See you in a bit (2018)

Material - Plywood, monitor, webcam, arduino
Size - 600 .1200 .900 (mm)
Completion - 2018

Exhibition -
‘Working in progress show 2018, Royal College of Art , UK (8/2/2018 - 11/2/2018)

“See you in a bit”

This project is about the disconnect between human and computer languages.

Humans are no longer make decisions alone, computers are beginning to communicate with us on an everyday human level. On the other hand, our response to computers has often been inefficient and indirect, the mutual limits of language and understanding between humans and machines has resulted in a mismatch between human expression and computer expression.

Computers are now designed to listen to and respond to human speech in more naturalistic ways. Digital personal assistants, such as Siri and Alexa use these nuances to convey a whimsical sense of humanity.

At the same time idiomatic spoken language can have ambiguous meanings. For example, people often use the phrase “See you in a bit” as a vague half-promise to alleviate awkward goodbyes

What happens if computers were to ask us tied them a favour by giving them more time to complete their operations? To a computer, “See you in a bit” is a vague expression, difficult to understand correctly. What types of learning programs do we need to teach computers our human politeness?

Algorithm. TD