Training Set (2022)
Clay, latex, silicone, oil and spray paint, smart speakers
30cm diameter x 4
Training Set is a 4 part interactive sculpture installation that explores the use of emerging voice assistant technologies to meet our complex human needs for structure, care and companionship by pushing current tropes of techno-capitalism into a not-so-distant speculative future.
(c) Elisa Georgi / (c) Sarah Ciston
Training Set Prototype 1 (Clay, silicone, latex, oil and spray paint, echo dot smart speaker, instructions on paper).
Training Set Prototype 1: virtual girlfriend Installation view at Another New Beginning group exhibition,
Stenkolsateljén Göteborg 2022
Historically under-recognised and un/underpaid feminised forms of labour are being simulated, simplified and packaged as a sellable product in the emerging fields of voice user interface design and natural language understanding/processing for smart home devices such as Amazon Alexa.
In Prototype #1, found Alexa “skills” are highlighted as examples of the trope of the virtual girlfriend. Exhibition visitors could activate a vocal response from the mouth sculpture by saying one of the example phrases listed on the wall beside it.
In Prototype #1, found Alexa “skills” are highlighted as examples of the trope of the virtual girlfriend. Exhibition visitors could activate a vocal response from the mouth sculpture by saying one of the example phrases listed on the wall beside it.
With support from Göteborgs Stad
Documentation of Training Set “conversation booths” and research materials,
various locations at ZK/U OPENHAUS, Berlin 2022.
Rosie domestic helper, ZK/U entrance hall
In a practice of mutual extraction with Amazon inc., a series of fictional AI personas were equipped with customised “skills“. They offer a range of partly fictional and partly real-world services that automate reproductive labour of various kinds: a virtual therapist, girlfriend, housekeeper and reproductive health assistant
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Visitors to Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (Berlin) were invited to talk to the sculptures which had concealed smart speaker devices inside them. Each scripted question from the menu triggered a customised response that blurred the lines between our present reality and a future in which we have fully accepted and adopted technology into the most intimate and private spheres of life.
(c) Elisa Georgi
Freja fertility assistant, ZK/U
Images (c) Elisa Georgi