Words by Weronika Murek
I
As humans used to say: once upon a time, in the city of Filipona it was not allowed to carry colts so all the inhabitants of Filipona carried only empty holsters.
But there is more to it.
As humans used to start: once upon a time in the city of Filipona there was a man called Tivald Pancroft who was a shy guy accidentally framed into murder an old lady. As he wants to get away with that situation, he agrees to an offer of a strange man called Benjamin Walter who claims to be a writer of noir crimes. He wants to switch bodies and identities with poor Pancroft just because he wants to know how is it to be sought after by police. They switch faces by the plastic surgery. They switch lifestyles. And then the trouble begins.
It all happened. I swear.
In the old comic book called A City of Silent Colts. And it was written by humans (Tibor Cs. Horvath and Erno Zorad).
II
The whole story came to my mind again when I started to mingle with AI.
First of all within the possible narratives there seemed to be two ways of approaching – it was either seen as gun (and therefore to be afraid of) or empty holster (and therefore not to be afraid of but rather of the curiosity or something ridiculous). Those who went either way seemed to focus rather on what seemed to be more picturesque: cinema-like ideas and sci-fi decorations. On the other hand: those who went either way seemed rather happy to use on the daily basis all AI-powered structures which morphed so smoothly and silently into the everyday reality that were hardly to be seen. The revolution does not come with a sudden switch and change but it is about slowly forging the daily customs. By making everything easier and more accessible we tend to let the habit grow on us very smoothly. The AI revolution does not change out hearts and brains into chipped-and-wired boxes, it won’t steal our souls and won’t crush our humanity, it won’t be neither colt nor empty holster. It will happen little by little by making everything easier, more comfortable and quicker. It will not take over our hearts but it will take over our customs. And once it reshape the way we see our daily customs and our sphere of comfort, it will be done.
What I am most interested in is to see and name those little customs of ours and how they are going to be reshaped little by little by using an AI.
III
As humans used to say: once upon a time in the city of Filipona it was not allowed to carry colts so all the inhabitants of Filipona carried only empty holsters. There was mr Pancroft who seemed guilty of murder and mr Walter who wanted to make it easier for him and letting him get away with it and for an exchange mr Walter just want to learn how it is to be guilty as charged and pursued by police. Seemed like a quirky but rather an equal change in the way of qui pro quo. Mr Walter comes to say: let me be you and let you be me, and lets see how it goes.
Making it easier and been allowed to learn.
It seemed like a familiar exchange, isn’t it?
IV
They started from scratches: they would exchange lifestyles as they would exchange faces. It was all comic book so unexpected things were to be expected. In the terms of narratives (cartoon and comic – the more so) it is easier to switch faces than to conventionally switch lifestyles. This is the moment when the story starts. Details. Little differences. Customs.
In the documentary called Made to Measure: Eine Digital Supernsuche there is a story about the experiment about reconstructing a stranger person relying only on what we can find about her in the Internet and in which she or he fed its algorithms. How many traces of our digital life do we leave behind? If our life are so much about daily habits, how many of them (if not all) are we able to reconstruct (let alone use)?
In the documentary we follow a man character. We find our about her background. We get to know that she agreed to join the experiments. Basing only on 5 years of her presence in the Internet, the creators of the experiment were to call to „construct” her doppelgänger. They hired an actress who was given all the information that were managed to be soughed by informatics and those of digital tracing. The actress saw the movies of main character (social media), she knew her voice, she could study the way the character is moving, behaving, walking and talking. It was her case study – to immerse into that very person.
And so they met in there last scenes of the documentary.
They look pretty much alike. They talked the same. They sit across the table and they looked twins-like. But that is more important the actress learnt by heart all the information about the character. The producers would even traced down her apartment in which she lived when she was a student and they recreated its model. Everything seemed to fit as a glove.
It does not come as surprise that there are traces of everything we do in the global net.
But it does hit different when we can experience that „other person being us basing on the traces we have left”. And it applies to human imagination even more than it is to imagine a faceless structure of AI doing so.
So I decided to give my essay a face. Or maybe two: of mr Pancroft and mr Walter.
V
Whenever I try to create I try to go on the harder path. It feels more interesting, it is not travelled, it makes you feel the struggle so everything becomes more real. In that way I do not want anything I do to be easier (although it might come across as an easier one). But whatever comes around the whole process of everyday life, it feels good to think that it might be easier. More accessible.
What I wonder it how those two paths might interfere with each other.
For some – and I am included – working in the creative industry means that our work – as it is also our passion – never starts and never ends. It comes (or it might come) with a burnout. The borders are blurred. The creativity it being fed with our everyday reality as we draw our inspiration from so-called life. So the question was: if there is not a strict line, how to trace those little moments and habits that are so obvious to us that we tend to oversee them and therefore we are not as vigilant as we would it it would applied to something „bigger” or more rare.
If we we a sum of our habits, will our habits become a sum of what we will become because of AI?
And how will it affects our creativity if our creativity is our daily (habitual) life?
VI
As humans used to say: once upon a time, in the city of Filipona it was not allowed to carry colts so all the inhabitants of Filipona carried only empty holsters.
It was AI idea to write it now as it would create a nice loop.
And it would be easier for me to finish.
So I do. Habits grows quickly.
Weronika Murek (born 1989) – writer, playwright and columnist. She graduated from the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Silesia, Faculdad de Derecho of the Universidad de Barcelona as well as the Creative Writing (SLA) postgraduate course at the Jagiellonian University.
She is the author of a collection of short stories Uprawa roślin południowych metodą Miczurina (Czarne Publishing House 2015) which was nominated for the Polityka Passports, the Gdynia Literary Award for prose and the Conrad Award. The collection reached the final stage of the Nike Award and won the Witold Gombrowicz Award for the best book debut. It has been translated into French, Hungarian, Slovak and Serbian and Norwegian. One of her stories was adapted to a short film Maria nie żyje/Maria is dead and a feature film Przejście/Passage (directed by D. Lamparska) that reached the final of the Golden Lions competition of the Gdynia Film Festival.
In 2015, she received the Gdynia Literary Award for her drama Feinweinblein (translated into English, French, Georgian and Romanian) and the award for the best debut in the Staging of Contemporary Art Competition for Sztuka Mięsa (staged by the Silesian Theatre in Katowice and directed by R. Talarczyk). In 2017, a TV theatre play based on Feinweinblein was also produced in the Teatroteka series (directed by M. Bednarkiewicz).
In 2019, her collection of plays with the same title was published (Czarne Publishing House). Since 2015, she has worked with Polish theatres, including the Studio Theatre, the New Theatre in Warsaw, the TR Warszawa, the Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw, the Słowacki Theatre in Kraków, the Jewish Theatre in Warsaw, the W. Siemaszkowa Theatre in Rzeszów, the H. Modrzejewska Theatre in Legnica and the Contemporary Theatre in Szczecin. She is a regular contributor to Dwumiesięcznik, the monthly magazine Pismo and the bi-monthly Książki. Magazyn do czytania.
