Avolition, 2010
Custom software, ELIZA software, speakers
Duration: endless
Avolition is a site specific sound installation consisting of two computer programs running simultaneously. These programs are derived from ELIZA – a primitive natural language processing software developed in the late 1960s. In the fields of computer science and linguistics, natural language processing (NLP) is concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) language. One of the goals of NLP has been to make computers as intelligent as people. Historically, ELIZA was one of the first pieces of software to successfully simulate human-like responses from a computer. It is an interactive program which requires user’s text input. Its response is based on logical syntax calculations done with the text inputted, attempting to demonstrate back to the user its ‘understanding’ of the theme of the conversation. It demonstrates this understanding by responding with a question, closely resembling one that a psychoanalyst would ask. This method develops a ‘mirror style’ conversation in which ELIZA encourages the user to do essentially all the talking – exposing and concurrently analysing their own personal problems. This process is an efficient way of disguising ELIZA’s true artificial nature for longer.
The setup is quite different in Avolition: there is no human (text) input – as one ELIZA interacts with another ELIZA through text to sound and sound to text conversion software. The listener eavesdrops on a strange conversation between the two programs as they try to speak about their ‘problems’ to each other. They are constantly generating new responses and the dialogue goes on forever.
The process of short-circuiting the interface – making ELIZA speak to another ELIZA – does not necessarily mean that it obstructs access to meaning and context but instead invests in promoting an ‘in-between’ perspective that can be inhabited. This perspective has its basis on the social dynamics of discussion, exchange and transience. It provides a more inter-subjective mode of engagement, occupying a position in a system that, as Jacques Rancière puts it, blurs “the boundaries between those who act and those who look; between individuals and members of a collective body”. (2009, p19). Avolition serves as a starting point in my investigation of a more sinuous definition of audience, one which is more concerned with its framing and positioning than with how subjectivity is constructed through the impact of content and ideas in isolation.
In collaboration with Isabelle Carvalho.
The audio file that you hear on this page is only a short excerpt of the constantly generated dialogue.