Google taught me how to be human
My work in the Uncanny Valley show at Hardware Gallery, as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival.
Google taught me how to be human was made in response to an article about a ‘Germinoid’ – an incredibly humanistic robot. The article includes videos about the robot’s breathing scheme, making and shaking its hand, and its first smile. (view the article here)
In response to this, these mock instruction manuals use text and diagrammatic imagery taken from Google and Wiki-How, explaining how to carry out these actions that we consider entirely natural.
The instructions are layered over old circuit diagrams to put them in the same realm as mechanical or electronic processes and devices, creating a complex and contradictory merging of instinctive actions that don’t require teaching, and formulaic instructions.
By playfully treating second nature behaviours and instinctive concepts of social etiquette as mechanistic operations, this work insists that there are certain elements of human behaviour which cannot be expressed by machines, and questions the future possibilities of what it means to be human as we become increasingly dependant on technology.
