Please Forget (Everything)

My friend Charles Lindsay — who long ago invited me to speak at SETI, back in 2014, when he was running the artist-in-residence program there — asks: “Can AI become sentient? If AI can become sentient, can it become conscious? If AI can become conscious, can it become enlightened?” And he does so in the context of an exhibit of his art currently showing at Heron Arts here in San Francisco. It will run through October 30. In addition to a range of pieces that explore the intersection of cybernetics and enlightenment, he’s been hosting a series of events at Heron. Just this week there was an interesting conversation I attended about Art, AI, and psychedelics. There’s also this hour-long soundtrack he created, a mix of field recordings, music, voices, and other sonic effluvia. He explains that among the founds sounds heard in this flowing collage are “the persistent ‘do not forget anything’ messages delivered by synthesized voices in all manner of public transportation in Japan.” It is from those messages that he derived the name of his show, Please Forget (Everything).