← A. Inventions, No. 17
Joseph Jiahao Muyin (1900–1979)
Spirit Levels
1930
Generative/American Industrial, Inc., est. 1922, Summit, New Jersey. Stainless steel, borosilicate glass, neon, nickel electrodes, unidentified clear reactive fluid. 11¼ × 7½ × 14¼". Collection of the author.
Nobody really understood the process, but that didn’t stop anyone from having a strong opinion.
It began with the work of a researcher named Inga Picton, who studied the effects of electricity on necrotic tissue. The data she painstakingly collected might have gone unexamined, had it not been for Dr. Joe Muyin, a pioneer in the emerging field of electrostatics, who had the original thought to reverse the process: to measure the body’s electrical discharge at the time of death, and to correlate these findings with Picton’s research. Could a device not be built for detecting such energies, mused Muyin, and thereby identify the presence of a specific disembodied human soul?
The very premise made unscientific minds skeptical, and scientific minds sentimental. It was facile, even offensive: surely a metal box with glass tubes and filaments occupied a different plane of existence than the incarnation of the human spirit. How demeaning it would be, to find that our ineffable humanity could be reduced to data! Some were troubled by Picton’s research, which had demanded of the departed that to which they could never have truly consented. Many thought Muyin’s machine a fraud. And yet, it was doing something, even if nobody could agree what. At first the machines were tested with the most obvious promptings — a burial ground, a memorial, a solemn anniversary — which caused them to register as intended, wildly, garishly. In time, the tests became subtler, and the responses all the more startling for their nuance. Even if it wasn’t life, it was something, a fascinating and stimulating simulacrum that both demanded and rewarded notice. Would that be enough? For the imagination? the appetite? for the soul? for science?
Published December 20, 2022. Copyright © 2022 Jonathan Hoefler.
About
The objects in the Apocryphal Inventions series are technical chimeras, intentional misdirections coaxed from the generative AI platform Midjourney. Instead of iterating on the system’s early drafts to create ever more accurate renderings of real-world objects, creator Jonathan Hoefler subverted the system to refine and intensify its most intriguing misunderstandings, pushing the software to create beguiling, aestheticized nonsense. Some images have been retouched to make them more plausible; others have been left intact, appearing exactly as generated by the software. The accompanying descriptions, written by the author, offer fictitious backstories rooted in historical fact, which suggest how each of these inventions might have come to be.
These images represent some of AI’s most intriguing answers to confounding questions, an inversion of the more pressing debate in which it is humanity that must confront the difficult and existential questions posed by artificial intelligence.
Previously:
No. 16. Measuring and Alignment Devices
Next:
No. 18. Keyed Pipe Harp (Arpòdigon)
