OVERVIEW | ARTWORKS | ARTISTS | DAC
Artwork Description:
Sarah is the digital doppelgänger of Sara (the actress). In addition to capturing her videos, her mood data was also collected. This emotional data was mapped to a group of perceptrons to synthesize emotional responses, which were tuned to manifest Sarah’s personality. Totally 87 video clips were driven by perceptrons to express Sarah’s emotions. As a result, digital replications of Sarah are permanently extracted into a digital dimension. This digital world becomes authentic due to the weaknesses of human nature. Sensory perceptions based on psychology models intertwine the simulated soul with the emotional dependencies of the real world, mirroring our own reality. Similar to our world, virtual bodies compete with each other, experiencing love and hatred in eternity.
Technical Information:
Sarah tech demo from yamin xu on Vimeo.
Relation to the Theme:
Considering the essence of art is mental experiences, the direction of study is led to an exploration of cognitive psychology. It offers ways to synthesize personality in the field of artistic creation. Shared psychological models between humans and machines open avenues for mutual and empathic emotional experiences, which blur virtual and real. While a machine having subjective feelings would imply consciousness, the issue itself is fraught with controversy. By analogy with the Turing test, it doesn’t seem to matter whether the machine can experience emotions; the presence of emotions in the machine is what matters. Instead, the focus is on the ability of machines to demonstrate emotional capabilities. Based on this grammatical language, we created Sarah’s digital clones by simulating psychology models. Different from the “perfection” pursued by engineering, we deliberately replicate the weaknesses of human nature to create an “imperfect” artificial intelligence society. Through participation and interaction, this imperfection resonates with us and allows us to reflect on ourselves. If we could create a world, should we create it in our image?