It’s Time We Talked

Digital Alchemy: Future Technology Products Inspired by Diverse Voices in Science Fiction (2020)
Interactive Art
Supported by EU Creative Europe Programme of the European Union Grant
A Feral Labs Project
Solo Exhibition at Catch (DK) ’21
Interactivity at NordiCHI ’22
Group Show at Currents ’23

This installation features a pair of devices known as Quantum Communication Crystals which allow the user to communicate with a version of themself from another quantum timeline. In other words, the crystal allows you to speak with another you—one who made different decisions. Always wondered what your life might’ve amounted to if you’d taken a different fork somewhere along the way? What might your life have been like if you’d studied science instead of art, or married your High School crush, or been born into a better or worse situation? The quantum communication crystal allows you to find out! The objects are based on the Plaga Interworld Signaling Mechanism prisms found in Ted Chiang’s short story “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” in which a group of addicts become addicted to speaking with their quantum selves. The pair of crystals displayed show a conversation between the artist and the artist’s deep fake double. A generative adversarial network or GAN was used to create a deep fake video of the content for the 2nd crystal, producing a video in which the artist (themself) has never said the words you are hearing.