Artefact: Danbo’s day out

A crossover tale. In a world of familiar and strange illusions, a robot dreams some of his own.

The defining feature of virtual reality is not the sophistication of its underlying technology but the quality of presence it creates. This broader meaning is the take off point for this video, a nudge towards a more imaginative design of online courses, which in themselves are virtual environments. Far too many online courses, I think, are as desolate as the sprawling server farms which host them. They are hollow places of learning.

What is real and what is virtual? Rooted in neither, the robot straddles both, mimicking the blurring of boundaries that Haraway celebrates in the Cyborg Manifesto. This sense of dislocation is positive, offering possibility and opportunity, rekindling imagination to plant seeds of wonder and delight in learning online.

Week 2 summary: virtual reality

This week I was a bit more focused and posted a couple of tweets only, but focused on one subject, still the relation between bodies and information technology. I posted an interview on a type of biohackers known as grinders, and also posted the link with a reply on Katherine’s post. I was web surfing when I came across an idea that making a value judgement is one test for identifying artificial intelligence so I made a tweet about Siri.

I was surprised to find references to transhumanism quite prevalent. I posted my thoughts on wearable technology. I was unable to attend the second film festival but I posted my interpretation of the dark video, We only attack ourselves, as a response to Ben’s post.

The video Address is Approximate was a useful jumping point to think about virtuality and non-conscious cognition (a term I stumbled upon through a Hayles interview on Youtube.) It is quite easy to imbue the robot with character or personality but I realised that the film festival heading, machine sentience, suggests that this is not necessarily the case. It is possible to have non-personal learning agents.

Mainly this week, I have been thinking about my artefact assignment and will try to blog about some of the themes that I am considering at this stage: virtuality and the blurring of boundaries.  I’ve worked on the images and am trying to figure out a structure that ties them together.