Submitted by Ewa Trebacz on December 1, 2020 - 5:15pm
"Voices+Voids: Reclaiming and Transcoding Our Data as Performance" the artistic collaboration between Afroditi Psarra (DXARTS), Audrey Desjardins (Design), and Bonnie Whiting (Music) which was presented through a website launch, a moderated discussion and an online performance organized by the Jacob Lawrence Gallery and curated by Emily Zimmerman is featured on the Seattle Channel:
https://www.seattlechannel.
As voice assistants like Alexa and Siri become nearly ubiquitous, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies are increasingly integrated in our lives, listening to our private conversations, and responding to our queries with automated replies. What does it mean that we’ve become familiar with these non-human interactions? What is the labor that goes into creating and supporting them? What are their limitations?
Voices and Voids responds to these questions and contradictions through a series of interdisciplinary, virtual performances and vignettes that challenge AI and ML technologies and consider the ways in which they corroborate the impact of Late Capitalism and the Anthropocene. The research project, which began in 2019 and continues through December, seeks to reclaim and ultimately transcode voice interaction data through embodied experiments that combine design, data-driven art, cyber crafts, found-object and traditional percussion instruments, spoken word, and movement.