When beginning a new major project, especially one that is self-guided, I like to start by first going over some recent projects and evaluating them in light of months of hindsight and continued thought. My most recent work ‘Misplaced Trust’ I thought was successful in a number of ways. I think it succeeded in being lightly provocative. The technical aspects all worked to my satisfaction and at the show it was plenty popular and I had some interesting discussions about it. People liked the printed receipts that the machine produced and people engaged with them after leaving the piece, comparing them with one-another.
The receipt printed by the mock voting machine .
It is an odd order of events however as I feel like the message I wanted to carry with the piece has only solidified since the show finished. If I could go back, I think I would title the piece ‘Echochamber’ as I think this is what the piece succeeded in demonstrating above all. By giving people a printout of their place on the political spectrum, it surfaced that plenty of groups who engaged with the piece had similar positions. In effect the piece took the digital echo chambers that form when people are pushed by social networks towards other people with similar views, and exposed them in real life.
If I were to remake the piece there is plenty I could strip back on, perhaps even the aesthetic of the voting booth as the container for the piece.
Another fault I have with the piece is the necessity for those engaging with the piece to read and understand articles and graphic elements on a screen. This is so far the only time I have used a screen in a work as a means of direct interaction with the piece. It has been interesting to learn the limitations of a piece of technology like this, much in the same way that I have been hesitant to revisit VR work after my first attempt at it. In hindsight the touch screen to me almost feels like a cop-out, although nothing springs to mind which could replace them in this scenario.
It is similar to my recoiling from VR because of the pre-conceptions people have about putting on a headset and separating themselves from the real world. I will think much more in future about the visible (consumer?) technology in my work.
In general I want to move in the direction of the work I made in first year ‘Workplace Anxiety’ which brought physical machines into the social setting of a workplace to represent ‘machines’, specifically AI and machine learning algorithms replacing people we previously thought irreplaceable by computers. Where this piece shone I thought was it’s accessibility. Anybody could approach the playfully talking machines and have them turn in their direction and glare; and get the same feeling of being cast out. I hope in my next project I can evoke a similar level of feeling with something equally simple seeming if, potentially more monumental in scale.