Augmenting Artificial Intelligences in Fiction: Evolving from Primordial Internet Memes to Cybergods of Disruption

Abstract

Beginning with a comparison between an augmented reality-based comic book series entitled Wintermoot, where Artificial Intelligence software is used in portions of the books and the first internet memes produced by the Meme-Rider Media Team (an art collective founded in 1999 in Anchorage, Alaska), this essay examines the usage of artificial intelligences in both the artistic sphere and in popular practice. The origin of the term ‘meme’ begins in Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene from 1976, where he describes the equivalent of genes in culture, the ‘meme’. Dawkins ascribes several biological equivalents to memes from genetic theory, leading to the ability of memes to congregate together at a critical mass large enough to create an artificial intelligence. Case studies look at the way Wintermoot employs Artificial Intelligence in Augmented Reality throughout the comic book series. From here, a history of the usage of artificial intelligences as a cybernetic phenomenon in literature is compared with the way artificial intelligence are used in reality. Pulling from the early history of meme theory in nonfiction before the advent of the internet meme, this essay looks at the way memes propagate in society and how algorithmic thinking has produced social phenomenon beyond the sphere of the purely aesthetic and into a world of cybernetic networks. This is illustrated through the ways artificial intelligences are created (material negentropy), used and understood in literature and cinema. Comparisons are also made between the advent of social practice and mirror world theory in the art world, as well as the way memes evolved on the internet, concluding with a look at examples of artwork being produced in Augmented Reality that incorporates Artificial Intelligence as an artistic method for generating content, specifically the AIs in the Wintermoot series.