How do you feel about your computer? Do you love your iPhone? Have you ever cried when a piece of technology dies?
Did it die… or did it just stop working?
iBleed will be the result of my studies into our emotional interactions with technology whilst studying for my MA course at Lancaster University.
A series of short animations will be created, each exploring a facet of our relationship with modern technology.
In scientific circles, our humanisation of computers is referred to as ethopoeia. You can read a particularly interesting study here, called ‘How Human is Your Computer‘ by J.P. Charlton. This paper acted as a catalyst for iBleed. It made me wonder about the human qualities I attach to my technology. It’s not just anger and frustration – negative emotions when the technology fails – but also nostalgia for the experience I have shared and grief for the gadgets that have died.
I’m fairly sure I’m not the only person who feels like this… these animations are a way for me to find others who relate to this. An out-reach programme, if you will.
One particular area of interest for me is video games. I used to make them, and I think that games are at the forefront of our emotional interaction with technology. We inhabit, briefly a digital world where our actions matter and we can form bonds, not only with other human controlled characters but with the ones that are completely digital… I also see the iconography, the design and the imagery as an art form, a view not shared by everyone. Perhaps it is a generational issue.
And talking of computer art… I’ve noticed an interesting parallel between the imagery of the early 8-bit games and Russian Constructivist art – The large expanses of solid primary colours held in geometric shapes and the judicious use of monochrome dithering.
"Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge." Designed by El Lissitzky 1919... and surprisingly similar to the triangle based imagery of Space Invaders and Asteroids
Another area of interest, and the subject of one of the animations is our relationship with computers in the workplace. I’m interested in examining whether they have passed the point of being mere tools and have become our colleagues – at times competent but often the office scapegoat for when things go wrong.
Similarly, I want to address the relationship we have with the people who created this technology and the way that their emotional interactions with the technology influence ours. Take Alan Turing and his test… A theoretical assessment for evaluating how human a computer can be. There is an irony in this though. Turing was often thought of as a computer in a human body, not just because of his impressive capabilities with mathematics and logic, but also because of his poor social skills and discomfort with human interaction. The implication being that perhaps, under the Turing test conditions, Alan Turing, one of the founding fathers of computers, would fail his own test.
The "standard interpretation" of the Turing Test, in which player C, the interrogator, is tasked with trying to determine which player - A or B - is a computer and which is a human. The interrogator is limited to using the responses to written questions in order to make the determination.
iBleed will seek to explore these themes. Sometimes they will form the subject of the animation whilst at other points they will inform the imagery used whilst discussing others.
The animations themselves will be available on as many different forms of technology as possible, both online and off – from the internet and computers to mobile phones and even more low-tech formats.
And importantly, will I give credit to my computer and colleague for enabling me to create these pieces?