Introducing chili design, Fak'ugesi talks

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- Hi everyone
- I am Mathilde Buenerd
- I am a French interaction designer and artist currently living in Geneva, Switzerland.

- To introduce myself a little bit,
- My work explores the connections between language, algorithms and social relationships.
- My main interest lies in how technologies could permit alien ways of looking at things.
- The projects I did before embody various forms like
mobile apps, web extensions, connected devices or generative art.

- The project I have developped during the residency is called _Empathic frequency_.

- It is an “emotional radio”
– a radio that can be operated through facial expressions.
This is a collaborative way of discovering songs, because
- One person acts as a listener
while the other is able to change the tracks by adjusting its facial expression
through a smile or a funny face for example.

- For doing so, I have recorded copious amounts of music from various radio stations in Johannesburg.

- Then, I have classified these musics through different emotions: happy, surprising, a bit sad.

- And in the end I made a program that choose and plays a music according to current detected expression.

- At the center of this project, and my answer to this year theme “Vernacular algorithm”
- is the exploration of how digital media
can allow us to forget for a while the cultural differences induced by language.

- In the projects I did before, I usually use language, writing or talking as my main material.
- But when I came to Johannesburg, I was very fascinated,
and also a bit disturbed in my process by the diversity of languages spoken here.

- That's why I wanted this project to explore the use of universal means of communication – emotions.
- It focuses on ways of communicating universally, transcending language barriers between people.

- It is also an attempt to unravel the way in which computers and algorithms view traditional cultures on a more global scale,
- And how technologies could open up alien means of perception.

- What I mean when I say that is.
- We usually use technologies to make our lives more organized, more rational.
- But what if we use it for losing control,
for discovering things we would have never discovered if we were in control of everything.

- You know
- What really bothers me nowadays, is that
- I think our imagination around digital media and what we should use it for,
is too restricted.

- That’s why one of the reason why I did this installation,
- Is to show an alternative, simple and funny ways,
of using apparently complex and obscure techs such as face recognition.

- I strongly believe that technology should not only be seen as a problem solver
or as a tool for increasing efficiency.

- We don’t listen to music or go to the cinema to solve any problem or to be more efficient.
- We do this because it opens our mind.

- I believe we can also use digital media in this way.
- Our lives are more and more tangled with technology,
so we definitely have to find more creative ways of using it.

- It has the ability to allow discovery,

curiosity,

inventiveness
and bring some unexpectedness in our lives,
and I think more people should focus on that.

- I would like to finish with a quote that I really like
from the swiss scientist Frederic Kaplan, who was saying in 2007
that it's maybe time to see technology through a different perspective,
introducing the notion of "chili technology".

- Maybe you want chili technology,
maybe you actually think that technology is something a bit exciting
that should push you a little bit.
Not just being in the background and do just what you want to do,
but sometimes,
come in your life and have a kind of unexpected effect.

- Think about that. Thank you.