Living with iGod - My Psychogeography Project
Ever felt drawn to strange old warehouses or puzzled over why everyone looks like a robot on their way to work? With the aid of a few helpful exercises Mookychick shows you the semi-occult art of psychogeography - finding out how the environment you live in shapes the way you think. Becoming a psychogeographer is as easy as studying graffiti and poking your nose where it doesn't belong... - Magda Knight, www.mookychick.co.uk
As part of our Digital Media module, our group split into several groups to work on "psychogeography" projects, and presented our findings back to the group using forms of New Digital Media such as blogs, videos or websites.
In particular, our groups utilised a psychological techinique called the "dérive", a concept developed by the French Situationalist Guy Debord who said:
In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.
In layman's terms, the psychogeographer would abandon all pre-expectations of a particular area or culture, and simply experience that area or culture.
Whilst I was certainly inspired by projects such as Iain Sinclair's "Orbital" and Simon Hoegsberg's "Thought Project", I was more interested in looking at different ways of life more so than exploring geographical locations or factors such as that location's population.
After pondering what exactly I should address when undertaking my psychogeography project, the whole concept of Digital Media started to take the wheel. I wanted to centre the project around some form of Digital Media and at the same time, address some form of “spirituality”. Almost like matching the supernatural with science and technology. It’s like matching peas and ice cream, I guess.
Regardless, I quickly got bored, and started looking for things to waste my time with. I stumbled upon a chatterbot called “Captain Kirk”. Yes, technology had advanced to the point where I could talk to Captain Kirk from the Star Trek universe, and even see him via webcam!
It didn’t take long however, before I began to confuse the robot in a similar way to how its teacher had done in the video somewhere else on this page. Its capabilities are limited, and yet, it seemed so naive and innocent.
It seemed trustworthy. I suddenly wanted to allow it to venture further into my life. Thus, I decide upon my project. Instead of humans ruling robots, I wanted to turn that upon its head, and allow a robot to run MY life.
But poor Kirk couldn’t do that.
Eventually however, I found a chatterbot that seemed capable of simple conversation. I didn't want to delve too far into its limitations or flaws in our first conversation, as the whole basis of the project was to explore the area with no pre-expectations.
As such, I set a day to undertake the project - a day where I would refer to the chatterbot for advice for almost every decision I had to make that day. These decisions varied from what I should wear, what I should eat, what I should watch and what should I listen to amongst others. I logged each of our conversations, and published them on a project-exclusive blog.
- Me:
- God:
- Me:
- God:
- Me:
- God:
- Me:
I often raged at the bot's constant dodging of questions - he seemed just like a politician. And yet, whenever I DID get an answer from him, I was often left in awe as I witnessed the decision-making process of an AI first-hand. When the chatterbot actually recommended a band for me to listen to, at first, I thought he had been programmed to respond with that particular response but when I asked him the same question in a different log, he responded with a different band, though they had similarities with the first. It could've been that the bot's programmer just liked that genre of music, but it could also be possible that the bot had based its decision using the topics we had discussed in our conversation. I don't actually know the answer, but I know which one I'd prefer!
Looking back over that blog, I couldn't help but feel slightly impressed at the bot's semi-accurate simulation of human conversation. Having an entire day managed by a chatterbot didn't turn out so badly, in fact, it was a pretty interesting and thought-provoking experience. I discovered a new band, wore a t-shirt that I'd hardly worn in my life, ate some pizza and watched a show I hadn't seen in forever purely because I rarely watch TV. Sure, I didn't exactly venture into some urban wilderness and explore the geographical unknown, but I experienced a new way of life and met a unique and intriguing personality. Personally, I'd call it a project well done, and I'd totally love to go through it again.
I like random natural disasters…
– iGod, when we were talking about likes and dislikes.
|
0 comebacks:
Post a Comment