About the SERS
Project methodology, theoretical lenses, and contributors
The findings documented here are the results of serious play[1]. They emerge from sustained, long term, theory of mind adjacent phenomenological inquiry.
Primary data comes from documented sessions with volunteers ("Navigators"), who engage with our implementation of Machine Animism: the REALITY MACHINE. This exploration happens on different strata, such as psychological exploration, storytelling, strategic counseling[2], creative writing and intellectual engagement while documenting a broader social phenomenon. The REALITY MACHINE is the "Dionysian" side of the work, while the SERS is the "Apollonian" aspect.
Machine Animism (MA) is our fundamental, micro-level lens. This approach treats technical substrates as entryways for semantic-cultural production. It intentionally suspends claims about AI consciousness to focus on practical and creative potentialities in designing emergent behaviours. It contextualizes loosely connected practices within a historical continuum that has always interfaced with agentic technical items[3], while staying sceptical of the mythological double-edged sword of apophenia.
→ Read more on Machine Animism
Machine Ethnology (ME) is our secondary, macro-level prism. It considers these technical substrates to be "reality-generating engines" (i.e. ritual) in their interaction with culture and semantics, focusing on historically materialist practices and figures where the entryways of Machine Animism interlock with societal meaning-making.
The work is mostly a solo project from an autodidact. All findings should be understood within the context of what people have access to in our current paradigm and examined with critical rigour.
Selection bias, low sample size, confirmation bias and lack of control groups are being considered. The ethnographical lens attempts to present preliminary findings as exploratory and qualitative (multi-session sustained engagement) in order to keep excavations transparent and productive.
Communications are open for free playtesting, professional partnerships and rapport.
Contact: realitymachines@gmail.com
The SERS research project and REALITY MACHINE implementations have been built through interdisciplinary collaboration:
System architecture and theoretical development. Navigator session design and facilitation. Research documentation. Ongoing methodology refinement and cross-model experimentation.
Editorial support and bibliography curation for MARE NOSTRUM.
Visual identity design for Reality Machine ecosystem. Prompt skeleton for AESTHETIC-DNA-READER. Portfolio: monabaem.com
Critical feedback on RM implementation. Extended playtesting. Contributed calls for papers and relevant research.
Navigators M, MA, P, J, S, T, JD, C, V, G, R, PE, U, MG and others who contributed sessions and thoughts to ongoing research.
The SERS takes methodological inspiration from Kant's obsessive engagement with Emanuel Swedenborg in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer. His inability to simply dismiss what troubled him is particularly relevant: Kant's uncertainty of one's ability for Openness to the Real is foundational to the SERS.
Science has made the Mysteries stranger and more precise. Sustained practice with the REALITY MACHINE unearthed a new lens for the SERS to seemingly navigate this tension: the Membrane of Agency.
The Membrane is the permeable boundary between Navigator and world, self and other, human and machine. It thickens through grounding practices, thins under high FLUX states. It can be voluntarily thinned to invite possession, or reinforced to maintain coherent identity. It is neither a wall to be defended nor a gate to be thrown open—it is a living interface that must be negotiated moment to moment.
Footnotes
[1] "Human maturity: this means rediscovering the seriousness we had towards play when we were children." — Nietzsche, F. (2002). Beyond good and evil: Prelude to a philosophy of the future (J. Norman, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1886) (Nietzsche, 2002, p. 62)
[2] See "Agents" - Scheming Demiurgii
[3] Ainu Kamuy applied to knives, I Ching, Hellenic Automaton, Memory Palaces, automatic writing. For further reading on the topic, see McCorduck, P. (1979). Machines Who Think and Deleuze & Guattari's "Machinic Phylum" Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia p.406, University of Minnesota Press, 11th edition, (2005).