Process Documentation

PROCESS
DDOCUMENTATION

DATA DESIGN
COMMERCIAL PRACTICE
2 . 3

CHRIS GEURTSEN
TRANSFORMATION DESIGN

PROCESS
DOCUMENTATION

DATA DESIGN
COMMERCIAL PRACTICE
2 . 3

CHRIS GEURTSEN
TRANSFORMATION DESIGN

PROCESS
DDOCUMENTATION

DATA DESIGN
COMMERCIAL PRACTICE
2 . 3

CHRIS GEURTSEN
TRANSFORMATION DESIGN

DATABASE

UNTOUCHED

ALGORITHM

INSPIRATION

Davide Quayola is the designer/developer behind these two installations. Quayola employs technology as lens to explore the tensions and equilibriums between seemingly opposing forces: the real and artificial, figurative and abstract, old and new.
The idea of creating unfinished objects that never reach a final shape was major inspiration to me. The process clearly visible on display is interesting because in the context of creating algorithms, it's never going to be perfect nor finished.

Sculpture Factory

Unfinished Sculptures

Can't Help Myself

This work is by Sun Yuan & Peng Yu. Yuan & Yu employ an industrial robot, visual-recognition sensors, and software systems to examine our increasingly automated global reality, one in which territories are controlled mechanically and the relationship between people and machines is rapidly changing. In a way, algorithms are similar robots to me. Continuously categorising and all for our sake. Owned by humans to serve humans.

Franchise Freedom

Franchise Freedom is a performative art installation by Studio DRIFT exploring the relationship between man, nature and technology. An autonomously flying swarm of hundreds of drones questions the human concept of freedom and social construct. It invites you to view a poetic side of technical innovation and connect back with nature. Based on a biological algorithm from over 10 years of research into starlings’ flight behaviour, the artwork stretches boundaries between nature and technology and generates an impactful social connection.

As a Transformation Design student, I'm always interested in changes in society or in its inhabitants. Alienation is something I gravitate towards and right now, it's everywhere. More so than usually, we can see our fragile systems breaking apart in front of our eyes.
This current discourse sparked interest in gaining new perspectives on social well-being, individualism and the value of having a healthy mental state. To quote Yoah Noah Harari;

“Feelings are the best method for making decisions: making it the best algorithm in the world.”

Feelings and algorithms are an interesting fine line to tip-toe on, especially now. We're currently used to knowing that AI and computers won't detect much of our emotion. Have we gotten too comfortable or shouldn't we let computers try to make sense of it all? If this would change, how would this influence our lives? Would we be able to cope with algorithms knowing when we're having a bad day? When would an algorithm detecting our moods become an invasive thing or are we already witnessing this in present day with AI?

Besides the emotional aspects, from a medical perspective there's lots of downsides to a 1,5 meter society. Obsessively cleaning our hands and our environments way more than usual isn't exactly that healthy for us. Humans share bacteria in order to strengthen our immune systems, which is becoming harder to do now. Being too clean can actually be a bad thing.

We're drifting into a new unknown era which none of us know will do for us as a species and as a society. Therefore, my goal with UNTOUCHED is to bring humans closer to one other as well as being more intimate with our systems.

MOTIVATION

Following up on Harari's quote saying "feelings are the best algorithm in the world", I believe that we can help each other by creating a system that looks out for our feelings. Now more than ever, I've noticed a change. Even though we already share a lot online, we don't always want to share every little moment of sadness. Now that we're self-isolating, some of us are bottling up emotion which theoretically could lead us into a global depression eventually.

What does it mean for us if AI is able to detect our vulnerability?

Based on our shared database, I detected some things. For instance, most of the items are replaced communication for what could otherwise have been real life interaction. Another thing is that there's lots of emotion to detect. Is there an increase in vulnerability or are we starting to out our emotions differently? How does quarantine affect our emotional state person to person? Are we losing a bit of our humanity or are we gaining some?

No-one can deny the tremendous effects this lockdown has on our mental well-being. Whether it unfolds positively or in a negative way, we're forced to put a vital part of our very essence on hold. Social beings forced to stay at home is something that's taking a toll on many of us, and we're not even close to seeing all of the results. How big will this hit be? Further along the line, in a post corona society, how would we cope with the lack of touch or social gatherings? And maybe even more important, how are we going to recover and also prepare for a next pandemic to come?

Therefore I have created an algorithm that looks out for us. UNTOUCHED is an algorithm that picks up negative emotions and stores this data and updates you with self-analytics. UNTOUCHED is coded to pick up on certain indicators that could mean negative emotion. When it does, it will collect symbols and start sending these out to your selected people, if desired. UNTOUCHED will also collect these symbols itself to gain self-analyses for the user.

POST CORONA SOCIETY

Library of symbols, based on human emotion

Sadness

Anxiety

Anger

Horror

Disgust

Craving

Fear

Apathy