Documentation
Notes Towards the Complete Works of Shakespeare by Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan, Sulawesi Crested Macaques (Macaca Nigra) from Paignton Zoo Environmental Park (UK) was produced in response to the familiar idea that if an infinite number of monkeys are given typewriters for an infinite amount of time, they will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. It was translated to a computer environment, producing live updates published on the web, alongside a webcam view of the production scene showing the creative activity in its fuller context. The text was produced in Paignton Zoo by a group of Sulawesi Macaque monkeys as their contribution the exhibition GENERATOR (1 May 22 June 2002, Spacex Gallery), curated by SPACEX & STAR (and supported by the National Touring Programme of the Arts Council of England and the Institute of Digital Art & Technology).
Technical diagram
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Web cam pictures
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QuickTime movie of web cam
webcam.mov (3.3mb)
Buy the publication online
http://www.kahve-house.com/society/shop/
Some press clippings
http://www.vivaria.net/experiments/notes/documentation/press
About
The project points to a number of overlapping ideas. It aims to raise questions in the minds of viewers, as well as those visiting the vivaria website, as to the role of chance in evolution and the creative process. For instance, the usual argument against the theory of evolution is that complex forms and behaviours could not evolve by random chance alone, and that change is cumulative. An orthodox Darwinian view of evolution is that through competition between organisms, only the fittest survive and produce offspring. This not only oversimplifies the issue but also makes an unacceptable political metaphor - where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Political and creative processes in the most general sense contain unpredictable elements because they are complex by nature and open to outside influence. By extension, the individual success or failure of creative types (artists and writers, not least) is accounted for by luck and circumstance (and not simply good breeding). Contradiction between parts is required for the complex whole to adequately describe the ways in which these parts express both disorder and order (and is thus one of the essential functions of life itself).
At the same time, life itself does evolve through chance elements and computers are being developed that display characteristics of life (through the increasing intersections of biology and technology). Indeed the overall vivaria project asks: what are the differences between animal life and artificial life, as it is increasingly difficult to draw firm distinctions between the two? The performance illustrates the monkey formula, but does so in such a way that a reductive view of animal life is undermined. Animals are not machines. Monkeys producing actions are not equivalent to a random generator such as a computer. On the contrary, it is possible that the monkeys will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare but not simply because of chance, but also because they can think and learn. The project does not undermine the possibility of the monkeys learning from the activity nor from succeeding in communicating.
The project is clearly not a scientific experiment, but hopefully does display some sense of integrity. Although it appears to test the truth of the formula, in reality it emphasises the unreliability of human (scientific) hypotheses. Animals are not simply metaphors for human endeavour. The joke (if indeed there is one) must not be seen to be at the expense of the monkeys but on the popular interest in the idea - especially those in the computer science and mathematics community (interested in chance, randomness, autonomous systems and artificial life). The fact that the work of Shakespeare is probably the work of a group of writers working under a pseudonym adds further irony to the work. Clearly, Shakespeare did not produce his works by some chance operation but it is also entirely disputable that he existed at all or certainly that he was one person in fact, one commonly held view is that he was an illiterate actor and a consortium of writers used his name as an ironic joke. The creative thinking subject as the site of consciousness, and the subject as a crucial part of a sentence and text - that which the action is determined by - remains a contested and contradictory set of ideas. Creativity is neither random nor entirely predetermined, in other words.
The project aims to address these ideas, to activate these contradictions, and demonstrate how these contradictions generate new ideas and possibilities, and in turn provide a much more acceptable political metaphor.
