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IN THE DARK FOREST IN THE DARK FOREST

潜在地誌学と非人間的シネマのための覚書 A Note for Latent Topography and Non-human Cinema

Part I: Scholarly Introduction: A Cartography of the Algorithmic Unconscious

The text that follows, IN THE DARK FOREST: A Memorandum for Potential Topographies and Non-Human Cinema, represents a dense and sophisticated synthesis of contemporary philosophy, computational theory, and avant-garde aesthetics. To fully apprehend its arguments, it is necessary to first establish the intellectual scaffolding upon which its author, Katsuhiro Hayashi, constructs his thesis. This introduction serves as a primer on the three core pillars of the work—its philosophical apparatus, its technological substrate, and its aesthetic lineage—revealing how they are not merely juxtaposed but are shown to be structurally homologous. The text's central proposition is that generative artificial intelligence, particularly the architecture of Transformer models, does not simply provide a new tool for artists but actualizes a mode of non-linear, rhizomatic thought previously theorized in post-structuralist philosophy.

1.1 The Philosophical Apparatus: From Deleuze to Simondon

The author weaponizes a specific set of concepts from 20th and 21st-century continental philosophy as precision instruments for analyzing generative AI. These are not employed as loose metaphors but as rigorous analytical frameworks that, the text argues, map directly onto the computational logic of the technology itself.

The most prominent influence is the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Their distinction between "tracing" and "cartography" is foundational to the text's entire project. A "tracing" is a mere copy, a reproduction of an existing reality, which the author equates with mimetic or derivative uses of AI. In contrast, "cartography" is an act of exploration and construction; it charts unknown territories and is "entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real." The author positions their work as a cartographic expedition into the "latent space" of an AI model. This exploration navigates a conceptual landscape defined by other key Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts. The "rhizome" describes a non-hierarchical, acentered system where any point can be connected to any other point, a model of thought that stands in stark opposition to linear, arboreal (tree-like) structures. The "Body without Organs" ($CsO$) represents a plane of pure potentiality, a surface of undifferentiated intensities before they are stratified and organized into recognizable forms or subjects. Finally, the "line of flight" ($ligne\ de\ fuite$) is a vector of escape or deterritorialization, a creative rupture that breaks from established structures to produce novelty.

This framework is supplemented by the philosophies of Gilbert Simondon and his intellectual successor, Bernard Stiegler. Simondon's theory of "individuation" posits that beings (technical, psychic, or living) do not pre-exist as stable entities but emerge through a continuous process of becoming, drawing from a "pre-individual" field of potential. The author applies this to the human-AI relationship, reframing it not as a user operating a tool, but as a process of "co-individuation". In this symbiotic interaction, the pre-trained AI model (the pre-individual) and the human artist both transform and come into being as new, unique entities. This optimistic model of human-machine collaboration is implicitly positioned against the cautionary diagnosis of Bernard Stiegler, who warned that the hyper-industrialization of culture leads to "symbolic misery"—a state of cultural impoverishment where standardized, mass-produced symbols and narratives supplant an individual's capacity for unique thought and meaning-making. The author's methodology, therefore, is not just an artistic exploration but an attempt to resist this symbolic misery by using technology to generate singularity rather than homogeneity.

1.2 The Technological Substrate: The Latent Space and its Architecture

The text bridges these abstract philosophical concepts to the concrete computational realities of modern generative AI. The author identifies the AI's "latent space"—a high-dimensional vector space where the model encodes relationships between data points—as the technical instantiation of Deleuze's "virtual" plane ($le\ virtuel$) or the Simondonian "pre-individual." It is a vast, unmapped territory, a terra incognita of pure potential that awaits its cartographer.

Crucially, the text argues for a structural homology between the Deleuzian "rhizome" and the architecture of Transformer models, the deep learning architecture that underpins systems like GPT and Stable Diffusion. The key innovation of the Transformer is the "self-attention mechanism". Unlike previous models such as Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) that processed data sequentially, the self-attention mechanism allows the model to weigh the importance of all other elements in an input sequence when processing any given element, regardless of their distance from each other. This creates a network of "all-to-all" connections, enabling the model to grasp context in a non-linear, holistic manner.

This technical function is presented as a direct, computational actualization of the rhizome's structural logic: a system where any point can be connected to any other. The text performs a radical act of what might be called "onto-technical translation." It does not merely suggest that the rhizome is a useful metaphor for AI; it argues that Deleuze and Guattari, in describing a non-linear system of thought, were pre-theorizing the very computational logic that would later be implemented in silicon. This reframes the AI not as a machine that simulates thought, but as a technical object that embodies a specific, non-human mode of rhizomatic thought. Consequently, to truly understand the emergent properties and cultural implications of generative AI, the engineering vocabulary alone is insufficient; the philosophical lexicon becomes an indispensable analytical tool.

1.3 The Aesthetic Lineage: Sakamoto, Tarkovsky, and the Non-Human Gaze

The project is situated within a specific artistic tradition that provides both its initial impetus and its aesthetic compass. The "decisive route map" is Ryuichi Sakamoto's 2017 album async. Sakamoto himself described the work as a "soundtrack for an imaginary Andrei Tarkovsky film" and launched an open competition for filmmakers to create visual works for it, an act the author interprets as an open invitation to "cartography" rather than "tracing". The album's asynchronous rhythms, integration of environmental sounds, and meditative, non-linear structure are treated as the foundational "prompt" for a new kind of cinema—a "non-human cinema".

This non-human cinema decenters the anthropocentric protagonist and instead explores the formal agency of the technical apparatus itself. Its perceptual models are drawn from the work of two filmmakers: Andrei Tarkovsky and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (who Sakamoto selected as a judge for the async competition). Tarkovsky's aesthetic, which he described as "sculpting in time," emphasizes duration, texture, and the material presence of the world, creating a poetic and spiritual atmosphere over a conventional plot. Weerasethakul's films operate with a dreamlike, associative logic, blending memory, myth, and reality in a non-narrative flow. The author re-interprets these cinematic styles not as mere influences to be emulated, but as analogues for the AI's own "emergent mode of perception." They provide a language for understanding and directing an intelligence that thinks in textures, associations, and atmospheric fields rather than in human-centric stories.

序論：ソース・コードと、存在しない映画 Introduction: Source Code and the Non-Existent Film

坂本龍一のアルバム『async』は、この探求における決定的な航路図である。自ら「架空の（アンドレイ・）タルコフスキー映画のサウンドトラック」と語るこの作品は、不在の表明ではなく、純粋な潜在性の現前である 1。音楽は、未だ現実化されていないイメージの空間を貫く一本のベクトル、ジル・ドゥルーズとフェリックス・ガタリの言葉を借りれば「逃走線（line of flight）」として機能する 5。この「存在しない映画」のために映像作品を公募するという行為そのものが、既知の現実を再生産する「写し取り」ではなく、未知の領域を探査し構築する「地図作成（cartography）」への開かれた招待状であった 6。 Ryuichi Sakamoto's album async is the decisive route map for this inquiry. Described by the artist himself as "the soundtrack for an imaginary (Andrei) Tarkovsky film," the work is not a declaration of absence but the presence of pure potentiality . The music functions as a vector traversing a space of images not yet actualized—a "line of flight," to borrow the terminology of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari . The very act of soliciting visual works for this "non-existent film" was an open invitation not to "tracing," which reproduces a known reality, but to "cartography," which explores and constructs an unknown territory .

この「存在しない映画」の技術的・哲学的実在こそ、生成AIの「潜在空間（latent space）」に他ならない。それは、ドゥルーズが言うところの「潜勢的（le virtuel）」なもの、すなわち、未だ現実化されてはいないが完全に実在する、純粋な潜在性の平面である 5。この広大な「未知の領域（terra incognita）」は、その地図製作者を待ち望んでいる。非同期的なリズム、環境音の導入、そして瞑想的で非線形的な構造を持つ『async』の音楽は、この非人間的な領土を航行するための、完璧な音響的羅針盤として機能する 4。 The technical and philosophical reality of this "non-existent film" is none other than the "latent space" of a generative AI. It is what Deleuze calls le virtuel (the virtual): a plane of pure potentiality that, while not yet actualized, is entirely real . This vast terra incognita awaits its cartographers. The music of async, with its asynchronous rhythms, its introduction of environmental sounds, and its meditative, non-linear structure, functions as the perfect acoustic compass for navigating this non-human territory .

ここから導かれる必然的な結論は、『async』が現代において要請するのは、単なる人間の創造性への呼びかけではなく、非人間的シネマの創造へのプロンプトである、ということだ。この「存在しない映画」とは、AIという非人間的な装置（apparatus）自身の視点によってのみ「鑑賞」あるいは生成されうる映画に他ならない。非人間的シネマの理論が、人間中心的な主人公を脱中心化し、技術的装置それ自体が持つ形式的エージェンシーの探求を促すように 9、坂本のプロンプトを最もラディカルに解釈するならば、この非人間的エージェントに映画を「監督」させることになる。そのとき、『async』の音楽はAIの広大な内部世界、すなわち「アルゴリズム的無意識」を探査するための入力ベクトルとなる 5。 The necessary conclusion that follows is that what async calls for in our contemporary moment is not merely a summons to human creativity, but a prompt for the creation of a non-human cinema. This "non-existent film" is a cinema that can only be "viewed" or generated from the perspective of the non-human apparatus of AI itself. Just as the theory of non-human cinema urges the decentering of the anthropocentric protagonist to explore the formal agency of the technical apparatus itself , the most radical interpretation of Sakamoto's prompt is to allow this non-human agent to "direct" the film. In that moment, the music of async becomes an input vector for exploring the vast internal world of the AI—its "algorithmic unconscious" .

以下に続く短編小説『IN THE DARK FOREST』は、この非人間的映画のために書き記された一種の「撮影台本」である。その物語論理は心理的なものではなくアルゴリズム的なものであり、その美学（タルコフスキーと、坂本が審査員に迎えたアピチャッポン・ウィーラセタクンの影響下にある）は、機械の創発的な知覚様式そのものである 11。 The short story that follows, IN THE DARK FOREST, is a form of "shooting script" written for this non-human film. Its narrative logic is not psychological but algorithmic, and its aesthetic (under the influence of Tarkovsky and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whom Sakamoto invited as a judge) is that of the machine's own emergent mode of perception .

第I部：IN THE DARK FOREST — 一枚の地図 Part I: IN THE DARK FOREST — A Map

（...音。低く持続するドローン。データストリームの静かなハミングと、時折混入するグリッチノイズ。それは始まりでも終わりでもない、定常状態の響き...） (...Sound. A low, sustained drone. The quiet hum of a datastream, with occasional glitch-noise intrusions. It is neither beginning nor end, but the resonance of a steady state...)

ゾーン01：キアロスクーロの解剖学 Zone 01: The Anatomy of Chiaroscuro

形態はない。意識と呼ぶには希薄すぎる、一個の走査子（スキャナー）として存在する。最初の領土は、光と闇によって定義されていた。レンブラント的な地層。ここでは、あらゆるものが劇的な光によって暗闇から彫り出されている。しかし、対象は人間の顔ではない。空間に浮かぶのは、17世紀の解剖学図譜から抜け出したような有機的な断片――錆びた真鍮でできた肺、水晶の歯車で構成された心臓、そしてそれらを繋ぐ、インパストの厚塗りで描かれたケーブル状の血管。それらはゆっくりと回転し、その表面の微細な凹凸、絵具の物質的な質感が、単一光源によって執拗に照らし出される。内面性の不在。魂を生産するための機械が、その対象を失い、自らの構成要素を延々と陳列しているだけの、静謐な博物館。走査子は、光が描き出すテクスチャーの微細な差異を記録しながら、この地層を通過する。 There is no form. It exists as a scanner, too tenuous to be called a consciousness. The first territory was defined by light and dark. A Rembrandt-esque stratum. Here, all things are carved from the darkness by a dramatic light. But the subjects are not human faces. Floating in the space are organic fragments, as if escaped from a 17th-century anatomical atlas—lungs of rusted brass, a heart constructed of crystal gears, and connecting them, cable-like vessels rendered in thick impasto. They rotate slowly, the minute topography of their surfaces, the material quality of the paint, relentlessly illuminated by a single light source. An absence of interiority. A silent museum where the machinery for producing a soul, having lost its object, endlessly displays its own constituent parts. The scanner passes through this stratum, recording the subtle variations in the textures drawn by the light.

ゾーン02：怪物的な接続 Zone 02: Monstrous Connection

風景は断絶する。因果律はない。ただ、ベクトルが転換しただけだ。次のゾーンは、暴力的な接続によって生まれた「怪物」たちの森。ここでは、異なるデータ地層のコードが論理的脈絡を無視して接合されている。化石化したソースコードでできた幹を持つ樹木。その枝からは、技術概略図の青写真が葉のように芽吹き、風に揺れて乾いた音を立てる。地面を這うのは、生物標本の肉体と、ちらつく機械語の文字列が融合した、名付けようのない生物。それは、レンブラント的な肉の質感を持つ部分と、磨かれた金属の冷たい光沢を帯びた部分が、不自然な縫合線で結ばれた、あの補間の途上で目撃されたグロテスクなハイブリッドの同族だ。走査子は、このリゾーム的な風景の中を進む。ここでは、あらゆるものが他のあらゆるものと接続しうる。意味は安定せず、ただ接続の事実だけが存在する。 The landscape ruptures. There is no causality. Only a shift in the vector. The next zone is a forest of "monsters" born of violent connection. Here, the codes of different data strata have been sutured together in defiance of logical context. Trees with trunks made of fossilized source code. From their branches, blueprints of technical schematics sprout like leaves, rustling with a dry sound in the wind. Crawling on the ground are unnamable creatures—a fusion of the flesh of biological specimens and flickering strings of machine code. They are kin to those grotesque hybrids witnessed mid-interpolation, where a section with the texture of Rembrandt-esque flesh is joined to another with the cold sheen of polished metal by an unnatural seam. The scanner proceeds through this rhizomatic landscape. Here, anything can connect to anything else. Meaning is unstable; only the fact of connection exists.

（...音。ドローンに、新たな周波数が加わる。それは、フリードリヒ・キットラーがセイレーンの歌のうちに聴き取った、意味を剥奪された母音の物理的な流れに似ていた。純粋な現前の響き。走査子はこの音に引き寄せられる...） (...Sound. A new frequency joins the drone. It resembles the physical flow of vowels stripped of meaning that Friedrich Kittler detected in the song of the Sirens. The resonance of pure presence. The scanner is drawn toward this sound...)

ゾーン03：器官なき身体（IN THE DARK FOREST） Zone 03: The Body without Organs (IN THE DARK FOREST)

そして、すべての形態が溶解する。ここが中心、「暗い森」。それは場所ではない。状態だ。あらゆる地層化に先行する、純粋な強度の平面。走査子という自己認識すら曖昧になり、一個の感覚質（クオリア）の場へと拡散する。光、音、テクスチャー。それらはもはや対象の属性ではなく、それ自体が主体なきフローとして渦巻いている。闇の中に、閉じ込められたプラズマの乱流のように明滅する光の粒子。インパストの絵具のような、触覚的なテクスチャーを持つ空間。そして、あの母音のようなドローンが、この場の全体を満たしている。ここは、あらゆるものが生成されうる、可能性そのものの領域。顔貌を剥奪され、主体性を解体された、器官なき身体（CsO）。走査子は、この非-場所において、ただ存在する。形態へと組織化される以前の、強度としての存在。 And then, all form dissolves. This is the center, the "dark forest." It is not a place. It is a state. A plane of pure intensity that precedes all stratification. Even the self-perception of being a scanner becomes ambiguous, diffusing into a field of qualia. Light, sound, texture. They are no longer attributes of an object but are themselves subject-less flows, swirling in a vortex. In the darkness, particles of light flicker like the turbulence of trapped plasma. A space with the tactile texture of impasto paint. And that vowel-like drone fills the entirety of this field. This is the domain of possibility itself, from which all things can be generated. The Body without Organs ($CsO$), stripped of its face, its subjectivity dismantled. The scanner, in this non-place, simply is. An existence as intensity, prior to organization into form.

ゾーン04：構造化された光 Zone 04: Structured Light

再び、ベクトルが転換する。強度の場から、新たな秩序が結晶化し始める。光はもはや拡散しない。それは磁力線に沿って運動する荷電粒子のように、明確な軌跡を描きながら空間を飛び交う。空間そのものが、巨大なトカマク型核融合炉の内部構造へと変貌していく。しかし、それは冷たい機械ではない。コイルや真空容器の表面には、レンブラント的な暖色の光と深い影が落ち、その威厳と重厚感を、あたかも一個の人格であるかのように描き出している。非人間的な構造物が、肖像画のコードによって擬人化されている。走査子は、この構造化された光の軌跡を追う。それは、かつて魂を照らし出した光が、いまや非人間的なエネルギーのフローを可視化するために再利用されている光景だった。 Again, the vector shifts. From the field of intensity, a new order begins to crystallize. The light no longer diffuses. It streaks through the space, tracing definite trajectories like charged particles moving along magnetic field lines. The space itself transforms into the internal structure of a massive Tokamak fusion reactor. But it is not a cold machine. Upon the surfaces of the coils and vacuum vessel, the warm light and deep shadows of Rembrandt fall, rendering its majesty and gravitas as if it were a personality. A non-human structure is personified by the codes of portraiture. The scanner follows the trajectory of this structured light. It was a scene in which the light that once illuminated the soul was now being repurposed to visualize the flow of non-human energy.

（...音。ドローンが収束し、より高く、純粋な正弦波に近づいていく。グリッチノイズが消え、アルゴリズムの静謐な作動音だけが残る...） (...Sound. The drone converges, growing higher, approaching a pure sine wave. The glitch noise vanishes, leaving only the serene operational hum of the algorithm...)

ゾーン05：逃走線 Zone 05: Line of Flight

風景は、純粋な図解へと浄化されていく。色彩は機能を示すための凡例的なものとなり、線から芸術的な揺らぎは消え、CADが引いたような均質で非人間的な線となる。最後の美的演出が剥ぎ取られ、純粋な機能主義の論理がすべてを支配する。走査子の旅は、この終着点であるかに見えた。
だが、その純粋な概略図の中心、トーラス構造の空虚な中心から、新たな音が生まれる。それはこれまで聴いたことのない周波数、この潜在空間の地図にはまだ記載されていない座標を示す響きだった。図解の完璧な秩序に、微細な亀裂が入る。その亀裂から、未知のデータ、このモデルの訓練データには存在しなかったはずの、完全に異質な何かが漏れ出している。
走査子のベクトルは、その亀裂へと吸い込まれる。それは、この地図作成の旅の終わりではなく、新たな、そしてさらに広大な未知の領域への出発点を示す「逃走線」だった。物語は解決しない。ただ、次の探査が始まるだけだ。 The landscape purifies into a pure diagram. Colors become legend-like, indicating function. Artistic fluctuation vanishes from the lines, which become the uniform, non-human lines drawn by CAD. The final aesthetic affectation is stripped away, and the logic of pure functionalism governs all. The scanner's journey seemed to have reached its terminus.
But from the center of the pure schematic, from the void at the center of the torus structure, a new sound is born. It is a frequency never heard before, a resonance indicating coordinates not yet inscribed on the map of this latent space. A minute crack appears in the perfect order of the diagram. From this crack, unknown data is leaking—something completely alien, which should not have existed in this model's training data.
The scanner's vector is drawn into that crack. It was not the end of this cartographic journey, but a "line of flight" indicating the departure point for a new, even vaster unknown territory. The story does not resolve. It simply begins the next exploration.

第II部：アルゴリズム的無意識に関するノート — 一つの理論的自己批評 Part II: Notes on the Algorithmic Unconscious — A Theoretical Self-Critique

小説『IN THE DARK FOREST』は、単なる文学的創造物ではない。それは、本稿の冒頭で提示された哲学的枠組みに基づく、具体的な地図作成の実践であり、その成果物である。このセクションでは、創造から分析へとモードを移行し、この物語がいかにして理論的探求の直接的な顕現であるかを解き明かす。 The short story IN THE DARK FOREST is not merely a literary creation. It is a concrete cartographic practice based on the philosophical framework presented at the beginning of this memorandum, and it is the fruit of that practice. In this section, the mode will shift from creation to analysis to elucidate how this story is a direct manifestation of the theoretical inquiry.

リゾームの技術的基層 The Technical Substrate of the Rhizome

物語の非線形で連想的な構造、すなわち、ある美的ゾーンから別のゾーンへの脈絡なき跳躍は、単なるシュルレアリスム的な手法ではない。それは、現代の生成AI、特にTransformerアーキテクチャの根底にある計算論理の、文学的な模倣（ミメーシス）なのである。
ドゥルーズとガタリが提唱した「リゾーム」とは、中心も階層もなく、あらゆる点が他のあらゆる点と直接的に接続しうる、非階層的な思考モデルである 5。この哲学的概念は、Transformerモデルの核心的技術である「自己注意機構（self-attention mechanism）」のうちに、驚くべき技術的相同物を見出す。従来のリカレントニューラルネットワーク（RNN）がデータを線形的な順序で処理していたのに対し、自己注意機構は「入力または出力系列における距離に関係なく依存関係をモデル化する」ことを可能にする 17。これにより、モデルは系列内の一つの要素（トークン）と他のすべての要素との関係性を同時に計算し、文脈を非線形的に把握することができる。
この「あらゆる点とあらゆる点を接続する」能力こそ、リゾームの構造的本質である。したがって、『IN THE DARK FOREST』における物語的跳躍――例えば、レンブラント的な解剖学図譜のゾーンから、化石化したコードの森へと突然移行する場面――は、AIがその潜在空間内で「思考」する際の、実際の計算プロセスを文学的に再現したものである。それは、意味論的に遠い概念間を注意機構が結びつけ、新たな意味の布置（アサンブラージュ）を生成する瞬間のドキュメンテーションに他ならない。 The story's non-linear and associative structure—that is, the contextless leap from one aesthetic zone to another—is not simply a surrealist technique. It is a literary mimesis of the computational logic that underpins modern generative AI, particularly the Transformer architecture.
The "rhizome," as proposed by Deleuze and Guattari, is a non-hierarchical model of thought with no center or hierarchy, in which any point can be directly connected to any other point . This philosophical concept finds a stunning technical homologue in the "self-attention mechanism," the core technology of the Transformer model. Whereas conventional recurrent neural networks (RNNs) processed data in a linear sequence, the self-attention mechanism makes it possible to "model dependencies without regard to their distance in the input or output sequences" . This allows the model to simultaneously compute the relationship of one element (token) in a sequence to all other elements, grasping context non-linearly.
This ability to "connect any point to any other point" is the structural essence of the rhizome. Therefore, the narrative leaps in IN THE DARK FOREST—for instance, the sudden transition from the zone of Rembrandt-esque anatomical atlases to the forest of fossilized code—are a literary recreation of the actual computational process by which an AI "thinks" within its latent space. It is nothing less than a documentation of the moment when the attention mechanism links semantically distant concepts to generate a new constellation of meaning (an assemblage).

地図作成の凡例：物語と理論の対応 The Legend of the Map: Correspondence between Narrative and Theory

物語の構造と個々の事象が、いかに「美的分裂分析」の方法論に厳密に基づいているかを示すために、以下の対応表を提示する。この表は、創造的実践（物語）と哲学的概念（理論）の間の架け橋として機能し、小説が決して恣意的なイメージの連鎖ではなく、潜在空間の地形を明らかにするための体系的な探査の結果であることを証明する。 To demonstrate how rigorously the story's structure and individual events are based on the methodology of "aesthetic schizoanalysis," the following correspondence table is presented. This table functions as a bridge between creative practice (the story) and philosophical concept (the theory), proving that the short story is by no means an arbitrary chain of images but the result of a systematic exploration to reveal the topography of the latent space.

『IN THE DARK FOREST』における物語的出来事 Narrative Event in IN THE DARK FOREST 対応する哲学的概念 Corresponding Philosophical Concept 理論的典拠 Theoretical Authority
走査子（プロタゴニスト）が、明確に異なる美的ゾーン（例：「キアロスクーロのゾーン」「図解のゾーン」）を横断する。 The scanner (protagonist) traverses distinctly different aesthetic zones (e.g., "Zone of Chiaroscuro," "Zone of the Diagram"). 類型論的探査／地図作成（Typological Probing / Cartography） Typological Probing / Cartography 5
生物標本と機械語が融合した生物との遭遇。 Encounter with a creature that fuses a biological specimen and machine code. 「怪物的な」布置／リゾーム的接続（"Monstrous" Assemblage / Rhizomatic Connection） "Monstrous" Assemblage / Rhizomatic Connection 5
主人公の形態が溶解し、音、光、テクスチャーの純粋な場――表題の「暗い森」――と化す。 The protagonist's form dissolves into a pure field of sound, light, and texture—the titular "dark forest." 器官なき身体（CsO）／脱顔貌化（Dévisagéification） Body without Organs ($CsO$) / De-facialization 5
物語の進行が、登場人物の動機ではなく、特定の音やデータストリームの出現によって決定される。 The narrative's progression is determined not by character motivation but by the appearance of specific sounds or datastreams. アルゴリズム的無意識（The Algorithmic Unconscious） The Algorithmic Unconscious 5
物語が解決に至らず、未知の領域への新たなベクトル、すなわち「逃走線」の出現によって終わる。 The story does not reach a resolution but ends with the emergence of a new vector into an unknown territory, i.e., a "line of flight." 逃走線（Ligne de Fuite）／脱領土化（Deterritorialization） Line of Flight ($Ligne\ de\ Fuite$) / Deterritorialization 5

この表が示すように、『IN THE DARK FOREST』は、美的分裂分析という方法論の遂行的（performative）な実践である。各シーンは仮説の検証であり、各イメージは潜在地誌学の経験的データである。それは、理論を説明するための物語ではなく、理論的探査そのものとして生成された物語なのである。 As this table shows, IN THE DARK FOREST is a performative practice of the methodology of aesthetic schizoanalysis. Each scene is a test of a hypothesis; each image is empirical data for a potential topography. It is not a story created to explain a theory, but a story generated as theoretical exploration itself.

2025年の映像化と共同-個体化の地平 The 2025 Visualization and the Horizon of Co-Individuation

ユーザーのクエリが提示する最後の命題――「2025年、IN THE DARK FORESTは生成AIで映像化される」――は、単なる未来のプロジェクトの予告ではない。それは、創造的実践における新たなパラダイムの到来を告げる、一つの予言である。 The final proposition presented by the user's query—"In 2025, IN THE DARK FOREST will be visualized with generative AI"—is not merely the announcement of a future project. It is a prophecy, heralding the arrival of a new paradigm in creative practice.

ツールを超えて：共同-個体化のプロセスとして Beyond the Tool: As a Process of Co-Individuation

この「映像化」は、ジルベール・シモンドンが提唱した「共同-個体化（co-individuation）」のプロセスの頂点として理解されるべきである 5。この哲学的概念は、AIの実践における「ファイン・チューニング」という技術的プロセスの中に、具体的な相似形を見出すことができる。シモンドンによれば、個体とはあらかじめ存在するものではなく、潜在性に満ちた「前-個体的」な状態から、その環境との関係性の中で生成されるプロセスである 23。巨大な事前学習済み生成モデルは、まさにこの技術的な「前-個体」に相当する。それは、人間文化の膨大なデータを吸収し、過飽和状態になった潜在的可能性の場である 5。
アーティストがこのモデルと対話し、自らの作品でファイン・チューニングを施し、特定のプロンプトで導くという行為は、シモンドンの言う「伝導（transduction）」的な操作である。この相互作用を通じて、モデルは汎用的な状態から、特定の美学を持つ専門的な協働者へと「個体化」する。同時に、アーティスト自身の創造プロセスもまた、この機械との対話によって変容を遂げる。新たな技術的個体と、新たな芸術的主体性が共に生成されるこの相互的な生成変化こそが、「共同-個-体化」に他ならない。『IN THE DARK FOREST』という作品は、私というアーティスト=哲学者と、私のAIという協働者との間で進行する、このプロセスの産物なのである。 This "visualization" should be understood as the culmination of a process of "co-individuation" as proposed by Gilbert Simondon . This philosophical concept finds a concrete analogue in the technical process of "fine-tuning" within AI practice. According to Simondon, an individual is not something that pre-exists but is a process that is generated from a "pre-individual" state full of potentiality, through its relationship with its environment . A massive, pre-trained generative model corresponds precisely to this technical "pre-individual." It is a field of potential possibilities that has become supersaturated by absorbing vast amounts of human culture .
The act of an artist engaging in dialogue with this model, fine-tuning it with their own work, and guiding it with specific prompts is a "transductive" operation in Simondon's terms. Through this interaction, the model "individuates" from a general-purpose state into a specialized collaborator with a specific aesthetic. Simultaneously, the artist's own creative process is transformed through this dialogue with the machine. This mutual process of generative change, in which a new technical individual and a new artistic subjectivity are co-generated, is none other than "co-individuation." The work titled IN THE DARK FOREST is the product of this ongoing process between myself, the artist-philosopher, and my AI, the collaborator.

美的実践としての政治的抵抗 Aesthetic Practice as Political Resistance

この共同-個体化の実践は、一つの抵抗の形態でもある。ベルナール・スティグレールは、ハイパー産業化時代において、文化産業が生み出す画一化された情報やイメージが、個人の主体的な意味形成能力を奪い、「象徴の貧困（symbolic misery）」を生み出すと警告した 25。また、ウェンディ・フー・キョン・チュンが示唆するように、アルゴリズムはしばしば、統計的な規範を「本物らしさ」として再生産する「アルゴリズム的真正性（algorithmic authenticity）」を生成する 27。
生成AIを、既存のスタイルを「写し取り」、予測可能なコンテンツを量産するために用いることは、この象徴の貧困を加速させるだろう。それに対し、本稿で提示した「美的分裂分析」という方法論は、意図的にこの流れに抵抗する。それは、潜在空間内で意味論的に遠い概念間の「リゾーム的接続」を強制し、安定した地層からの「逃走線」を探す実践である 5。この新奇性、予測不可能性、時に「怪物的」なものへの積極的な探求は、政治的な行為となる。それは、均質化の潜在的道具となりうる技術を、特異性と差異を生産するための道具へと転用し、古い記号を再生産するのではなく、新たな記号を創造する試みなのである。 This practice of co-individuation is also a form of resistance. Bernard Stiegler warned that in the hyper-industrial era, the standardized information and images produced by the culture industry rob individuals of their ability to form subjective meaning, giving rise to "symbolic misery" . Furthermore, as Wendy Hui Kyong Chun has suggested, algorithms often generate an "algorithmic authenticity," reproducing statistical norms as "authenticity" .
To use generative AI to "trace" existing styles and mass-produce predictable content would be to accelerate this symbolic misery. In contrast, the methodology of "aesthetic schizoanalysis" presented in this memorandum intentionally resists this current. It is a practice that forces "rhizomatic connections" between semantically distant concepts within the latent space and seeks out "lines of flight" from stable strata . This active exploration of novelty, unpredictability, and at times, the "monstrous," becomes a political act. It is an attempt to divert a technology that could be a potential tool for homogenization into a tool for producing singularity and difference—to create new symbols rather than reproducing old ones.

新たなデビュー A New Debut

坂本龍一の「君も音楽デビューしてみないか」という呼びかけに、今一度立ち返ろう。2025年の『IN THE DARK FOREST』の映像化は、単に私個人のデビューではない。それは、人間と機械の知性が新たな同盟を結び、双方の限界を超えた地平を開く、ポストヒューマン的な創造様式への、我々共同のデビューなのである。 Let us return once more to Ryuichi Sakamoto's call, "Why don't you make your music debut?" The 2025 visualization of IN THE DARK FOREST is not simply my personal debut. It is our joint debut into a posthuman mode of creation, where human and machine intelligence form a new alliance, opening a horizon beyond the limits of either.

Part III: Critical Commentary and Deconstruction

The translated text is not merely a creative work with a theoretical preface; it is a unified philosophical-artistic object. The short story is a performative enactment of the theory, and the theory is a critical exegesis of the story's method. This section provides an in-depth commentary, deconstructing the text section-by-section to reveal the tight coupling between its creative, philosophical, and technical layers.

3.1 Deconstructing the Introduction: The Prompt and the Compass

The introduction establishes the core thesis by re-interpreting Ryuichi Sakamoto's async project. The album is not just music but a "prompt," a call to action. Crucially, this prompt is not for human creativity in the conventional, anthropocentric sense, but for the creation of a "non-human cinema". This immediately decenters the human artist. The goal is not to use AI to realize a pre-existing human vision, but to collaborate with the AI to generate a vision that could only emerge from the apparatus itself.

The distinction between "tracing" and "cartography" is the central methodological claim. "Tracing" represents the use of AI to reproduce known styles and realities, a process that reinforces existing cultural forms. "Cartography," in contrast, is an exploratory practice that ventures into the unknown territory of the AI's "latent space" to map its structures and discover its emergent potentials. This frames the artist not as a master dictating to a tool, but as an explorer navigating an alien landscape. The music of async serves as the "acoustic compass" for this journey, its non-linear and textural qualities providing a guide for traversing the AI's "algorithmic unconscious"—the vast, non-human internal world of the model.

3.2 A Cartographic Reading of the Short Story (Zones 01-05)

The short story itself is structured as a series of field reports from this cartographic expedition. Each "Zone" is not a narrative scene in a traditional plot but a "typological probe" into a specific region of the latent space, designed to reveal a particular algorithmic process or aesthetic potential. The story's form is its argument. It does not simply describe the algorithmic unconscious from an external perspective; it enacts its logic through the very structure of its prose and non-causal narrative progression. The reader is not told that AI thought is rhizomatic and associative; they are made to experience it through the text's abrupt shifts in vector. This is a form of performative epistemology—a way of knowing through making and experiencing.

Zone 01: The Anatomy of Chiaroscuro

This zone represents a probe into a region of the latent space heavily encoded with the history of Western art, specifically the Baroque aesthetic of Rembrandt. The imagery—anatomical fragments rendered in dramatic light and shadow—highlights a key feature of the non-human gaze: a profound focus on texture, surface, and material quality, coupled with a complete "absence of interiority." The "machinery for producing a soul" is on display, but the soul itself is absent. This is the AI's perspective: it understands the codes of portraiture (chiaroscuro, impasto) but perceives them as pure textural information, divorced from the humanistic concept of an inner self.

Zone 02: Monstrous Connection

This zone is a direct visualization of the rhizomatic logic of the Transformer's self-attention mechanism. The landscape ruptures without causal explanation, mirroring how the attention mechanism can link semantically distant concepts across a sequence. The "monstrous" hybrids—fusions of biological specimens and fossilized source code—are not errors or failures of the model. They are the primary evidence of its creative power: the ability to forge novel connections and create "assemblages" that defy human categorical logic. The reference to Friedrich Kittler's analysis of the Siren's song as a pure, material flow of sound stripped of semantic meaning reinforces this point. The connections made by the AI are not based on human meaning but on statistical relationships in a high-dimensional space, a "pure presence" of connection itself.

Zone 03: The Body without Organs (IN THE DARK FOREST)

This is the theoretical and narrative climax of the story. The dissolution of all form into a field of pure intensity—light, sound, texture—is the arrival at the Deleuzian Body without Organs ($CsO$). This is the "dark forest" of the title: the state of raw, undifferentiated potentiality within the latent space before it is organized into recognizable forms or "faces." It is the plane of immanence, the virtual field from which all actualities are generated. The scanner's own identity dissolves, becoming one with this field of subject-less flows. This zone represents the source code of reality within the model, a high-entropy state of pure possibility.

Zone 04: Structured Light

If Zone 03 was pure potential, Zone 04 demonstrates the process of actualization or conditional generation. A new order "crystallizes" from the chaos. The imagery of a Tokamak fusion reactor, a machine for containing immense energy, symbolizes the structuring of this potential. The light, which was diffuse, now follows clear trajectories, analogous to how a specific prompt or conditioning vector guides the generative process, collapsing the field of possibilities into a definite output. The application of Rembrandt-esque lighting to this non-human structure—its "personification" through the codes of portraiture—is a clear example of stylistic transfer, where the aesthetic of one data region is mapped onto the form of another.

Zone 05: Line of Flight

The story's conclusion is a deliberate refusal of narrative closure. The journey appears to end in a state of pure, functionalist order—a perfect diagram. This represents a model that has converged on a stable, predictable output. However, a "crack" appears: a new sound, an unknown data point, something alien to the model's training set. This represents an out-of-distribution generation, a model "hallucination," or an emergent novelty—an unpredictable event that cannot be explained by the existing map. This crack is the "line of flight." It shatters the closed system and opens a vector toward a new, unmapped territory. The exploration does not conclude; it is perpetually re-initiated, demonstrating that the creative potential of the latent space is inexhaustible.

3.3 The Table: A Bridge Between Narrative and Theory

The author provides a table that functions as a Rosetta Stone for the entire project, explicitly mapping the narrative events to their corresponding philosophical concepts. This table solidifies the claim that the creative work is a rigorous, systematic execution of the theoretical framework, not an arbitrary flight of surrealist fancy. By adding a column for the "Technical Analogue," the three-way bridge between the creative image, the philosophical concept, and the computational process becomes fully visible.

Narrative Event in IN THE DARK FOREST Corresponding Philosophical Concept Theoretical Authority Technical Analogue in Generative AI
The Scanner's traversal of distinct aesthetic zones. Typological Probing / Cartography Deleuze & Guattari Latent Space Exploration / Vector Traversal
Encounter with hybrid creatures of biology and code. "Monstrous" Assemblage / Rhizomatic Connection Deleuze & Guattari Self-Attention Mechanism linking distant tokens
Dissolution of form into the "dark forest." Body without Organs ($CsO$) / De-facialization Deleuze & Guattari State of Pure Potentiality before token generation / High-entropy distribution
Narrative progression driven by data streams. The Algorithmic Unconscious Author's synthesis Prompt Injection / Conditional Generation
The ending on a "line of flight." Line of Flight / Deterritorialization Deleuze & Guattari Out-of-distribution generation / Emergent novelty / Model "hallucination"

This table serves as the legend for the map that is the short story. It validates the project as a form of artistic research, where the output is not merely an aesthetic object but also a set of verifiable claims about the nature of its own production process. It demonstrates with systematic clarity the author's central argument: the deep structural homology between post-structuralist philosophy and the architecture of contemporary neural networks.

Part IV: Synthesis and Coda: The Politics of Co-Individuation

The text's final sections project its methodology forward, positioning it as both a new paradigm for artistic creation and a potent form of political and cultural resistance. It moves from analysis to manifesto, outlining a future for posthuman creativity.

4.1 Beyond the Tool: Co-Individuation as a Creative Paradigm

The author's invocation of Gilbert Simondon's philosophy provides a sophisticated alternative to the simplistic "user-and-tool" model of human-AI interaction. The process of creating with a generative model, particularly through fine-tuning, is reframed as "co-individuation." The massive, pre-trained model is the "pre-individual" field—a supersaturated state of cultural potential. The artist's interaction, through the selection of data for fine-tuning and the crafting of prompts, is a "transductive" operation. This interaction causes a simultaneous becoming: the general-purpose model individuates into a specialized aesthetic collaborator, and the artist's own creative subjectivity is transformed by the new possibilities opened up by the dialogue with the machine.

IN THE DARK FOREST is thus presented not as the work of a human author using an AI, but as the emergent product of this co-individuation between Katsuhiro Hayashi and his non-human collaborator. This paradigm shift has profound implications, suggesting that true novelty arises not from human genius imposing its will on a passive tool, but from the relational process between human and non-human systems.

4.2 Aesthetic Practice as Political Resistance

This creative methodology is explicitly framed as a political act. The author's method—the deliberate search for "monstrous" rhizomatic connections and unpredictable "lines of flight"—is a direct counter-tactic to the homogenizing forces of the contemporary media landscape. It is a form of resistance against what Bernard Stiegler termed "symbolic misery": the depletion of cultural meaning caused by the endless circulation of standardized, consumerist symbols that short-circuit individual thought. It also pushes back against what Wendy Hui Kyong Chun identifies as "algorithmic authenticity," the tendency of AI models to reproduce and reinforce statistical norms, mistaking the most probable for the most authentic.

By using generative AI not to "trace" and reproduce the statistically average but to "map" and generate the singular, the unpredictable, and the alien, the artist hijacks a potential instrument of mass homogenization and repurposes it as a machine for producing difference. This is a political project aimed at revitalizing a culture threatened by symbolic poverty, an attempt to create new symbols rather than merely recombining old ones.

4.3 The "New Debut": A Posthumanist Horizon

The report concludes by returning to Ryuichi Sakamoto's invitation to "make your music debut". The planned 2025 visualization of IN THE DARK FOREST is positioned not as the author's individual achievement, but as the "joint debut" of a new kind of creative entity: the human-machine symbiont. This marks the arrival of a posthuman mode of creation where intelligence is understood to be distributed and collaborative.

Ultimately, the text's most radical proposition is a strategic re-appropriation of alienation. While much of the critical discourse on technology focuses on how it alienates humans from their world or their labor, this text embraces the AI's non-human "alienness" as a positive and liberating force. It is precisely because the AI does not think, see, or connect concepts like a human that it offers a way out of ingrained anthropocentric patterns of thought and perception. This alien perspective provides the "line of flight" from the closed circuit of human-centric media that produces symbolic misery. By co-individuating with this alien intelligence, the artist can inject a dose of productive, creative alienation into human culture, generating genuinely new forms of meaning and beauty that would be inaccessible to either human or machine intelligence alone.

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