Death, Dying, and the Undead: Contemporary Approaches and Practice<\/a>. <\/em>The conference (which I’ll be attending either way!) will be held at UCQ’s Noosa Campus on October 25 this year.<\/p>\n

\n

Paper Title: Death and the m(AI)den<\/strong><\/p>\n

This paper explores the complex and troubling relationship between death and gender in a range of contemporary films and texts about artificial intelligence, focusing most explicitly on Alex Garland\u2019s Ex Machina<\/em><\/a> (2015). In particular, this paper explores the ways Garland\u2019s film frames and addresses questions about how to distinguish between the living and the not-living\/dead, between the human and the machine endowed with consciousness. The paper draws on the iconic work of Frank Jackson, whose \u2018Mary\u2019s Room\u2019 <\/a>thought experiment about strong artificial intelligence is referenced in Garland\u2019s film, and on Alan Turing\u2019s test for strong artificial intelligence (the imitation game<\/a>), in exploring the ways that gendered and sexualised AI throw into focus a particular set of ideas and anxieties about the relationship between death and desire.<\/p>\n

The paper also explores the implications of Ex Machina<\/em>\u2019s references to Wittgenstein\u2019s blue book<\/a>, especially in terms of Wittgenstein\u2019s early exploration, in that text, of language games: of language as a game.<\/p>\n

In playing some games of its own, the paper moves from the blue book<\/em> (and the character Nathan\u2019s beard) to Charles Perrault’s\u00a0Bluebeard<\/a><\/em>, and to the ways in which the film\u2019s iconography echoes and complicates the old French tale\u2019s images of gender, sex, desire, and death.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grimm, J & W 2001, \u2018Fitcher\u2019s Bird\u2014Fitchers Vogel (1857)\u2019 in J Zipes (ed.), The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, <\/em>W W Norton & Company, New York & London.<\/p>\n

Jackson, Frank 1982 \u2018Epiphenomenal Qualia\u2019 in The Philosophical Quarterly, <\/em>vol. 32, no. 127, April 1982, pp. 127-136.<\/p>\n

Jackson, Frank 1986 \u2018What Mary Didn\u2019t Know\u2019 in The Journal of Philosophy<\/em>, vol. 83, no. 5, May 1986, pp 291-295.<\/p>\n

Jonze, Spike (writer and director) 2013 Her <\/em>Annapurna Pictures.<\/p>\n

Garland, Alex (writer and director) 2015 Ex Machina<\/em> DNA Films.<\/p>\n

Perrault, Charles 2001, \u2018Bluebeard\u2014Le barbe bleue (1697)\u2019 in J Zipes (ed.), The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, <\/em>W W Norton & Company, New York & London.<\/p>\n

Robinson, William S 2002 \u2018Jackson\u2019s Apostasy\u2019 in Philosophical Studies 111<\/em>: pp. 277-293.<\/p>\n

Turing, Alan \u2018Can Digital Computers Think? (1951)\u2019 in B Jack Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: Seminal Writings in Computing, Logic, Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, and Artificial Life: Plus The Secrets of Enigma<\/em>, Oxford & New York, Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

Wittgenstein, L 1969, Preliminary studies for the \u2018Philosophical Investigations\u2019: generally known as the Blue and Brown books<\/em>, 2nd edn, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is the abstract for a paper I’m hoping to deliver at the upcoming inaugural conference of the Australasian Death Studies Network: Death, Dying, and the Undead: Contemporary Approaches and Practice. The conference (which I’ll be attending either way!) will be held at UCQ’s Noosa Campus on October 25 this year. Paper Title: Death…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[916,483,12,653,383,193,667,182],"tags":[1144,1142,1154,1149,1150,1151,1155,1152,1153,1141,1143,918,1145,1147,1146,1148],"class_list":["post-1971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fairy-tales","category-mechanical-women","category-art-and-other-catastrophes","category-academic-and-other-research","category-on-living","category-on-reading","category-research","category-work-in-progress","tag-alan-turing","tag-alex-garland","tag-australasian-death-studies-network","tag-blue-book","tag-bluebeard","tag-charles-perrault","tag-conference","tag-death","tag-dying-and-the-undead","tag-ex-machina","tag-frank-jackson","tag-grimm-brothers","tag-imitation-game","tag-marys-room","tag-turing-test","tag-wittgenstein"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LH1G-vN","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/death_AI.png?fit=473%2C270","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1971"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1974,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions\/1974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}