Intimate Commons

Concept

What is the role of property in modern times? What aspects of property should be private, and what should be held in common? These questions have been deliberated upon for centuries, as the role of property has evolved in tandem through both our mainstream massive, long-term economic shifts—like feudalism to capitalism—and economic experimentation—like the myriad forms of socialism and anarchism tried and existing both small and large scale [1,2].

One construct for property has been the notion of the commons. For those unfamiliar with the concept, it refers to resources shared by a community, network, or group of people that are collectively governed and managed [3].

These resources take myriad forms—natural and scarce, like forests and fisheries, or human-made, like irrigation systems and the internet.

Whereas commons refer to the resources themselves, commoning refers to the norms, practices, and rules that communities develop collectively to manage these shared resources effectively, prevent overuse, and ensure long-term viability [4].

As culture and technology shift, society’s conception of what constitutes a common pool resource also shifts. Shifting cultural norms have relaxed notions of “private property,” even extending to societal constructs like questioning the role of marriage and other intimate relationships and property [5]. The information age brought forth notions of the digital commons, patent laws, and other forms of artificial scarcity [6]. As we continue to embrace technological acceleration, including advancements in AI, how does our conception of the commons evolve through AI’s reinforcement, questioning, and shifting understanding of what a community or group deems morally valid? In what ways does our evolving relationship with machines challenge or encourage us to adopt new communal practices, rigidify or relax morés around intimacy, and evolve as a species?

Intimate Commons is a provocative, telematically orchestrated interactive experience that frames its core provocation from this context: to explore the boundaries of commoning in our current and future human-to-machine entwinement and its impacts on our most intimate experiences, relationships, and spaces, both material and immaterial.

Intimate Commons Mobile Experience

The installation consists of a digital experience that centers on a series of questions based on survey data generated through a large language model. Users access an online application that asks a series of questions about what they would be willing to share or exchange, which might include their most intimate relationships, objects, and experiences. These answers are anonymously recorded and processed as data used to affect the audio-visual elements of the installation that accompany the experience.

Intimate Commons Desktop Experience

Intimate Commons Desktop Experience

A multisensory digital dashboard is presented visually, enabling participants to explore and filter the collected data of others’ responses along various criteria, including location and question type. This visualization is accessible in the web application on a separate URL and user submission, enabling participants inside and those interested outside the boundaries of the exhibition to experience the installation.

Intimate Commons Technical Architecture

Sonically, each answer informs a continuously generated narrative produced by a speaker who imagines a day living in a world of increasingly communal and shared resources. The narrative directly reflects what participants have answered and is generated on the fly by an underlying AI model, which is directly correlated with the foundational model used to generate survey questions.

Intimate Commons User Experience

Each instance of Intimate Commons presents new questions based on the collective input of local participants, whether place-based in co-located environments or distributed in networked environments. The experience becomes increasingly fine-tuned to the unique gravitational pull of a community’s norms by continuously training the underlying LLM, which generates multiple-choice options for each new question and drives the sonic component of the installation.

Intimate Commons is intended to be an evolving conversation with its participants before, during, and after an exhibition. Participants can access the web application directly on their phone during an exhibition and revisit it afterward. The overall experience conveys the building of a constructive narrative of intimacy and its boundaries mediated through the non-human to explore our own visions of commoning along with our local community.

References

1. Meiksins Wood, Ellen. 2017. Origin of Capitalism. Verso Books.
2. Wright, Erik Olin. 2010. Envisioning Real Utopias. Verso Books.
3. Ostrom, Elinor. 2015. Governing the Commons. Cambridge University Press.
4. Bollier, David, and Silke Helfrich. 2019. Free, Fair, and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons. New Society Publishers.
5. “David Graeber on Debt, Service, and the Origins of Capitalism.” University of Birmingham. June 9, 2018. Video.
6. Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The Wealth of Networks. Yale University Press.