About this Episode
Can a script produce an agent?
In this closing to Chapter 3: Code and Expression, we explore how scripting—understood as the dual mechanism of code and expression—may contribute to the emergence of agency. From genetic and computational systems to artistic and performative contexts, this video traces how scripts operate across different material substrates to generate autonomous-seeming behaviour. We revisit concepts like substrate neutrality, the relationship without a touch, and character as a transferable script, and reflect on what it means to write or perform an agent—biological, artificial, or fictional.
This is the concluding episode of four in Chapter 3 of the thesis, Scripting for Agency, exploring the question: can a self be written—or, "encoded and decoded"?
About this Series
Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a video lecture series based on Dr Katarina Ranković’s practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Combining philosophy, performance, creative writing, and AI theory, the series explores how our understanding of the self shapes our personal lives, our politics, and our relationship to intelligent technologies.Links
Series Playlist: https://bit.ly/sfa-series
PhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf
Thesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art
References
- Cairns-Smith, A. Graham. Seven Clues to the Origin of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
- Dennett, Daniel C. Freedom Evolves. Harlow: Penguin, 2004.
- Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.