Joanne Osuchukwu

The Human Condition

When I first made this piece, I intended for it to depict the secure attachment from attachment style theory. Sturdy geometric stability that begets peace in spite of cosmic uncertainty. But look at it long enough, it expands. It becomes the fragmented tale of the human condition: trying to exist in a world that keeps widening, keeps proliferating and moving faster than we can integrate it. Most of what governs our daily life is mental. Our minds, but also the inherited structures of other minds and circumstances that surround us.

Sun Tzu wrote that he could predict the outcome of war before it begins by studying the inputs, the terrain, the supply lines, the preparation of soldiers, the atmosphere. According to him, given enough relevant variables, the shape of what is coming may reveal itself.

We are not mechanical, but we've remained creatures of habit. Zoomed out longitudinal data, studied carefully, surfaces patterns that repeat themselves too often to be random. The recurring trajectories, the inputs that tend toward certain outcomes, the early signals of a life going off track… in a recursive world, there is so much pattern. If we can see the pattern, we have better intelligence to navigate. In turn, we may know what works, what tends to break, and at what point someone we love might be drifting somewhere they can't return from alone, so we can reach back in time.

Machine learning, utilized correctly, lets us do exactly this at scale. Ultimately the goal is prevention, or at the very least, more accurate and faster detection that doesn't further mystify what's already mysterious.