Award Winner for Volume 19
Deepfake, or Provisional Signs Marked by the Presence of Nonpresence
Until we make the necessary decision to jettison deepfake from our discussions of AI-generated media, we will fail to invent arguments that are well suited to the needs of people who do not live their lives in relation to a digital environment filled with fake and genuine media but, instead, to a digital environment that presents computer-articulated human beings with a diet of provisional simulations marked by the presence of nonpresence. Even though deepfake has come to mean very much the same thing to people from different walks of life when pressed to invent persuasive claims about deepfake media at the rhetorical levels of conjecture, definition, quality, and action, the rhetorical work that has been done at the level of definition has created an exigence within the discourse on deepfake media. Because culturally recognizable digital forms, including deepfakes, are computer-generated simulations, it must be concluded that deepfake simulations express themselves in the manner of simulations, meaning that they give provisional (arranged for the present, changeable, temporary) expression, marked by the presence of nonpresence, to mathematically described, algorithmically defined models of the real. Being another form of simulation within an environment of simulations, deepfake cannot be defined as either fake, false, or inauthentic, or genuine, true, or authentic. Instead, computer-generated media, including deepfakes, must be defined as provisional signs that circulate above and beyond the order of truth as defined by both the order of obligatory signs (medieval) and the order of arbitrary signs (modern) because computer-generated simulations of arbitrary signs are constrained to speak the absence of presence, the presence of a concept not present, the presence of nonpresence.
“Deepfake, or Provisional Signs Marked by the Presence of Nonpresence” is something of a watershed moment. The essay advances one basic claim: signs that take shape in the computer-human interface are neither arbitrary signs nor obligated signs but are, instead, provisional signs—that is, code-generated, culturally transcoded simulations that are but temporary arrangements, provided for present need or occasion, that may thereafter get culturally transcoded out of the same code base into the simulated form of other provisional signs. If that claim holds, “... Provisional Signs Marked by the Presence of Nonpresence” would then mark a turning point in the study of signs, writing, and knowledge. Semiotics would need to expand its focus to include not only the study of signs that operate and get organized within a religious context (the order of obligated signs) and signs that operate and get organized within the demythologized, demystified context of the material world (the order of arbitrary signs) but, also, signs that operate and get organized within the cybernetic context of the computer-human interface (the order of provisional signs). Because provisional signs that get written within the computer-human interface always depend for their existence upon the nonphonetic form of writing that computers use when they signify within and between themselves, grammatology would need to expand its focus to include not only the study of graphic scripts but also computer-generated simulations that always bear an indexical relationship to algorithmic forms of nonphonetic writing that in turn determine the provisional value of the culturally transcoded signs as they get written for the present into the computer-human interface. Because signs that belong to the order of provisional signs are underpinned by a nonphonetic form of “primary writing” that causes provisional signs to be filled with a nonsignified, nonrepresented nonpresence, it also follows that provisional signs must signify differently than both obligated and arbitrary signs and that the order of provisional signs must then constitute an order of true knowledge that differs from and competes with the different and competing orders of true knowledge that issue from and depend for their existence upon the different and competing orders of obligated and arbitrary signs. Knowing that the true order of provisional signs has put up new, legitimate boundaries around the fields of semiology, grammatology, and epistemology, we should decide to abandon the misbegotten practice of classifying provisional signs, including deepfakes, as fake, false, or inauthentic, in favor of making present and seeking to redress a true, genuine, authentic imbalance that exists between provisional signs emptied of presence by the power of primary writing and the increasingly marginalized order of arbitrary signs.
—Stan Harrison