Script for FALSAC Lives in an Environment - Summary by Tiange Hou

"What is the nature of agency and life?" is debated in many fields, including philosophy and biology. With this question, I conducted interdisciplinary research, resulting in FALSAC Lives in an Environment, a simulation exploring to what extent a system could be alive and where "seemingly existing agency" exists, in the context of survival.

This artwork documents my personal way to approach this question and the specific difficulties I face. In this video, I will illustrate my research and some important details of the simulation. Every aspect of this work made at the end is related to the essential question “what is the nature of agency and life.”

Then, I will introduce several difficulties I encountered during development, which I think requiring further discussion.

After that, a recorded video of FALSAC, who lives in its own environment, will be played.

Research

For this research-based artwork, I was mainly inspired by two references. The first one is a scientific article titled "Life with Purpose: The Need for a Theory of Agency," published in Aron magazine in 2020. In this article, the author presents one of the dilemmas in biological sciences: ascribing goals and purposes to, for example, cells. Then, the author argues that "a genuine theory of agency might finally help to clarify what science can say about free will." The second reference is a story from Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2, titled "The Measure of a Man." This episode focuses on the debate of whether an android could be considered a sentient being. This episode first aired in 1989.

The argument from the Life with Purpose article gives an interesting way to dive into this debate. I don't have a clear position on whether I support it or not, but I wanted to start my work from this point. With my biological background, I looked through references in the fields of biology, along with philosophy, science fiction, cybernetics, and history. During my research, I decided to finalize this art practice, an exploration of the nature of agency and life, with a simulation of a living system in its own environment.

For the final piece I completed in May 2022, inspired by several concepts in biology, from homeostasis to stress physiology, I fantasized about the internal and external environment of FALSAC (Fantasized Artificial Living System Alike Centrolenidae (glass frog)). Then, a simplified simulation was developed in Unity3D. Besides, the key parameters of FALSAC’s internal and external environment are visualized. The visual and computational value of Unity3D supports me to develop this simulation. Thus, when the (electrical) power is supplied to this program, FALSAC exists in its own environment, a cyberspace.

FALSAC’s story:

In terms of homeostasis, FALSAC’s “life” is supported by its internal system. This system includes a control center, gland A, gland B, and paths between them. FALSAC, as a “living system,” is also an open system, meaning that FALSAC could exchange matter and energy with FALSAC’s external environment to live.

FALSAC “lives” in this environment. Without external stimuli in this environment, FALSAC’s internal system does a normal amount of work.

There will be times at which external stimuli appear in this external environment affecting FALSAC’s internal environment.

One kind of stimulus is handleable. When FALSAC’s internal environment is affected by those stimuli and FALSAC senses this change in its internal environment, FALSAC starts to do more work supported by its internal system to maintain the relative constancy of its internal environment, (meaning that the internal value is within a certain range.)