Posthuman Rituals

In Mirror Ritual, a circular mirror conceals a machine vision camera that detects human faces. Once a face is detected, a neural network performs emotion classification of the viewer, based only on their facial expression. The classified emotion is then used as the basis for a unique machine generated poem. The poem appears on the mirror’s surface for as long as you look at it. If you look away, the poem disappears forever.

Message Ritual uses a domestic lamp with built-in microphones to listen in to household conversations. A speech-to-text system transcribes those conversations from which key topics of conversation are extracted. These topics are used as a basic for custom machine generated poetry that is sent to each member of the lamp’s household upon waking each morning. Over time the lamp learns about the topics of conversation and adjusts its poetry accordingly.

For Worn Ritual, individuals confide a personal story or painful memory to the artist, who then uses this story as the basis for a bespoke machine generated poem. Selecting the right poem may take many iterations between artist and the AI system. Once a final poem is selected, a significant phrase is hand-stamped onto an aluminium bracket, that is then gifted back to the person who shared their story.

Dr Rajcic’s work is strongly informed by theories of posthumanist philosophy, in particular Karen Barad’s theory of Agential Realism. Theory not only informed the design practice, but also shaped the design and research methodologies applied to investigating what these artefacts become as they are put out into the world. This involved taking a “diffractive reading” approach to collected data, as well as the deliberate consideration of all agents in the assemblage; not solely participants, but the designers, researchers, and other influences.

You can read more about this research in the publications listed below.