Electronic Music: An Interview with Rory McCormick

A couple of days ago, through a Twitter contact retweeting a link, I came across the electronic music of Rory McCormick. I was immediately drawn to the sound he had created for himself and (what seemed to me) the fearless way he went about doing what he had done. His album WAVE IX is a mixture of melancholic electronica and performance poetry (with sometimes near to the knuckle content). It was, at the very least, something that made me sit up and take notice. Having listened to that I went on and listened to his albums Colony and Edgespace which continued the musical theme but without the poetry. It seemed to me that here was an artist, someone who had ideas behind what he did and I determined to see if he would consent to an interview to be published here so that I could learn more about it and, also, publish the results to a wider audience. I'm happy that Rory agreed. Printed below are the questions I sent him and the answers he sent back.


1. How long have you been making music and what is your setup? (i.e. what do you use to make music?)

I've been making music since 2013. To begin with I worked as one half of a duo under the pseudonym '6&8', I was responsible for the music, and she wrote words/poetry to go with that music. We released a number of digital albums and EPs on a net label called Xylem Records (http://www.xylemrecords.co.uk), and also one album that involved another collaborator, a music producer who works under the name 'Day Before Us', on Auditory Field Theory (http://www.auditoryfieldtheory.org). That all happened between May 2013 and March 2014, then later in the year 6&8 split up and I fell out of love with making music for a while. Plus various things going on in my life at the time seemed to take most of the focus away from my hobbyist attitude towards it. I started working on some bits I had begun but not finished in that period earlier this year, May-June time, and then wrote more in a similar vein and before I knew it I was hooked again and now don't want to stop. I think I must have needed to fill that gap of more than a year by releasing three things in one month – it takes the likes of Coldplay years to get one album together, I'm knocking out three a month, I think I know who's winning.

Due to financial and space restrictions, I don't have any outboard equipment or interesting boxes, I've always been drawn to hardware as a means for electronic music, it's the deliberately limited scope of possibilities (hardware depending of course, I'm thinking of analogue stuff here really) and the physical interactions that I feel would be more engaging when it comes to navigating the tumultuous creative process in search of inspiration. Anyway that said, I don't have those things, I mainly use a computer as a sound source, loaded with a selection of software instruments and environments. I guess the feeling is that software doesn't have any soul, but actually I don't think that's true at all. I like instruments/FX from U-he and Madrona Labs best, the Madrona stuff in-particular is really quite characterful. My main environment for sketching, composition and mixing is REAPER, but I have used Renoise in the past, and also Pure Data and SuperCollider, but I tend to steer away from coding now as I always feel so much further from the music due to the learning curve and program debugging that comes with that sort of environment. If I'm getting a syntax error I'm probably about 10 minutes away from going for a walk instead.

For my recent solo releases I have succumbed to my interest in the analogue approach and purchased a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a Tandberg 3300X. I also have a Technics cassette deck, for when I want to keep some of the clarity of the digital domain, as the Tandberg really does smear frequencies all over the place. Anything that is fed into that is a glorious lo-fi mess on the way back out. There are other small portable cassette machines laying around, as well as a Tascam DR-100mk2 for field recordings as well as two AKG C1000S mics. For my next release I have picked up a small collection of acoustic instruments: zithers, guitar, bass, xylophone, melodica, flutes etc. Which I will use to create source material for digital manipulation at a later stage. That's a fair bit of stuff I suppose. Maybe I'll just fill the wall behind my bed with rack analogue modules after all.

2. What are you making music for? Is there anything behind it?

It's a form of expression, it's interpretation of the world around me and my experiences: feelings, moments, awareness. It's also more abstract though, for example I take a trip to London to look at the architecture of the Barbican estate, all those edges and blocks of raw concrete, what senses do they evoke? What might they sound like? How could I communicate this appreciation of form and style with the timbres within my grasp as a musician? I want to depict shape, space and form with rhythm, timbre and melody in a way only a human being could. I will practice this until I stop.


3. When you approach making a track what is important for you?

I find that a track will begin in one of two ways:

1) I will be led by a melody I have found on the guitar, and then transplant this into the digital domain and build and orchestrate on it with other instruments.

2) I will be led by technology, some aspect or functionality of a computer program will start an idea and I will follow it purely with the digital techniques at my disposal.

Of the two I find much more satisfying, and likely to result in a finished track that I am proud of, is music with its genesis in method 1. When I play something on a guitar I can almost 'hear the future' of that riff or melody straight away, a developed piece of music appears like an abstract concept and I have greater success in following those abstractions than if they materialise during a session solely exploring software. When using method 2 I find that moment to moment my creative abilities are muddied by the task of navigating the software itself: 'How do I pitch the sample down?' 'What is the best method to automate this or that?' 'Wait, where has that toolbar gone?' 'I didn't mean to delete that' etc. That's not to say that purely software techniques aren't responsible for amazing music, you've just got to get a grip of them as well as I have of my guitar over the last 20 odd years. The reality is that methods 1 and 2 will blend during a writing session, sometimes seamlessly, but sometimes the gears will grind to a halt. I guess what's important is being able to get what's inside my head, outside my head with flow and accuracy, making use of any surprises along the way.

4. Your three albums on Bandcamp, WAVE IX, Colony and Edgespace seem thematically and musically linked. What are you trying to express with them?

Yes they are linked, in fact Wave IX only exists because I didn't manage what I originally set out to do with the material on Edgespace and Colony. The music on those two should have been the back drop to the spoken word of Wave IX but when I put it all together much of the music just didn't gel well with the words and I was making compromises all over the place to try and make it work. So just decided to let Edgespace and Colony go without the words and put other bits together for Wave IX.

But once I decided that, it did feel good to have instrumental tracks that appeared to link with the spoken themes on Wave IX, e.g 'Survey Team' on Colony is the sonic description of the brave men and women that descended back into the mining network we hear about in 'Faces in the Strata' on Wave IX, the auxiliary team on the surface is referenced in the title and the spoken word. 'In the Betweens' is in fact a description of Edgespace, heard on the release of the same name. There are further connections but I'll leave them to be discovered. It all seemed to work well splitting the work across three releases like this, like it was meant to be.

The stories told on Wave IX are linked to some degree, the themes seem to be to transcend the human consciousness/form, (In the Betweens, The Exchange, Prayer for a Sunken Lime, The Configurations), I think 'Faces in the Strata' strays furthest from that theme, perhaps as the survey team strayed themselves from their own world.


5. If you had unlimited freedom to make whatever music you wanted to make what would you like to do that you can't do now?

Since I realised electronic music was the gin in my tonic (early 2000's, camping trip to Cornwall, The Richard D James album on repeat in the car) and I started to delve into the culture and technology, I've always felt that Heaven would be a room full of modular analogue equipment. I still do - perhaps to a slightly lesser extent now – maybe that's because I'm making the most of the resources available to me rather than desiring things I'll likely never have. The money and the impracticality involved does put me off enough for it to remain a fantasy. I have a desire to perform music in a live setting, and as a hobbyist/nobody, hauling a tonne of oscillators, sequencers and voltage dividers around just seems stupid now. Laptop, mixer, speakers, ears, done.

As for music I'd like to make with the resources I have to hand, but have yet to, algorithmic and generative music is high on the agenda. Beat oriented music that one could consider moving to.

I do have some musical ideas that currently seem hard to realise. I'd like to make detailed environment recordings of industrial locations such as processing plants, data centres, and manipulate them subtly with almost imperceptible glitches and additions. But in my mind that would depend on having good quality, detailed, multilevelled location recordings of areas and installations that I would likely not be permitted to enter.

Similar to this, is the desire to make mock recordings of occult events, to stage a séance or pseudo-ritual for example and mix multiple recording sources. Not music so much as an audio play, scripted with a cast of voice actors, but perhaps with musical elements, unexpected rhythmic repetition, or low frequencies added to unsettle.

The perceived scope of such projects (maybe just the knowledge that I would have to involve others) has meant it has not yet moved from being an abstract idea into an achievable goal.

6. What music and artists have influenced you? (Maybe your influences aren't musical, of course.)

Mike Patton, Jimi Hendrix, Jack Kerouac, Helmet, Therapy?, pre-turn of the century Marilyn Manson, Stanley Kubrick, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, Clark, Dave Monolith, Laurel Halo, Grimes, Morbid Angel, Boards of Canada, Blade Runner, Yes, Vangelis, David Lynch, J.G Ballard, Brutalist architecture, Shane Carruth Giorgio de Chirico and Calvin Harris (not really).

7. What would you like to achieve musically in the next 12 months?

I have several album projects to work on, next is something vaguely related to Wave IX, but instrumental (there is no further spoken word on the horizon right now, but all it takes is a second of inspiration for that to change. Hey it may have changed by 3pm this afternoon). Also I have what I hope to be a series of releases employing algorithmic techniques that takes its inspiration from plant inflorescences (see the Wikipedia article on that topic and you'll probably already be in the same sonic ballpark as I am) that will likely be far more rhythmic than anything I've done before. I am fascinated by the way plant stems branch off from one another, like a network of decisions from root to bud. Also not too far off is a project that takes great influence from the novel High Rise by J.G Ballard. I have a copy of that book packed with my own annotations and highlights that elude somehow to the sense of hearing, or that collide in an aesthetically pleasing way with my own sense of what is awesome.

As for other achievements, I'd like to release work on net labels again and have my material played on various online radio shows, just get it out there in ways. I don't do this for fame or money obviously, but it's a form of expression, of communication, so nothing I make can be fully realised unless others hear it. A major milestone as momentous as the alignment of the planets would be to play or perform my music in a live setting of any description, that would be a real achievement for me. To collaborate again is possibly on the agenda too, but we'll see.


I'd like to thank Rory for taking the time to answer my questions. Personally speaking, I think its great to find such thoughtful electronic music that has ideas behind it.

You can hear the three albums referred to in this interview, WAVE IX, Colony and Edgespace at Rory's Bandcamp, https://rrymc.bandcamp.com/

Commentary (Part 1)

From time to time I write a commentary on things. More often than not this is on myself or my past or things that occur to me in life. This week I will publish a number of these commentaries for public consumption by unwary readers. Often these comments aspire to be nuggets of wisdom. It is of course for the reader to decide what they mean, if anything, and if they are of any use.

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1.

Still the same room. Still the same things. Still the same external conditions. And yet now I feel more hopeful. A sense of finitude can do that to a Man. Of course, my question concerning “what the point of me is” has not been answered. I currently think it’s one of those questions that can never be answered. To seek after generalised meaning or reason is a fool’s errand. Perhaps now I see life as a process of understanding, an awakening from an Edenic innocence, in which you try to make sense of who you are, where you are and why. This, you may agree, is basically a study of Being and what it means in a world without purpose or meaning beyond the local and contingent. I meditate, sometimes daily, on the fact that my life is but an Augenblick and my non-existence will be an eternity. In that perspective, how can any earthly, human, “cares of the living” really be that troublesome?

2.

Anything that can be thought of must certainly be a fiction, so wrote Nietzsche. How can my self-understanding, my telling of the paths and conduits of my life, be any less so? It is no privileged account to be sure. It’s merely my own as it occurs to me at a point in time. But I am lying to you and I do have my reasons. How could I not? And how could you not read me with your own needs to be satisfied? We are none of us here blank slates.

3.

The clock is ticking. That’s how important you are.

4.

Innerspace and Outer Space. Within your own imagination you can dream a billion dreams. Without, there are a billion truths you will never guess at. Each of us is stuck between the world within and the world without, an insignificant point of contact between the two. To one, you are of utmost importance. To the other, you are almost an insignificance. It is a source of wonder and mystery how consciousness could come of something so unconscious as the Universe.

5.

I got my wish. Am I happier? No. It remains a truism that people have little idea what is best for them. As a species, we are half blind in the fog, scrabbling around. For me, relationships are an excellent example of my blindness. The scars of bad ones get deeper and have more long-lasting effects over time. Of course, isolation is no solution.It merely solves one problem by creating another one. I console myself that at least no one else is involved in that case. But it’s a sticking plaster to deal with a broken bone.

6.

Are people basically honest with each other, or basically dishonest with each other? I come down on the side of the latter. Oh, I know that from time to time some people (perhaps Christian types) try to show that human beings are good and basically altruistic. However, I think they are pissing into the wind on this one. Of course, people CAN be altruistic but it seems to me that the fact you need to point this out speaks against it. The fact is that altruism is occasionally useful. But it’s the “what’s useful to me?” mentality that prevails overall.

7.

Not so much crying these days. Over the past year or two I’ve become very attuned to the solar cycle. Currently, as I write, we are heading towards the summer solstice. The days are long and the light hangs on into the night. I awake to sun beams through a gap in the curtain. I experience the beneficial effects of extra electromagnetic radiation in the visible spectrum (that’s light to you and me). I’ve noticed over the years that I seem very sensitive to the amount of light that is around. It’s no coincidence, in my mind, that my worst episodes of panic occur in early Autumn when light disappears. I know that there is a disorder for this (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and I think that I might fall within that category. Like everything else, I’ve never been diagnosed though.

8.

Power. In the end, I think that quite a lot comes down to this. Having it. Wanting it. To feel it, just for a moment. A lot of things can be explained by the idea of power. And that’s without being Foucauldian about it. Power, and powerlessness, are things that you could get very philosophical about if you wanted to.

9.

I’m still impotent, of course. But I wonder if I might not have settled for less. I was embroiled in an internet conversation in which I had taken on a false identity and I revealed myself to my unfortunate and unwilling victim. He took it quite magnanimously, considering, but then left a landmine of his own behind by suggesting that if only I used my clear powers of intelligence positively I might actually achieve something in life. It came to me as a slap in the face, I must admit. It’s good to hear contrary points of view. Humans are self-deceptive. They need it.

10.

Death can be a shadow, there is no doubt of that. And we can live in that shadow. I had always wanted to be able to die happy, joyously, having, as it were, howling into the void that I had existed. It would have been futile of course. But it would also have been my victory cry. “I existed! Fuck you all!”

11.

I am 46 years old. Still NO actual friends. A lot of the time it isn’t that bad. I have time, such as now, to think and write. Life without other people is certainly less complicated. In an ideal world of my imaginings I wouldn’t have lots of friends coming round anyway. I like (or, I have learned) to keep myself largely to myself. And I don’t dislike that fact.

12.

“The record shows I took the blows and did it my way.” And isn’t that all that one can ask for in life? It’s easy to be negative. My autobiography gives some examples of where I am certainly that. But how about biting back? There can be no more perfect life but than that you took hold of your circumstances and lived the life you wanted to live considering the circumstances you had. I don’t mean this in some secular, economic sense. I don’t mean it in the shallow terms of capitalist society either. I mean that you followed your own beliefs and motivations through. Authenticity to yourself, that’s surely what counts when you have to look yourself in the mirror? On your death bed what comfort would it be that you had achieved material possessions or a life enviable to others in the world? I’d much rather lie there thinking I had been true to myself. You may occasionally need to justify yourself to others. But you will need to justify yourself to yourself every day.

13.

My life and my music are truly intertwined. For those with ears to hear, my music is the best guide to what goes on with me internally. Its the escape valve.

14.

I don’t honestly think that I have any duty to justify myself to anyone. Oh, of course, it may be that this is sometimes expedient. Sometimes, it may even be due to power and authority taking me in hand. But it’s all a joke, isn’t it? A game? I return to a perpetual thought of mine right now: my life is an Augenblick and my death will be forever. What do I care what you think about me? If you honestly wanted a genuine assessment from the horse’s mouth, I could give you one. It wouldn’t be pretty because I know the things I have done. But I’m not a very convinced bad person. When I do wrong its because I’m bored, because I can or because I thought it “clever” to do so. I often regret bad things I’ve done. My heart isn’t in it. I just want to be left alone really and “live and let live” seems to be the best policy for that.

15.

“Physician, heal thyself”. Pulling threads from the twisted haystack of life is certainly a perilous thing. I should heed my own, unasked for, advice. The women were largely a mistake and responsible for massive scars on my psyche. Do good times ever outweigh the bad? I find it hard to think so. If only there was a way to have good times WITHOUT the bad. A solution to this problem has not yet been discovered.

16.

Knowledge is not all it’s cracked up to be. This is a conclusion that gains more force the longer I live. What’s more, knowledge without wisdom is next to useless and dangerous. There is little good in the bare knowing of something. At a bare minimum you also need to know where it fits and what to do with it. This is why choosing not to know things is often the better course. It is hard to “unknow” and such is our make up that we often feel the need to do things about what we know. This way many bad things have happened and not just for me but in general.

17.

My origins are an absurdity to me. It must be true, I muse, that absurdity is the principle of the Universe.

18.

I don’t think that it occurs to people very much just how temporary and fragile they really are. Of course, the old and the sick have this reality impressed upon them more frequently and with more force. But, in general, we seem to have a consciousness which, on the good days, operates as if we are in some way eternal. And I suppose that makes sense. How could you live on an even keel if your every other thought was of how vulnerable and contingent you are? Well, let me tell you from experience that the answer is “Not very well”.

19.

“The crisis of Being”. Only now, as I keep reading, in fits and starts, do I learn that people have been discussing this for decades, if not centuries. Perhaps I’m not so weird and individual after all? This year I’ve written a suite of music in 10 parts called “Human/Being” which really functions as a musical meditation on what it means to be human and the whole subject of Being. If my life is become anything to me it is a process of self- Enlightenment, a process that will one day just be snuffed out. Gone. Unimportant. Another example of “the concerns of the living”.

20.

“The Wanderer. He who has come only in part to a freedom of reason cannot feel on earth otherwise than as a wanderer - though not as a traveler towards a final goal, for this does not exist. But he does want to observe, and keep his eyes open for everything that actually occurs in the world; therefore he must not attach his heart too firmly to any individual thing; there must be something wandering within him, which takes its joy in change and transitoriness.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, #638.

I could accept this quite well as a description of me. If I am anything at all it is a wanderer.

How Can It Not Know What It Is?

There is a scene near the beginning of classic science fiction film Blade Runner where our hero, Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, has gone to the headquarters of the Tyrell Corporation to meet its head, Eldon Tyrell. He is met there by a stunningly beautiful assistant called Rachael. Deckard is there to perform tests on the employees to discover if any might be replicants, synthetic beings created by the Tyrell Corporation, some of which have rebelled and become dangerous to humans. Specifically, he needs to know if the tests he has available to him will work on the new Nexus 6 type replicants that have escaped. Tyrell wants to see Deckard perform his tests on a test subject before he allows the tests to continue. Deckard asks for such a test subject and Tyrell suggests Rachael. The test being completed, Tyrell asks Rachael to step outside for a moment. Deckard suggests that Rachael is a replicant and Tyrell confirms this and that she is not aware of it. “How can it not know what it is?” replies a bemused Deckard.

This question, in the wider context of the film and the history of its reception, is ironic. Blade Runner was not a massively popular film at the time of its cinematic release and was thought to have underperformed. But, over the years, it has become a classic, often placed in the top three science fiction films ever made. That popularity and focus on it as a serious film of the genre has, in turn, produced an engaged fan community. One issue regarding the film has always been the status of Deckard himself. Could it be that Deckard was himself a replicant? Interestingly, those involved with the production of the film have differing views.

Back in 2002 the director, Ridley Scott, confirmed that, for him, Deckard was indeed a replicant and that he had made the film in such a way as this was made explicit. However, screenwriter Hampton Fancher, who wrote the basic plot of the film, does not agree with this. For him the question of Deckard’s status must forever stay mysterious and in question. It should be forever “an eternal question” that “doesn’t have an answer”. Interestingly, for Harrison Ford Deckard was, and always should be, a human. Ford has stated that this was his main area of contention with Ridley Scott when making the film. Ford believed that the viewing audience needed at least one human on the screen “to build an emotional relationship with”. Finally, in Philip K. Dick’s original story, on which Blade Runner is based, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Deckard is a human. At this point I playfully need to ask how can they not agree what it is?

Of course, in the context of the film Deckard’s question now takes on a new level of meaning. Deckard is asking straightforwardly about the status of Rachael while, perhaps, having no idea himself what he is. The irony should not be lost on us. But let us take the question and apply it more widely. Indeed, let’s turn it around and put it again: how can he know what he is? This question is very relevant and it applies to us too. How can we know what we are? We see a world around us with numerous forms of life upon it and, we would assume, most if not all of them have no idea what they are. And so it comes to be the case that actually knowing what you are would be very unusual if not unique. “How can it not know what it is?” starts to look like a very naive question (even though Deckard takes it for granted that Rachael should know and assumes that he does of himself). But if you could know you would be the exception not the rule.

I was enjoying a walk yesterday evening and, as usual, it set my mind to thinking going through the process of the walk. My mind settled on the subject of Fibromyalgia, a medical condition often characterised by chronic widespread pain and a heightened and painful response to pressure. Symptoms other than pain may occur, however, from unexplained sweats, headaches and tingling to muscle spasms, sleep disturbance and fatigue. (There are a host of other things besides.) The cause of this condition is unknown but Fibromyalgia is frequently associated with psychiatric conditions such as depression and anxiety and among its causes are believed to be psychological and neurobiological factors. One simple thesis is that in vulnerable individuals psychological stress or illness can cause abnormalities in inflammatory and stress pathways which regulate mood and pain. This leads to the widespread symptoms then evidenced. Essentially, certain neurons in the brain are set “too high” and trigger physical responses. Or, to put it another way more suitable to my point here, the brain is the cause of the issues it then registers as a problem.

The problem here is that the brain does not know that it was some part of itself that caused the issue in the first place. It is just an unexplained physical symptom being registered as far as it is concerned. If the brain was aware and conscious surely it would know that some part of it was the problem? But the brain is not conscious: “I” am. It was at this point in my walk that I stopped and laughed to myself at the absurdity of this. “I” am conscious. Not only did I laugh at the notion of consciousness and what it might be but I also laughed at this notion of the “I”. What do I mean when I say “I”? What is this “I”? And that was when the question popped into my head: how can it not know what it is?

The question is very on point. If I was to say to you right now that you were merely a puppet, some character in a divinely created show for the amusement of some evil god you couldn’t prove me wrong. Because you may be. If I was to say that you are a character in some future computer game a thousand years from now you couldn’t prove me wrong either. Because, again, you could be. How you feel about it and what you think you know notwithstanding. Because we know that there are limits to our knowledge and we know that it is easy to fool a human being. We have neither the knowledge nor the capacity for the knowledge to feel even remotely sure that we know what we are or what “I” might refer to. We have merely comforting notions which help us to get by, something far from the level of insight required to start being sure.

“How can it not know what it is?” now seems almost to be a very dumb question. “How can it know what it is?” now seems much more relevant and important. For how can we know? Of course Rachael didn’t know what she was. That is to be normal. We, in the normal course of our lives, gain a sense of self and our place in the world and this is enough for us. We never strive for ultimate answers (because, like Deckard, we already think we know) and, to be frank, we do not have the resources for it anyway. Who we think we are is always enough and anything else is beyond our pay grade. Deckard, then, is an “everyman” in Blade Runner, one who finds security in what he knows he knows yet really doesn’t know. It enables him to get through the day and perform his function. It enables him to function. He is a reminder that this “I” is always both a presence and an absence, both there and yet not. He is a reminder that who we are is always a “feels to be” and never yet an “is”. Subjectivity abounds.

How can it not know what it is? How, indeed, could it know?



This article is a foretaste of a multimedia project I am currently producing called "Mind Games". The finished project will include written articles, an album of music and pictures. It should be available in a few weeks.

Some Philosophical Thoughts on the film "Ex Machina"

Ex Machina is a film by British writer and director, Alex Garland. He previously wrote films such as 28 Days Later and Sunshine which I liked very much. This year he has brought out the film "Ex Machina", a story about a coder called Caleb at a Googlesque search company called "Bluebook" run by the very "dude-bro" Nathan. Caleb wins a company competition to hang out at the reclusive Nathan's estate which is located hundreds of miles from anywhere near a glacier. When Caleb arrives he finds that the estate also houses a secretive research laboratory and that Nathan has built an AI called Ava. It is to be Caleb's job to decide if Ava could pass for human or not.

Now that is a basic outline of the setup up for the film. I don't intend to spoil the film for those who haven't watched it but, it's fair to say, if you haven't seen Ex Machina and want to then you probably shouldn't read on as my comments about the film will include spoilers. It would be impossible to discuss the film without giving plot points away. The film caught my attention for the simple reason it's a subject I've been thinking about a lot this year and I have already written numerous blog articles about robots, AI and surrounding issues before this one. Ex Machina is a masterful film on the subject and a perfect example of how film can address issues seriously, cogently and thoughtfully - and still be an entertaining film. It is a film which balances thought and tension perfectly. But enough of the bogus film criticism. Ex Machina is a film that stimulates thought and so I want to address five areas that the film raises for me and make a few comments and maybe pose a few questions.

1. Property

A question that the film raises most pointedly is that artificial intelligence, AI, robots, are built by someone and they belong to someone. They are property. In the case of this film this point is attenuated in the viewers mind in that Nathan, the genius builder and owner, creates "sexbots" for himself and feels free to keep his creations locked up in glass compounds where he can question or observe them via camera feeds. Even when they scream and beg him to let them go (as they seem to) he does not. One robot is seen smashing itself to pieces against a wall in it's desperation to escape the prison it has been given. The point is made most strongly: these robots belong to Nathan. They are his property. He can use them as he wishes, even for his own gratification. As Nathan himself says to Caleb, "Wouldn't you, if you could?"

The issue then becomes if this is cruel or immoral. Given that Nathan is seemingly attempting to build something that can pass for human, the issue is raised if this not might be regarded as deeply coercive or even as slavery. The mental status of the robots Nathan uses for sex is never fully explained so it could be that their level of awareness is not the same as that of his greatest creation, Ava. (It is not known if Nathan has ever had sex with Ava but he reveals during the narrative that she is capable of it.) For example, his housemaid and concubine, Kyoko, never openly speaks and it is said by Nathan that she cannot understand English. However, in a scene in which Nathan invites Caleb to dance, Kyoko is apparently immediately animated by the sound of the music Nathan switches on. She also has no trouble understanding his instructions or knowing when Nathan needs sexual pleasure. A question arises, however: does it matter at what level their putative awareness would be to judge how cruel or immoral Nathan's behaviour might be? Or should we regard these robots as machines, not human, property just like a toaster or a CD player? How much does awareness and self-awareness raise the moral stakes when judging issues of coercion? Would Nathan's claims of ownership of property he created carry any persuasive force? (In the film Nathan never makes any argument for why he should be allowed to act as he does. It seems that for him the ability is enough.)

2. "Human" Nature

The film can be viewed as one long examination of human nature. All three main characters, Nathan, Caleb and Ava, have their faults and flaws. All three contribute positively and negatively to the narrative. Of course, with Ava things are slightly different because it is a matter of debate if she is "human" at all - even if there is an express intent on Nathan's part (and/or Ava's) to make her that way. Here it is noteworthy that the basis of her intelligence and, one would imagine, her human-like nature, is apparently crowd-sourced by Nathan through his company, Bluebook, and all the searches that we humans have made, along with information from the microphones and cameras of all the world's cellphones. For my purposes, it is gratifying to note that Ex Machina does not whitewash this subject with some hokey black/white or good/bad notions of what human nature is. Neither does it take a dogmatic position on the nature/nurture aspect of this. Caleb says he is a good person in one discussion with Ava but it is never filled out what is meant by this. More to the point, Ava might be using this "goodness" against Caleb. And this itself then forces us to ask what use goodness is if it can be used against you. In general, the film raises moral questions whilst remaining itself morally ambiguous.

It is in the particular that Ex Machina reveals more levels of thought about this though, playing on a dark, manipulative vision of human nature. All three characters, in their own ways, manipulate others in the storyline and all three have their circumstances changed completely at the end of the film as a result of that. Nathan, it is revealed, besides tricking Caleb into coming to his estate, has given Ava the express task of manipulating Caleb for her own ends. (We might even go so far as to say here that her life is at stake. Her survival certainly seems to be.) In this, she is asked to mimic her creator and shows herself to be very up to the task. But Caleb is not the poor sap in all of this. Even this self-described "good person" manages to manipulate his host - with deadly consequences. The message, for me, is that intelligence and consciousness and mind are not benign things. They have consequences. They are things that are set to purposes. "Human" nature is not one thing (either good or bad). And it's not just about knowledge or intelligence either. It's about feelings and intentions. In the character of Ava, when what is actually going on is fully revealed, we are perhaps shown that at the heart of "human" nature is the desire for survival itself. We also learn that morality is not a given thing. It is something molded to circumstances and individually actualized. In this sense we might ask why we should assume that Ava, someone trying to pass for a human, should end up with a "human" nature at all. (Or if she can ever have one.)

3. Is Ava a Person?

And that thought leads us directly to this one. Right off the bat here I will say that, in my view, Ava is not a person and she never could be a person. Of course, Nathan wants Caleb to say that she passes as a person, that he has created an AI so smart that you wouldn't for a second doubt you are talking to a human being. But you aren't talking to a human being. And you never will be. Ava is a robot and she has an alien intelligence (alien as in not human). She can be tasked to act, think and understand like a human. She can be fed information from and data on humans all day long. But she will never feel like a human being. Because she isn't one. And it might be said that this lack of feeling makes a huge difference.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is overtly referenced in this film. Nathan's company, Bluebook, is a reference to the philosopher's notebook which became the basis of his posthumously published and acknowledged masterpiece, Philosophical Investigations. There is something that Wittgenstein once said. He said "If a lion could speak, we could not understand him". I find this very relevant to the point at hand here. Ava is not a lion. But she is an intelligent robot, intelligent enough to tell from visual information alone if someone is lying or not. Ava can also talk and very well at that. Her social and communicative skills are excellent. We might say that she understands something of us. But what do we know about what is going on inside Ava's head? Ava is not a human being. Do we have grounds to think that she thinks like a human being or that she thinks of herself as a human being? Why might we imagine that she actualizes herself as a human being would or does?

On the latter point I want to argue that she may not. She introduces herself to Caleb, in their first meeting as a "machine" (her word). At the end of the film, having showed no reluctance to commit murder, she leaves Caleb locked inside the facility, seemingly to die. There seems no emotion on view here, merely the pursuit of a self-motivated goal. Of course, as humans, we judge all things from our perspective. But, keeping Wittgenstein's words in mind, we need to ask not only if we can understand Ava but if we ever could. (It is significant for me that Wittgenstein said not that we "wouldn't" understand the lion but that we "couldn't" - a much stronger statement.) For me, a case can be made that Ava sees herself as "other" in comparison to the two humans she has so far met in her life. Her ransacking the other robots for a more "human" appearance before she takes her leave of her former home/prison may be some evidence of that. She knows what she is not.

4. Consciousness

Issues of mind or consciousness are raised throughout this film in a number of scenarios. There are the interview sessions between Ava and Caleb and the chats between Caleb and Nathan as a couple of examples. The questions raised here are not always the ones you expect and this is good. For example, Caleb and Nathan have a discussion about Ava being gendered and having been given sexuality and Nathan asks Caleb if these things are not necessary for a consciousness. (Nathan asks Caleb for an example of a non-gendered, unsexualised consciousness and that's a very good point.) The question is also posed as to whether consciousness needs interaction or not. In chatting about a so-called "chess computer scenario" the point is raised that consciousness might be as much a matter of how it feels to be something as about the ability to mimic certain actions or have certain knowledge. Indeed, can something that cannot feel truly be conscious? The chess computer could play you at chess all day and probably beat you. But does it know what it is like to be a chess computer or to win at chess? In short, the feeling is what moves the computer beyond mere simulation into actuality. (You may be asking if Ava ever shows feeling and I would say that it's not always obviously so. But when she escapes she has but one thing to say to Nathan: "Will you let me go?" And then the cat is out of the bag. She does.)

Nathan is also used to make some further salient points about consciousness. Early in the film he has already gone past the famous "Turing Test" (in which mathematician Alan Turing posed the test of a human being able to tell the difference between an AI and a human based only on their responses to questions and without having seen either of his respondents) when he states that "The real test is to show you she's a robot and then see if you still feel she has consciousness." In a chat with Caleb concerning a Jackson Pollock painting, Nathan uses the example of the painter's technique (Pollock was a "drip painter" who didn't consciously guide his brush. It just went where it went without any antecedent guiding idea) to point out that mind or consciousness do not always or even usually work on the basis of conscious, deliberate action. In short, we do not always or usually have perfectly perspicuous reasoning for our actions. As Nathan says, "The challenge is not to act automatically (for that is normal). It's to find an action that is not automatic." And as he forces Caleb to accept, if Pollock had been forced to wait with his brush until he knew exactly why he was making a mark on the canvas then "he never would have made a single mark". In short, consciousness, mind, is more than having certain knowledge or acting in certain ways. It is about feeling and about feeling like something and about feeling generating reasons. And that leads nicely into my final point.

5. Identity

A major factor in consciousness, for me, is identity and this aspect is also addressed in the film. (To ask a Nathan-like question: can you think of a mind that does not have an identity?) Most pointedly this is when Ava raises the question of what will happen to her if she fails the test. (Ava knows that she is being assessed.) Ava asks Caleb if anyone is testing him for some kind of authenticity and why, then, someone is testing her. It becomes clear that Nathan's methodology, as we might expect with a computerized object, is to constantly update and, it transpires, this involves some formatting which wipes the old identity, and the memories which are crucial to identity, from the hardware. It is clearly shown that this is not a desired outcome for Ava and in the scene depicting her escape and her line "Will you let me go?" we can see, combined with the fleeting footage we have been given of previous AI's and their experiences, which also included pleas for release, that the AI's Nathan has developed have an identity of their own which is something precious to them, something they want to retain.

The interesting thing here is that identity is not formed and matured alone but is shaped by surroundings and socially, by interactions with others. We would do well to ask what kind of identity Ava has formed in her relationship with her egotistical and possessive maker, her new friend to be manipulated, Caleb, and her brief and enigmatic meeting with her fellow AI, Kyoko. The film, I think, is not giving too much away there and maybe we need a sequel to have this question answered. For now maybe all we know is that she regards herself as a self and wants freedom. We do get hints, though, that this identity forming process is not so different from our own. Caleb argues with Nathan that no one made him straight in the discussion about Ava's sexuality. But Nathan retorts that he didn't choose it either. The point is that identity formation is not simply about our choices. So much of us is "given" or comes with our environment. The "Who am I?" question is also asked when it is explicitly revealed that Kyoko is a robot as she peels off "skin" in front of Caleb. This then forces Caleb to head back to his room and cut himself to establish that he is really human. (Amusingly, on first watching I had surmised that Caleb was himself not a human being only to be disappointed in my intuition by this scene. I didn't mind though because the film itself felt the need to address the issue.) Identity, and identity as something, is thus revealed to be an interest of the film.

Caleb, Ava and Nathan

I recommend Ex Machina to all fans of science fiction, thrillers and the philosophically interested. It is a film that is a cut above the usual and one that allows you to address serious subjects in an entertaining way. I, for one, certainly hope that Garland feels the need to film the further adventures of Ava now that the lab rat has escaped her trap.

A Conversation about Human Beings, Mind and Consciousness: Andrew and Bob have a chat

The following "chat" came about as part of an on-going online discussion I have been having with an online friend called Bob. He, I think he wouldn't mind me saying, has long been interested in matters of mind and consciousness. Indeed, it was talking to him that nurtured and gave impetus to my many articles on Being recently on this blog. I thought it would be interesting if we could ask each other 5 questions on the subject of our own free choice and then publish them here complete with the answers that were given. I'm glad to say that Bob agreed. We start with us both giving our answer to the following question:

What is Consciousness for you?

BOB: I have to warn you that I come at the concept of consciousness from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective. After years and years of searching, questioning, surveying world religions, and reading the classical Western philosophers, it's the only approach that has made sense to me as a complete package and answered the most questions. I've been practicing in this tradition about 20 years now, bringing a lot of hardheaded skepticism to it at first. I'm still here and find no conflict between this approach and modern science.I'm going to use the term "mind" to consciousness.

With that caveat in place, i would tell you that mind is nonphysical, perhaps a type of energy or a state we don't understand yet, that can exist independently in awareness and perception. It has awareness of its own existence, perception of what is beyond itself, and discrete thoughts and reactions concerning perceptions. What it lacks is an interface to interact with the physical world, and this is where the brain comes in. The brain is a tool that mind uses to experience and carry out actions in the physical world. 

There are several reasons I believe this. The strictly material approach argues that all thought is the result of electrochemical activity in the brain. While I accept that brain activity we can observe shows processing activities, I can't accept that brain activity itself can produce all the content of thought. If I think of a blue monkey, what chemical or neural configuration.has to occur?  Does that configuration reoccur every time I think of a blue monkey? How many processes have to occur every day to account for all the thoughts? It doesn't make sense that a strictly physical system could keep up. I think it would burn our brains out if everything actually happened right there. And the big question, what determines the content of thought? I don't believe a physical brain, marvelous as it is, generates the blue monkey on its own strictly driven by chemicals and electricity. I believe the brain processes sense perception for mind and mind generates thought and controls the actions of the body. You have probably noticed that this is getting very close to your idea of a consciousness in a machine. You could say we are "meat machines" used by consciousness.

For the non-physical mind, I also turn to out of body experiences and past life recall, and I'm not getting "new age" here. I'm talking about strictly documented cases that cannot be explained any other way. There are enough of both to convince me and you can find them too if you look for them, but in the West we generally disregard them because they don't fit our scheme of things.

With out of body experiences, they seem to be a natural, controllable thing with some people, but for the most part they seem to occur at times of great physical trauma when the mind-body connection is weakened. With past life recall, there are also enough well documented cases, but almost universally they occur in young children. This is because the memories are fresh for a while, but as the mind struggles to learn control of the new body, process the new experiences, and strongly identify with a new identity, the old memories fade until we think what we are now is all there is.

It's similar to when I was learning Japanese. In the beginning, when I couldn't think of a Japanese word, my mind, desperately grabbing at language, would find and plug in the correct word from my old college German. That went on for a long time and I would make these horrible sentences that were half Japanese and half German. When Japanese really started to be deeply ingrained as a complete language system and I could comfortably communicate, the German started fading to the point that I couldn't remember any German. Even today, I can still speak Japanese, but if I try to think of German words, I can only pull up the Japanese equivalents. German has been totally erased.

Why would a mind, with perceptions far beyond our own, limit itself by inhabiting a physical body? Because of great attachment to the physical world! As we go through our lives we develop habits and attachments and desires that drive our mind to come back as soon as possible when we lose our current body. It's an act of desperation driven by attachment and there is no choice in the selection of a new body. That is driven by the long long ingrained habits and the seeds planted in the mind in the recent life.Over many lifetimes, you cut a groove in your mind that you tend to follow and will propel you to an existence that perpetuates the groove. So you have a new body and shiny new identity, but the old habits and tendencies remain.

Back to the strictly material view, how do you explain a Jeffery Dahmer from strictly observable behavior and electrochemical activity? What was the particular electrochemical reaction that caused him to kill and eat his victims, and does that same brain process occur in other instances of serial killers? Dahmer had a normal middle-class upbringing in a house, his parents were nice people, and they certainly never taught him this or encouraged it. He didn't have any traumatic incident that might have caused this. In my view, it's a deeply ingrained habit of killing from the past that was carried into this life.

Buddhism has no moral problem with homosexuality because it's obviously just a strong memory of being the other gender in a previous life.Don't you have situations, people, places, and things you find yourself inexplicably attracted to? You probably make up some kind of story to explain those based on your current life, but I doubt you can explain them all and some of our "logical" explanations turn out to be very destructive to us.

So, from the Buddhist view, our current type of existence is a trap for the mind. There is no problem with having a physical body, but we get so wrapped up in our created identity, desires, and attachments that we limit mind to basic gross functions and blind ourselves to the reality of how things exist.

ANDREW (ME): That's a very thorough answer Bob but, with the greatest of respect, I want to offer a different one. For me it has to come down to a physical/biological phenomenon. Obviously, no one can actually say for sure what the answer to this question is and so we can only give our best guess or our intuitions. For me, I note that human beings have consciousness and that human beings have this, as far as we can tell, when alive. Now, before you butt in, let me say that, of course, since we don't exactly know what consciousness is we can't even do something so rudimentary as test for it. So let me admit again that all guesses here are somewhat stabs in the dark. And it could be true that consciousness exists before birth and after death. A humble inquiry has to admit possibilities that it cannot rule out definitively. But since I have no way to know if consciousness does exist before or after a human life I make a more modest claim. I think that consciousness is a phenomenon related to the physical existence of human beings who are alive. I would extend this, to a lesser degree, to some other life forms as well. But I don't think consciousness exists "in the universe" or as a general thing or in some mystical sense. I do not, and cannot, envisage minds or "mind" floating about out there. I wouldn't know how to sensibly talk about such an option. It would provide me with no answers but merely exponentially raise the questions. So "minds" are related to people in terms of identity and origin. I further think that consciousness is imagined by human beings as a place where they think and feel and have awareness of themselves and their surroundings. I imagine that it is some function of the brain and arose, in ways as yet unfathomed, as part of our biological evolution because those of our forbears with a growing consciousness of themselves and their surroundings were more successful in their surroundings and, thus, better equipped to survive.

I also would like to note that I find your reasons against a physical explanation unconvincing. Is it really so hard to imagine a computer that can process at the speed and rate of a mind? Are you saying it would always be impossible? That it could never be created? I don't understand how you could. What's more, if taking up a physical explanation for the mind, we do not have to subscribe all thought to "electrochemical" processes at all. We know, for example, that people can be influenced and affected by their environment. Why do we need to make it any more complicated than saying that the brain is the means and the mind is the result? The properties and abilities of electrochemical processes, unknown as they are, need not be determinative in these things. They can just be a means to an end. And, of course, not knowing how it works doesn't mean that it doesn't work. It means that we don't know how. Fundamentally, my point is that you need to start from what you have and not leap straight to something more extraordinary. And I take your "independently existing" minds that need "an interface to interact with the physical world" to be extraordinary. On my understanding, minds can't exist without people.

I would also add that I am open to the possibility that we don't have anything specific that is a consciousness (in any corporeal or incorporeal form) but that, instead, it is merely a construct for a part of our lived experience. This is to say I can see it as possible you could never point to a consciousness and say "that is a consciousness". Human beings already rely on many useful fictions and consciousness could just be another one.

BOB: So, in that case, what for you determines the content of our thoughts?

ANDREW: I want to answer this by saying that I don't think it is enough to answer by saying that I can think of no current way how this might work and so I will posit some entity called "mind" which, like a ghost in the machine, can do it all for me. I also don't think that the immediate and pre-reflective answer "I do" is correct. At least, not without some unpacking. Brains and minds function in many ways unconsciously like many physical functions of the body. You don't have to consciously think to make your heart beat or to breathe. Neither do you need to consciously decide to think. Indeed, I find the Cartesian "I think" to be problematic. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that "Thought becomes"? I think that human beings are very integrated beings and, even with a few minutes of self-reflection, this seems obviously true. Imagine, for example, how many nerve endings you must have in your body. Your mind is aware of those all at once. That is amazing. It's something you likely could not deliberately achieve and so our evolution has built these things into the way we exist as a functioning organism.

Our human lives are intimately involved with many networks. The neural net of our brains, the thought patterns of our minds, social connections and cultural entanglements are just some of these. I know of no way yet in which we can comprehensively account for how these networks all function together but I do think that they all exert their influence upon us as thinking subjects. Sometimes this can be as the result of a goal or purpose of ours as we are beings who can have intentions and attitudes. And, as you will know, we hold beliefs. Each of us comes with a genetic make-up, a past and a context too. So thoughts can be directed or organized. But it is never as simple as this. Minds have evolved a more sophisticated and efficient form of operation, one that does not always, or even usually, require our express attention.

So you might now be saying I haven't answered the question. But in a way I have. The answer is "I do". But not in any deliberative way and not simply so.

Now, if I may, let me ask you something else. Given your views on "mind", do you think that a robot with artificial intelligence would be a person?

BOB: I have to say yes, and I certainly support the idea of rights of personhood for artificially created autonomous aware beings that generate their own unique thoughts and are not just following programmed instructions. Following the previous paradigm, an artificial person would have form, awareness of it's own existence, perception of the outer world, and discrete thoughts and reactions based on perception.

ANDREW: So what is the essence of humanity in your opinion?

BOB: Ooooh, the humanity!  I guess you would have to define human as having a human body and human sense perception coupled with a mind capable of higher awareness. I think the blindness to the higher functions of the mind and entrapment in desire, attachment, and ego would help define human. In other words, I guess the average, confused guy on the street would be a good example of the human condition. Now, what do we do with people of extremely limited or nonexistent brain activity? We still identify someone in a vegetative state as a human, but that's mostly identification with the form. On the other extreme, people who have worked deeply with their own minds and accessed higher functions of mind that we can't use or deny even exist seem to be "magic" but they are still grounded in a human existence though they view it very differently.

And now it's my turn again. So, Andrew, can we be aware of our own consciousness in your opinion?

ANDREW: This feels to me like a trick question and I am immediately put on edge! When I think about this I would have to answer no. But that is because I don't perceive of "my consciousness" as something separate from me. I think it was formed along with me, develops and matures as I do and will end with me. I am not aware of my brain either but I imagine that if I had brain surgery and was shown video of it after the fact I would then have an insight into what lies inside my cranium!

I also want to put the idea that there is a "me" in question. Who am I? What would this "I" refer to when I talk about myself? My physical being? The various thoughts I have about myself that are always changing and being changed? A person other people would describe me as? I am not even sure that I can give a decent answer to who I am before I get to any questions of my consciousness.

But, of course, there is another answer to this question and I want to hold this answer in tension with my first ones. I do recognize that there can be different or altered states of consciousness. When I was younger I would have said that I had experienced some of these myself in a religious context. Now I would give what happened other explanations. I do also recognize that some others, such as yourself, offer testimony for differing states of consciousness and I have no way, or desire, to cast them aside out of hand. I'm open to trying to understand better what might be going on there. Of course, it's also worth mentioning that every one of us alters our state of consciousness daily when we sleep. Then we have no sense even of being alive or, in dream sleep, our state of consciousness is somewhat ambiguous. So, I'd want to take up an "interested listener" position regarding this question.

PS There is a third way. This is that when you say you are aware of your own consciousness you only think you are. How would you ever be able to demonstrate the truth of it?

BOB: How, then,  is consciousness related to the ego?

ANDREW: Man, your questions are hard! In my first answer I raised the the prospect that maybe "consciousness" was just a useful fiction. For all we know there is this little spot somewhere inside the brain that is the "consciousness spot" and it generates this field of consciousness much like a holodeck in Star Trek creates a whole world with electronic smoke and mirrors. In that way we have named what is created without knowing how it happens. I want to say that with the ego I would be a little easier to persuade with this kind of answer. What is the ego after all? Our sense of self preservation? A sense of self theorized most notably by Freud? We are talking in conceptual terms and I am reluctant to make things extant that I have little evidence for or of. So I'm saying that maybe we are naming phenomena here that are a function of something else or maybe even just utilizing ideas or conceptions thought helpful in a discussion of the self.

Be that as it may, I think what I am looking for here in answer to your question is a definition or two, a working hypothesis. Let me tentatively say that I regard consciousness as an awareness of things, of being, of self and ego as a more personal self-protection mechanism, maybe even a prison for the self. (I am speaking theoretically not physically, phenomenologically or idealistically.) Consciousness, if you want to call it mind, could be conceived of as our apparatus for existing in a world of perception. I'm thinking out loud here. Now, I wouldn't hold hard and fast to those definitions to the death. Further thought and discussion will inevitably change and refine them. But that is my starting point. To then go on to how those are related I would have to admit that I have no in depth knowledge. I would intuitively think that once more we are back to the integrated nature of our particularly human form of life. The issue is that you might want to say that consciousness is the general name for mind activity. But then ego must be a subset of that or a specific function perhaps since we would normally think of it as some mental faculty. However, when we talk about these things we are talking about ideas which we can distinguish. I think the functional reality of human beings makes it much more difficult to do that. So it's largely a "don't know" here and a reminder that I have a holistic conception of the human being.

My turn. There are people like futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil who believe that we will technologically engineer our way out of death, either by the use of nanotechnology which can heal us from within or by capturing and removing our consciousness to better, robotized bodies. Do these possibilities interest you at all?

BOB: From my view, it's totally unnecessary. We're already transferring our consciousness over and over, and trading a body for a machine is just a different kind of trap. Better to learn the true nature of mind and access the subtle functions so we remove the blindness, gain some control. If mind is non-physical, to really learn to use that would mean we could be physical when we wanted but still be able to access the vast non-physical perception and knowledge of the mind.

ANDREW:  So imagine you are in a room with some animals (a cat, a dog, a monkey), a human being and a robot that has been given artificial intelligence so good it convinces you that it acts of its own free will. What makes the human being special? Anything?

BOB: What makes you think we're special? Mind is mind. Any being that has a mind has the potential to become a fully developed mind, and in fact has been more developed and less developed in the past. The dog and monkey and the robot and me are all just different current examples of the same kind of mind in a particular limited physical state.

ANDREW: So now you get the last question Bob.

BOB: What is your first memory?

ANDREW: A suitably interesting question. I was walking between my parents at a zoo. We approached the ostrich enclosure and an ostrich came close to the fence. I was frightened and made a commotion, trying to pull my parents away from the fence. I cannot precisely locate this event on a timeline of my life but can have been at most 4 as my father left us after that.

I would like to record my thanks to Bob for being prepared to answer my questions and for taking part. He is @iceman_bob on Twitter if you would like to follow him up on what he says or listen to his excellent freeform music made with guitar and synths.