User:Cristinac

Research&Writing

Best wishes

what Best wishes is a series of postcards.

how On the postcards are screen shots that colleagues and friends have taken of themselves while visiting their favourite websites.

why Heterotopia is a term coined by Michel Foucault that refers to spaces of otherness, which are neither here nor there. Examples of such spaces are the moment when you see yourself in the mirror or the duration of a phone call. Interacting with technology creates a similar space, a different reality that we switch to. The postcards function as souvenirs from virtual locations. The entire study is based on trying to find a physical form for a virtual environment, a bridge between realities, or proof for heterotopia. Hence, the outcomes are printed. Another reason for proceeding thus is that it is more common to find oddly designed websites or applications than it is to find printed matter, seeing as there are more restrictions are costs to the latter. Graphic design is used here as a vehicle for provoking critical thought by taking familiar objects out of context.

Conversations with Cleverbot

what Conversations with Cleverbot is the second of a three book project on the theme of information overload. A recurring motif in the books is the progression into the unknown. Their format was specifically chosen to illustrate the same concept: the first book is A3, the second A4 and the third A5.

how In order to communicate the finds that were made through research, I made a book consisting of a dialogue I had with Cleverbot, in which various theories were explained.

why Cleverbot is a web application that uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to converse with humans. The difference between Cleverbot and other chat bots is that the former learns from the responses it receives, thus it could be described as the collective consciousness of the Internet.

The Library of Babel

what The third book of the Information Overload project is based on The Library of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, in which the universe consists of one immense library. The book contains 410 pages, which is a direct reference to the same restriction that all the books in the Library of Babel possess.

how For the third book, I asked a friend to create a program that would randomly reorder the words of any given text, after which I passed The Library of Babel through the program 410 times. Each version was then placed on one A2 document, projected onto the wall and photographed. As time passed, one could clearly notice how light settled into the room, and the 410 photographs went from clear text on a dark background to blurred text on a light background, suggesting progression into the unknown. The resulting images were then printed in an A5 format and left as loose sheets. Randomly hidden amongst them was one title card that read ‘The Library of Babel’.

why The Library of Babel is a perfect metaphor for the anxiety caused by being subjected to an endless stream of information. All the books in the library are 410 pages long and contain every possible ordering of just a few characters, which leads to most of them being unreadable.