London based digital artist Kevin Carter's work focuses on the relationship between society and the utopian promise of technology, in particular the desire for seamless interaction between humans and technology based systems.
From a critical point of view this relationship might be understood as a spatial problem, based on a belief that intelligence resides within a technological system, rather than as part of a shared, though often transparent, interaction. It is these interactions, implicit in our relationship with technology, with which my work is currently concerned.
Recent works have used voice, both computer generated and human, as a medium to explore these interactions. Seamless Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is always imagined in Science Fiction to be conducted via the medium of voice. In reality, the current abilities of Speech Recognition (SR) systems fall way short of this fantasy. Current SR software tends to work well in noiseless, context-free environments. But if a particular context is introduced, perception of the meanings produced by the interaction may change radically. In the manner of SR software architecture, he has compiled a lexicon of pronunciations and translations interpretations based on his son Jakes pre-language baby talk. He has extracted these phonetic sound words and their resulting translations from an 7 hour video of Jakes day.
These sound words and accompanying translations are a guess, made by him, on the articulation and meaning of Jake's words based on the context in which they were spoken.
In parallel to this approach, he was keen to create a particular tension in the way the audiences interacted with the work. The workÕs interface design and functionality have been informed by quickfix language learning resources. This approach is taken to an extreme by allowing the audience to decide how long they wish to spend viewing the work. This decision has an explicit effect on the manner of the work's final representation.
Recent projects by Kevin Carter.
