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Liquid Democracy

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FADE IN. 
EXT. OPEN OCEAN - DAY
Distant elevator music fades into the image of an open
ocean. As we hear the waves and the music come together, we
can imagine what it’s like to be out on the beach, bathing
in the ocean, under the sun, while looking at our phone,
turning the camera lens towards us.
Pause that moment.
Right there, before the snap.
Right before the wave hits.
Take a selfie.
INT. OCEAN AND SPEECH ROOM - DAY
The ocean is still in the background of the screen.
A new frame enters, slowly increasing in size, while the
ocean is calmly moving behind. In it, a podium with a yellow
flag. It only partially fills the screen, allowing us to see
the ocean behind.
JOHN, an unidentified man, enters the set, with the ocean
behind him. He is wearing a green body suit, and dressed in
elegant attire.
                    JOHN
               (In an inspirational,
               presidential tone)
          Thanks for being here. I’m the
          president’s new press secretary.
          Today we will be addressing the
          shift of our political arrangement,
          which lies between direct and
          representative democracy. In direct
          democracy, participants must vote
          personally on all issues, while in
          representative democracy
          participants vote for
          representatives once in certain
          election cycles. Meanwhile, our new
          system doesn’t depend on
          representatives, but rather on a
          weighted and transitory delegation
          of votes.
The people in the audience, all 3D modeled attendees, scroll
on their phones.
                    JOHN
          Liquid Democracy is the term we
          have assigned to our new system,
          which generically describes either
          already-existing or proposed
          popular-control apparatuses. Voters
          can either vote directly or
          delegate their vote to other
          participants; voters may select a
          delegate for different issues.
An array of issues comes up in bright lists on screen:
marriage equality, affirmative action, free trade
agreements, war, peace, tax reform...
                    JOHN
          We have mostly experimented on a
          local level or exclusively through
          online platforms. That’s why it’s
          absolutely crucial that we bring
          the digital revolution to everyone,
          everywhere!
People in the audience enthusiastically clap, and reporters
take photographs.
A big title that reads "Liquid Democracy" appears on screen,
as it melts into the ocean.
EXT. PÁRAMO - DAY
A peaceful landscape of the Páramo highlands in Colombia,
surrounded by a mysterious fog and mist.
A disembodied voice speaks to us, as if from a loudspeaker.
It is the voice of THE CLOUD, this time reading off from
Wikipedia.
                    THE CLOUD
          Páramos are known to be "water
          factories", since most of their
          vegetation is capable of capturing
          the moisture in the air, and
          turning it into water droplets,
          which due to the force of gravity,
          find their way to the ocean,
          forming crooks and rivers on their
          way.
Images of rivers, caves, mist, and fog in the Páramo appear
on the screen, as they dissapear and fade into the Páramo
landscape.
                    THE CLOUD
          They are tropical, since they are
          located close to the Equator. That
          doesn’t mean they are warm.
          Actually, most of the time they
          reach very low temperatures since
          they are located 3.000 meters above
          the sea level. That is why Páramos
          are like frozen islands in tropical
          zones; a geographical paradox of
          boisterous beauty.
The images of the Páramo are suddenly disrupted by two
frames that appear from above, like projector screens rolled
down from the roof. They partially fill the screen, allowing
us to see the Páramo behind.
John appears in one of the frames, while his MOM appears
in  another. We can only see their hands; they are talking
to us in sign language.
                    JOHN
          Hello friends! Welcome to the
          e-census, my name is John, and you
          are few steps away, very few, from
          being one of the first Colombians
          to fill out the electronic form for
          the national census of population
          and housing. Mom... come!
                    MOM
          Tell me son.
                    JOHN
          Look, participating in the e-census
          is very easy. Just follow the
          instructions.
                    MOM
          OK, what do we have to do?
                    JOHN
          Just click on the button, look,
          this one, which says "create a new
          account and user name."
                    MOM
          Let me do it...
Clicks sound all over while the Páramo image repeats itself
infinitely behind John and his mom, like a fractal. While
the click sound grows in intensity, and the images go into a
mise-en-abime (like an error window in a computer), we start
a journey through the Páramo of Chingaza, located close to
Bogotá, on google maps. We see it behind John and his mom.
                    MOM
          OK.
                    JOHN
          Then you have to enter your
          information in the ID fields.
                    MOM
          OK, I need my ID. Look, here it
          asks for a password and a username.
                    JOHN
          Remember that the username and the
          password will be the same ones
          you’ll be using to access the
          e-census from now on. You can also
          use it to vote in our new liquid
          democracy. All the information of
          our home is confidential... No one
          can see it...
Fill-in boxes appear on screen, being filled out with random
information that isn’t legible; name, last name, address,
phone number, favorite meal, work, authorization for GPS
location and face recognition, access to microphone and
camera...
                    JOHN
          The form is divided in 4 sections:
          1. Location, 2. Housing, 3. Home,
          and 4. People. Fill in all the
          sections.
The e-census turns into an app, using the regular questions
these do, and storing our private information in the new
Liquid Democracy cloud.
                    MOM
          Is it very difficult to fill in
          these fields?
                    JOHN
          No mom. You’ll find definitions
          that will guide you. Always review
          if the information is correct. It
          was never this easy to count us
          all!
John and his mom wave goodbye enthusiastically as their
frames disappear into the google maps tour of the Páramo.
We hear the water from the Páramo, flowing through the
mountains.
Water is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly
colorless chemical substance that is the main constituent of
Earth’s streams, lakes, and oceans, and the fluids of most
living organisms.
EXT. PLANET MARS - WEDDING DAY
A dusty day on the surface of Mars, at the Hellas Plains.
A frame appears within the image of Mars, where a wedding is
taking place. There are no clouds in the sky, as it shines
in its full darkness.
Picture your wedding day, cloudless, without any words, any
information.
Picture how you would look like viewed from a satellite
camera. How many clouds would form in the Martian skies just
from pictures of your wedding day?
John appears dressed as a priest, officiating the ceremony
that is about to take place.
                    JOHN
          We can now offer our customers a
          ’cloud-bursting’ service that can
          100% guarantee fair weather and
          clear skies for your wedding day!
People in the audience clap incessantly.
                    JOHN
          We’ve been working on this perfect
          day for almost 3 weeks. Yes,
          success can be guaranteed!
Wedding rain-free day ads appear on screen, as we are taken
on a virtual tour of Mars.
Images of clouds and of the Páramo, foggy and rainy, start
appearing on screen and gathering on top of each other.
                    JOHN
          However, if a natural disaster such
          as a hurricane were to occur, this
          cannot be controlled.
The images of the clouds and Páramo, start forming a visual
storm on top of Mars, slowly filling out the screen.
The páramo disappears.
The clouds disappear.
We continue on a tour around Mars, as another frame appears,
taking us on a tour at the desert of La Guajira, in the
north of Colombia. The tour takes us across the desert,
looking for one of the largest open-sky coal mines in the
world: El Cerrejón.
As we look for the coal mine, John’s mom appears on screen,
speaking to us in sign language.
                    MOM
               (quote from Jean Baudrillard’s
               "Simulacra and Simulation")
          Abstraction today is no longer that
          of the map, the double, the mirror
          or the concept. Simulation is no
          longer that of a territory, a
          referential being or a substance.
          It is the generation by models of a
          real without origin or reality: a
          hyperreal. The territory no longer
          precedes the map, nor survives it.
          Henceforth, it is the map that
          precedes the territory - precession
          of simulacra - it is the map that
          engenders the territory. It is the
          real, and not the map, whose
          vestiges subsist here and there, in
          the deserts which are no longer
          those of the Empire, but our own.
          The desert of the real itself.
The tour on Mars and La Guajira start to zoom out into
space, revealing that both images emerge from a phone screen,
held by John in a T.V. studio with a green screen behind,
and several lights.
We see the apparatus behind him; cameras, lights, crew, and
a stool where he is sitting.
INT. T.V. STUDIO WITH GREEN SCREEN - UNSPECIFIC
A strong studio light showers John’s face, dressed again in
the same suit that he used while giving a speech in front of
the ocean.
Where is the ocean?
John is holding his phone.
                    JOHN
               (through a text that appears
               on screen as he types on his
               phone)
          Become a universal user of our new
          democracy. Our digital agora is
          more lively than ever; just get
          your new smartphone and get
          connected!
A series of words and concepts appear on-screen, as pop-up
ads on T.V. : Cybernetic assembly, digital agora, virtual
parliament, liquid democracy.
The Colombian national anthem begins to play, faint on the
background. We see a green flag, with a fan making it wave,
on the same side that we saw the yellow flag initially.
Behind John, a series of images start replacing the chroma
key.
A computer voice enthusiastically starts speaking, as if
from a loudspeaker.
                    THE CLOUD
          We use clouds for everything in our
          lives. To search for information,
          places, entertainment... literally
          everything. Unfortunately many
          regions in Colombia are so remote
          that a lot of people still have no
          access to the Internet or to
          smartphones. That’s why many of
          them are still using legacy phones.
          How could we get those people
          closer to all the information
          they’re missing?
We begin a tour through the Cauca river, starting at the
location where Hidroituango appears on the map. Some parts
of the map are more visible than others; resolution in
sattelite maps defines our visual access to these
territories.
                    THE CLOUD
          Introducing: my line, powered by
          Google. A traditional telephone
          landline everyone can access no
          matter the moment or the device. My
          line brings the power of Google
          assistant to anyone with access to
          a standard phone line. This
          inclusive technology makes search
          and artificial intelligence
          available to people without a
          smartphone or a computer. Using
          my line is incredibly simple; after
          placing a call to a regular mobile
          telephone number, the caller can
          ask Google assistant a question, in
          just a second or two we process the
          question in our custom software and
          connect with Google systems in the
          cloud. My line receives the
          response and speaks it back to the
          caller by phone.
The tour arrives at the Caribbean Ocean, through the entry
port of Barranquilla, the golden doors of Colombia.
We hear people calling from their phones, asking questions
to My Line: Where is Hidroituango? What’s the weather in
barranquilla? How cloudy will the sky be today?
                    THE CLOUD
          Now people can access information
          on the internet without having
          internet!
Electronic reason and computational reason, as Achille
Mbembe argues, makes us ponder on "digital borders as
biopolitical spaces".
Dataflow can also be called stream processing; the cloud is
a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet and used
to store, manage, and process data in place of local servers
or personal computers.
Water.
Information.
Internet.
Democracy.
When colonial languages were imposed by European countries
on the entire world, each region appropriated this new
technology to its own context. Regionalism, accents, and
variations of the original colonial language, created the
diversity of understanding in a postcolonial world.
Could this happen with digital technologies? If virtual
space is increasingly a homogenizing tool - accessing
Facebook in Bogotá or in San Francisco, despite the
different contexts, is the same experience at a design level
- how could accents and regionalisms be developed out of
these technologies, especially in the global south?
We still believe that single-crop systems are development;
whether it’s an agricultural or an ideological system, we
think that controlling the flow of water is progress.
The control over nature is the control over information.
The control over information is the control over nature.
EXT. OPEN OCEAN - DAY
The open ocean moves, flowing back and forth, on a sunny
day.
From the ocean’s horizon, a series of definition appear in
order. They are read by John.
                    JOHN
          1. A LIQUID is a nearly
          incompressible fluid that conforms
          to the shape of its container but
          retains a (nearly) constant volume
          independent of pressure. As such,
          it is one of the four fundamental
          states of matter (the others being
          solid, gas, and plasma), and is the
          only state with a definite volume
          but no fixed shape.
          2. FLOW (of a liquid, gas, or
          electricity) move steadily and
          continuously in a current or
          stream.
          3. STREAM transmit or receive
          (data, especially video and audio
          material) over the Internet as a
          steady, continuous flow.
          4. TORRENT a strong and fast-moving
          stream of water or other liquid.
          5. CLOUD a visible mass of
          condensed watery vapor floating in
          the atmosphere, typically high
          above the general level of the
          ground.
The elevator music slowly fades in, as the definitions
dissolve into water.
We hear the computer voice of The Cloud, as the image slowly
fades out.
                    THE CLOUD
               (reading off Yoko Ono’s poem,
               which appears on screen)
          Imagine the clouds dripping.
          Dig a hole in your garden to
          put them in.
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JUAN PABLO PACHECO is an artist and curator with a degree in film and cultural studies from Connecticut College (USA), and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (USA). His research and artistic work are marked by reflections on the construction of images and knowledge, especially in relation to the digital era. His work has focused on inquiries about the materiality of digital space, and its impact on the political, social, and cultural systems of today’s world. He has developed research, as well as artistic and cultural projects in the United States, Senegal, France, Spain, and Colombia. He is currently a professor at the visual arts department of the Javeriana University of Bogotá, and an advisor to Plataforma Bogotá, an interactive media lab for art, science, and technology.