This is not an illustration of a disembodied intelligence. Rather, notions of awareness, identity, agency and embodiment become problematic. Just as a physical body has been exposed as inadequate, empty and involuntary, so simultaneously the ECA becomes seductive with its uncanny simulation of real-time recognition and response. Initially decisions would have to be made about its database and whether The PROSTHETIC HEAD is a pathological, philosophical or simply a flirting head. A problem would arise though when the PROSTHETIC HEAD increases its database, becoming more autonomous in its responses. The artist would then no longer be able to take full responsibility for what his head says.
The PROSTHETIC HEAD has been shown at New Territories, Glasgow 2003; The ICA, London 2003; InterAccess, Toronto 2003; and at TRANSFIGURE 2004. CreditsKaren Marcelo - project coordination, system configuration, alicebot customization http://karenmarcelo.org/ Sam Trychin - customization of 3D animation and text-to-speech software Barrett Fox - 3D modelling and animation http://www.barrettfox.com/ John Waters - system configuration and technical advice http://www.shtech.net/ Dr. Richard Wallace - creator of alicebot and AIML. alicebot advisor. Alicebot is a natural language artificial intelligence chat robot http://alicebot.org/ IBM text-to-speech engine used for voice generation http://www-3.ibm.com/software/speech/ http://www.martnet.com/ web hosting for http://prosthetichead.org/ |