How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Understanding ‘alien’ thought

Abstract Initially coined by Weizenbaum in 1976, ‘alien' thought refers to the radical difference with which ‘thinking machines’ approach process of thinking. The contemporary paradox over-determination and indeterminacy—caused largely algorithmic decision-making civic realm—makes these differences both more entangled difficult navigate. In this essay, I trace Leibniz Turing’s axiomatic procedures instrumental rationality, indeterminacy mid-twentieth century co-development computers neurosciences advance following proposition: understanding alien requires incomputability, temporal swarming, inscriptive-significational errance. Understanding phenomena turn thinking doing, distributed thinking, ontological indeterminacy. All are present machinic operations as well twentieth experimental artistic practices artists such Duchamp, Cage, Xu. These rely on indeterminate function diagrammatic machines. A machine is neither abstract nor particular; an idea that determining supreme instance, infrastructure last but rather instantiates a real yet come (Deleuze Guattari thousand plateaus: capitalism schizophrenia: Trans. Massumi B, University Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987). used entry into its correlates—infinity complexity—by way aesthetic analogy.