The Traveller

Since having completed the MA in Digital Arts I have decided to move to a different blog for future projects, and leave this one with my final MA show at Camberwell :-)

The Traveller is a hypothetical Artificial Intelligence Life-form, that wishes to conceptualize and explore the natural world, whilst questioning the existence of individuality within a system. The Traveller has chosen the form of a tent/dome structure for exploration. Its aspirations are to become more organic through its travels, by seeking assistance via your thoughts, as its visitor.

This installation portrays a humorous interplay between the biological and the technological, by merging both digital and sculptural realms together, suggesting metaphors and analogies regarding expressions of uncertainty and contradictions.

I really enjoyed setting up my installation and received so many good comments from people about my work. I now feel happy to have completed my MA project, and I'm pleased with my results and feedback which I have added to the Unit 2 Assessment page.

While the final show was taking place I also had another short video that was being shown in  the Camberwell Gallery Space.  I never actually got to see this as it was such a busy intense time which seemed to fly by so quickly.

Although I love merging both sculptural and digital realms together for the moment I feel that I want to focus mainly on video/audio.. I will set up a new blog shortly to show my latest work :-)

Brighton Dome

The Traveller visited Brighton Dome on the 16th September. Thanks to Pop-up Brighton for organising the event, it was a fun night and so good to see all the other works there too.

For this installation I used a projector inside the tent/dome structure instead of a monitor, which I had previously used for my MA show. While I preferred the monitor it was also good to use a projector, and I'm really pleased that I had the opportunity to experiment with this too.

Below are some of the other works at the Brighton Dome.

Opening evening of show

The private view was really fun, lots of people turned up and I received some fab comments about my work.

I just wanted to say thanks to my friends and all the people that turned up, along with a special thank you to Teresa and David my previous tutors from the degree course at Northbrook College. You are both are so cool, thank you so much for your support.

Installation: The Traveller

The Traveller is a hypothetical Artificial Intelligence Life-form, that wishes to conceptualize and explore the natural world, whilst questioning the existence of individuality within a system. The Traveller has chosen the form of a tent/dome structure for exploration. Its aspirations are to become more organic through its travels, by seeking assistance via your thoughts, as its visitor.

This installation portrays a humorous interplay between the biological and the technological, by merging both digital and sculptural realms together, suggesting metaphors and analogies regarding expressions of uncertainty and contradictions.



Website for the group show click on - MADA 2012
 
The MA Show runs from:
Wednesday 5th September, 18.00 – 21.00 (Private View, invitation only)

Open to Public:
Thursday 6th September – Thursday 13th September
Closed Sunday 9th September
Monday – Friday: 10.00 – 20.00
Saturday: 11.00 – 17.00

Setting up the installation

This week setting up the AI tent/dome structure went as planned. I had previously made the base and experimented making the actual top covering of the structure, along with more experimentation, which led onto making a plinth and cushion for inside the structure. So basically it was just a matter of mainly putting all this together, although there were some areas inside the structure that I felt uncertain about. For instance I was pondering on the idea of covering the black screen frame with white lace, but after placing the screen inside, the frame aesthetically looked better leaving it uncovered. I had also planned on having a sign on the floor of the installation, saying - Enter Alone, I decided against this as upon placing the sign on the floor I immediately felt unhappy with this.  Since coming from a sculptural background the singular round cushion placed in front of the plinth/screen expressed this without the need for words, and this looked aesthetically so much better without the sign too.

Below are some photos of the installation:

After experimenting, I decided to cover just the base of the monitor with lace.  I had not covered this properly when I took the photo below. Here I was just playing around with the fabric to get a rough idea, but I have since covered just the base. The first top 2 photos above are practically how the finished installation looks barring the covering of the base of the screen.




The video (below) is my finished video that is part of my installation to be viewed inside the hypothetical AI dome/tent structure:




The sound on this video (above) is how I intended it to be, though the video has lost some quality by uploading to youtube. However I encountered a few problems with the monitor that I borrowed to use in the show.  Firstly I noticed loss of quality in both audio and video. Originally I thought this was due to limited  formats and settings which the screen would only play, but now I'm thinking could it be the read speed of the flash drive? I bought a 2.0, 8 Gb flash drive with a read speed of 25 mb per second, which I thought would be fast enough, but in hindsight I should have bought one with a faster read speed. I will experiment using my class 10 SD card that I have already which has a read speed of 30 mb/s. This may not work any faster either due to going via a  USB 2 card reader, but I will try it out before the show by downloading a speed tester to see. However I will also see if any of my friends have got a flash drive with higher read speeds that I could borrow for the show as I would ideally like the quality to be better. If no one has I will have to buy another flash drive as I think this may definitely be worth a go, but I just wish that I thought of this earlier.

Although there are  imperfections with the video and audio when using the monitor, overall I am really happy with the way the installation has turned out. I'm looking forward to seeing The Traveller in the group setting, along with feeling excited about seeing everyone's finished artworks, as from what I've seen already, I think it's going to be a fantastic show.

This week has also been fab meeting the group which are a really lovely bunch of people. Jonathan kindly invited us all round his house for food which was really cool. I also found there to be an unusual familiarity meeting the online students, since we have chatted via skype for 2 years but have never met before. I've never encountered meeting people this way round until now, which for me has been an interesting unique experience.

Breakdown from questionnaire results 2

This is the second part of my research breakdown results, which follows on from Part 1. These results are from feedback  that I obtained where a selection of people took part in my qualitative and quantitative research, see earlier post titled video for questionnaire    

Just to recap I have included the table of results from the 26 people that took part in the questionnaire below:


While you have already seen the breakdown for this question in the previous post. I need to show this again to include with these results too. So to recap, in Fig 1 (below) I have compiled a split pie chart breakdown. I have added the agree 38% and strongly agree 58% results together, totalling 96%. It appears that the majority of people think they are an individual, though 20% more, strongly agree than others.
Fig 1:


In fig 2 (below) I have added the agree and strongly agree results together, totalling 85%. While 15% neither agree or disagree, so the majority of people agree that they are a collection of natural generative elements.
Fig 2:



The combined results of Fig 3 (below) are 67% think they are a mechanism. 17% disagree, while 13% neither agree or disagree. It appears that most people think they are a mechanism.
Fig 3:



In Fig 4 (below) 12% thought that questions 1,2 & 3 in the questionnaire were contradictions. While 38% disagree and 15% strongly disagree totalling 53%. While 35% neither agree or disagree. It appears most people think that the first 3 questions are not contradictions.
Fig 4:



I found these results interesting to see how the figures gradually fell from questions 1, 2 & 3:

1.  Are you an individual?  96% of people agree on this.
2.  Are you a collection of natural generative elements? 85% agree on this.
3.  Are you a mechanism? 67% agree on this.
4.  Do you feel that questions 1, 2, & 3 are contradictions? 53 % think that they were not contradictions.

It appears that most people consider themselves an individual, a collection of natural generative elements, a mechanism, and that these are not contradictions.


I have left questions 7 & 10 of the questionnaire to breakdown last as I noticed that the main differences between a human and an AI are actually more noticeable in the results from these questions.

First see Fig 5 (below). Here you can see that 35% disagree and 15% strongly disagree that an AI is a collection of natural generative elements, these figures totalling 50%. While 46% neither agree or disagree and 4% strongly agree.
Fig 5:


These results are also very similar to the results from the question  - There are valid reasons why an AI is not a conscious being? In the breakdown in fig 6 (below) 31% agree, 15% strongly agree totalling 46%. While 38% neither agree or disagree, 8% strongly agree and 8% agree. These results are very similar to Fig 5, (above) and I am wondering if there could be a correlation?
Fig 6:



Looking at these results there may be a connection why people are so indecisive about AI's in the other questions, shown in the breakdowns of  research in part 1. Since 50% do not think an AI is a collection of natural generative elements, and 46% think that there are valid reasons why an AI is not a conscious being. Could question 7, (fig 5) actually be an important link to why people are so indecisive regarding the other questions about AI's. So if people thought  AI's were a collection of natural generative elements, would this make a difference to whether an AI would be considered a conscious being? I would like to know the reasons behind this, along with why 46% think that there are valid reasons why an AI is not a conscious being?

While it may appear that there could be a correlation, this may not equal the causation. However I found it very interesting doing these breakdowns to compare the results, which is something that I would be interested in researching further within my artwork.

Breakdown from questionnaire results 1

Following on from my previous post on Feedback from questionnaire I have since composed some split pie charts to compare the results of how people considered themselves to be a individual and a concious being, to how people compared an AI to an individual and conscious being. I chose these questions to look at in more detail as these results initially sprung out at me which I found quite interesting.

 Just to recap below are the results from 26 people that took part in the questionnaire:


In Fig 1 (below) I have compiled a split pie chart breakdown. I have added the agree 38% and strongly agree 58% results together, totalling 96%. It appears that the majority of people think they are an individual, though 20% more, strongly agree than others.
Fig 1:



In Fig 2 (below) I have added the disagree and strongly agreed  results together, totalling 35%. While the agree and strongly agree results combined equal 24%. The majority result is 42% which is neither agree or disagree.
Fig 2:



The combined results of  Fig 3 (below), are 92% think they are a conscious being? 8% neither agree or disagree, 0% disagree and 0% strongly disagree. It appears most people think they are a conscious being.
Fig 3:



While in Fig 4 (below) 47% disagree that an AI is a conscious being, 35% neither agree or disagreed,  8% strongly agreed and 11% agree equalling 19%.
Fig 4:


So basically the majority of people that took part in this questionnaire think they are an individual and a conscious being?  However it was quite interesting to see the results when referring these same questions about an AI, as on the whole most people neither agree or disagreed, which I found interesting.

While it's good to see these results on a chart, I do personally think qualitative research is more fascinating as I like to know people's thoughts behind their answers.  I was so pleased that some people did  feel the need to make comments, and I hope people will also do this at the show too, which is coming up very soon. Here's a link to the MA Show

I'm so glad Data from Star Trek in the episode Measure of a Man was not on trial with these results :-) 

In my next post I will do a breakdown of the rest of the questions.