DEVICE FOR MINDLESS COMMUNICATION
[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/12796931]
So what do you do? How do you know the groom? How long have you been collecting Cult Classics action figures?
Dinner party chatter can be relentlessly soul sucking — which is exactly where Spanish artist Gerard Ralló’s device comes in. This particular unit (part of a series) is designed to sit around the neck and broadcast mindless banter so that you don’t have to. The machine can’t decipher your conversation partner’s exact words or phrases, but once it tracks the back-and-forth pattern of chit-chat it jumps in with answers to mundane queries — all of it based, says Antonelli, on “an algorithm of banalities.”
(MORE: Is Technology Making Us Lonelier?)
The above video by Ralló imagines the piece at work.
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