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STARTS is an initiative of the European Commission to foster alliances of technology and artistic practice. As part of this initiative, the STARTS residencies foster pioneering collaborations and the STARTS Prize honors the most inspired results in the field of creativity and innovation at the crossings of science and technology with the arts. STARTS is funded through various schemes provided by the European Commission.
Prosthetic Memory
M Eifler
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*Prosthetic Memory* is an ongoing experiment in self-augmentation combining handmade journals, daily videos, and a custom AI. With the journal lying flat on a desk, a camera captures its pages. The AI compares this feed to its model, determines which page is showing, and projects an associated video memory on the desk nearby. Created to replace the artist's long-term memory that was damaged by a childhood brain injury, *Prosthetic Memory* explores questions like:
- When memories are external, mediated, and public, what is the difference between how they are experienced by their creator and an audience?
- Do our assumptions, fears, and uses for AI change when data and machine learning models are created by individuals and families on a personal, instead of a corporate scale?
- Given our increasing exposure to algorithmic interventions, how do our identities and perceptions shift when we see ourselves and others through that lens?
The first iteration of *Prosthetic Memory*, captured in the documentation provided, created a bridge between the physical and virtual components of the memory. In upcoming iterations an age-malleable recreation (deep fake) of the artist will appear on a screen above the notebook, reading from its pages, and, using NLP and sentiment analysis, pointing the user to other pages and videos with similar events or feelings.
Links: http://www.blinkpopshift.com/2020#/prosthetic-memory
- When memories are external, mediated, and public, what is the difference between how they are experienced by their creator and an audience?
- Do our assumptions, fears, and uses for AI change when data and machine learning models are created by individuals and families on a personal, instead of a corporate scale?
- Given our increasing exposure to algorithmic interventions, how do our identities and perceptions shift when we see ourselves and others through that lens?
The first iteration of *Prosthetic Memory*, captured in the documentation provided, created a bridge between the physical and virtual components of the memory. In upcoming iterations an age-malleable recreation (deep fake) of the artist will appear on a screen above the notebook, reading from its pages, and, using NLP and sentiment analysis, pointing the user to other pages and videos with similar events or feelings.
Links: http://www.blinkpopshift.com/2020#/prosthetic-memory
Collaborator: Steve Sedlmayr
M Eifler (US) is an artist and researcher working in embodied/spatial interaction, speculative interfaces, and computational prosthetics. They have exhibited work or performed at TED in Vancouver, the Exploratorium, SFMoMA, the YBCA, the Wattis Institute in San Francisco, XOXO, Wiensowski & Harbord in Berlin, Laurie M. Tisch Gallery and the Armory Show in New York, Seattle International Film Festival, as well as the Smithsonian Institution and Kennedy Center. During the pandemic they have been honored to contribute to the Harvard Safra Center’s Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience team. Eifler graduated from California College of Art in 2011 with an interdisciplinary MFA.