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Can I Interest You in Anything All of the Time 
2021

This two-part sound work explores our current and future possible experiences with disembodied voice assistants through the perspective of my 3-year-old

nephew.

 

Part one makes apparent how he started thinking of Alexa as a Ghost. One of the days, my sister called for Amazon's voice assistant Alexa to play a fish video for him. The responding female voice, which seemed to be coming out of no physical body, scared my nephew to bits. Communication without a physical human body became a point of inquiry.

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Install view of Can I Interest You in Anything All of the Time from exhibition Now That The World Is Ending, Let’s Get Together for The Wrong Biennale at 1.Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery, 2022

Part two is the voice of an imagined near-future Alexa. One that could be more intimate, more friendly, more caring and more invasive. One that could be obviously present at all times more obvious than it is now. We might more readily accept the presence of an anthropomorphic-machine-voice-companion instead of a complicated human companion. And so in part two, Alexa's omnipresence is imagined through her long stretches of human-like breathing, through which I question the blurring boundaries between the real and the simulation.

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Install view of Can I Interest You in Anything All of the Time from exhibition Now That The World Is Ending, Let’s Get Together for The Wrong Biennale at 1.Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery, 2022

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