The Liar’s Light

We are at an early stage for AI to be truly humorous; to be very human-like. But the value of training artificial systems to understand and interact with us in more familiar, intimate ways is vast and is continuously expanding, but we need to do it ethically. The goal with Liar’s Light is to create automated and targeted mind-reading technologies that tailor communications to a given individual, by redefining man’s feelings as a machine of emotions in the form of colors and pixels.

“ The Liar’s Light ” is a speculative design that attempts to make the composition of every day visible- that is in large part invisible and only partially perceived by the one experiencing it. It is the narrative quality of our personal histories, even if only as a visual metaphor.

Type : Interactive Installation

Design genre : Speculative Design

Duration : 14 weeks

Tools : HTML/CSS, Processing, Arduino, Illustrator, AutoCAD, Adobe Premier Pro

Organization: Pratt Institute, 2019

Conceptualization

A quality that makes human beings different from the “smart” machines in the ecosystem is “emotions.” But when AI starts identifying human emotions, how does the system perceive an angry, happy or optimistic human being?

The project began with a futuristic visualization of a technology that could be put to use in the technocratic world. It consisted of 2 parts, a narrative and a story board that emphasized on the usage of the technology.

“Digital and bio-technologies have turned the external machine of iron and steel into the internalized and recombining machine of the bio-info era. The bio-info machine is no longer separable from the body and mind because it is no longer an external tool, but an internal transformer of the body and mind, a linguistic and cognitive enhancer. The Machine is us.” - Franco Berardi

The Assembly

So the next step after conceptualization was to simulate the idea and test it in some form. I began to make a list of components I can probably use to translate this idea into an actual experience.

User Testing

After successfully assembling all the components, I worked on the simulation code and data visualization of emotions using colors and pixel grids in the form of cells. The next step was to test the code using the arduino board and the motion sensing light that I used to build the system.