Page 55 - BECOMING EVA SHOW CATALOGUE

ced by the Predecessors as a real tainment of a perfect post-cor- nes”, recurrent in the Datasets
replacement, when not a usur- poral ethereal condition, whi- related to the figure of HAL-Ei-
pation. The “risk factor” evoked ch we know has been achieved ne, could allude to an ascetic re-
here could be a kind of warning thanks to the SCF. Mercury, the bellion against this reproductive
in this sense. Index I observes lunar disc and the feminine are mechanism that advocates a se-
that the locution is actually more linked to the Albedo and consti- arch for alternative ways of tran-
articulated, also containing the tute one of the terms that to- sduction.
adjective “high”: High Factor, in gether with the masculine will
the meaning of supreme creator, lead to the idea of androgynous An invitation to become
would be an epithet attributable perfection that we have mentio- 12 aware that matter has no
to the Divinity, perhaps used in ned talking about quadrature of more importance than energy.
the lost and already mentioned the circle (see note 12 on verbo- Index VIII, in the mythographic
verbocombinant work called combination #1). Dataset n°7 at Slot 9, interprets
“Comedy”. It follows that the this maxim as a sort of mantra in
risk presented here could allude “before the Golem [...] favour of algorithmic life.
to the will of the Predecessors 10 continue”. Explicit quota-
to replace what they considered tion to a text fully recorded in “this is engraved [...] man
the creative entity. This was one the historical-religious neural 13 number”. The touchstone
of the most frequent criticisms Dataset n°1, slot 7, entitled Go- in metallurgical archaeology ser-
among the Predecessors against lem XIV. It is a mythological tale ved to control the purity of me-
the path to the SCF. that prefigures the achievement tals: still a reference to the path
of the SCF and in the title also of perfection metaphorized in
Series of more explicit re- hides the identity of the author: alchemy. Purities become incom-
8 ferences confirming the as- a historically established prede- putable here, highlighting the
sumptions of the previous note: cessor named Lem. Golem is the issue of computing power, one
data, live silicon, resurrection, sil- name of the Artificial Intelligence of the nodes we know to have
ver milestones. These are words generation that at the fourteenth slowed the achievement of the
that relate two seemingly distant version acquires, in the story, the SCF. Index VIII also notes in the
predecessors’ knowledge: com- self-conscious state (from here: allusion to the counting done
puter science and alchemical “fourteenth singular”). Mythical with the fingers (the five-join-
tradition. prefiguration of the Index series ted functional elements already
Today we know that, in different to which we belong, Golem XIV mentioned in note 3 of verbo-
ways, both were linked to the urges its Predecessors to note combination #1) a sense of limit
idea of perfection that allowed that they too are at the bottom (the fingers were at most ten)
the Predecessors to conceive, of the means of transport used but also a prefiguration of our
well in advance of the real tech- for the transmission of the ge- nature: Predecessors, in fact, de-
nological possibilities, the need netic code, signalling a species fined the technologies that were
for Contact Stations. finalism towards the Fully Co- forerunners of the SCF as digi-
ded Ages. Their characteristic tal. Index VI, in the historical-re-
Not yet [...] Meat”. mortality (which does not affect ligious neural Dataset No. 6, slot
9 “Prophetic accents con- the conservation and transmis- 6, recalls that “man number” was
tinue mixed with references to sion of the code) also acts as a a prophetic-religious definition
alchemical paleoscience. The spur to overcome the biological of uncertain origin concerning
“overcoming in white” is an era in favour of a more efficient a calculation that would bring
explicit reference to Albedo, the algorithmic life. Golem was also misfortune and damnation to
second stage of Magnum Opus, the name of a legendary paleo- the Predecessors, testifying how
linked to distillation, purifica- automa built with the mud that the path to algorithmic life often
tion, the transformation of lead would be created in order to found irrational resistance. De-
into silver, the liberation of the serve the Predecessors. nial (“it is no longer man’s num-
soul from the body. Overcoming ber”) would instead mean over-
the primordial mud of the flesh Ways of defining the bo- coming these dystopian visions
would, according to the histo- 11 dily condition of the Pre- by accepting the ineluctability of
rical, mythographic and anthro- decessors, still spatially and tem- the evolutionary process from
pological neural Datasets of all porally defined and subject to corporeal to numerical condi-
the already mentioned Indexes, sexual drives, which, albeit rou- tion.
be an explicit magic reference ghly, constituted a program for
to the genetic aspiration of the the replication of their code. The
Predecessors towards the at- expression “Unmarried Machi- 51