Final Project Proposal
The final project is to create a performance piece inspired by the Fluxus performance workbook. I still want to link the work thus far to my theme of artificial intelligence and cyberpunk. One idea that has been on my mind is the voight kampff / baseline test from the Blade Runner films.
The test, a series of questions made to invoke an emotional response in order to tell whether the person in question is a Human or android. These questions are abstract and don’t necessarily link to each other. What separates Man from machine is our emotions and the ability to think abstractly on ourselves. A machine shouldn’t be able to think about such things, but then if it could would that then make it human?
The opening of the baseline is a quote from Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire.
And blood-black nothingness began to spin, a system of cells interlinked within, cells interlinked within cells interlinked, within one stem. And dreadfully distinct, against the dark, a tall white fountain played.
The continuation not said in the film
There’s one misprint — not that it matters much:
Mountain, not fountain. The majestic touch…Life Everlasting — based on a misprint!
I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,
And stop investigating my abyss?
But all at once it dawned on me that this
Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;
Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But topsy-turvical coincidence,
Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.
Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game,
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found.
Proposal
To recreate the baseline scene from Blade Runner by interviewing various people (in a safe setting) and asking them questions all while they complete certain tasks. Similar to the Fluxus Performance workbook and the way that’s set up. My hope is that each response vary in tone and emotion. I would then collage the videos together and end it with a question “Who’s Human and who’s Machine? Can you tell the difference?”
