Tele-Imagination

2022, 裝置, 與Thore Flynn Hadre合作

隨著Covid19在香港的第五次爆發,人們在品嚐了半年的自由之後,再次想起了封鎖的感覺。隔離很快再次成為社交媒體上的熱詞。

人類並不是唯一受到影響的人。兩個機器人:來自美國的Kamala,新來港攻讀學位,以及本地剛畢業的Philip,也被隔離。

當他們被隔離時,他們會怎麼想和怎麼做?它和我們人類有什麼不同?

點擊此處以瀏覽項目網頁(僅英文)

Tele-Imagination

2022, Installation, with Thore Flynn Hadre

With the 5th outbreak of Covid19 in Hong Kong, people are reminded how the lockdown feels like again after having a taste of half a year of freedom. Quarantine soon became a hit word on social media again.

Human beings are not the only ones that are affected. Two robots, Kamala from the states, newly arrived at Hong Kong for its degree, and Philip, a newly local graduate, are also in quarantine.

What will they think and talk about when they are isolated physically? How is it different from us humans?

visit the project website for more information here.

Wifi Killer 2000

A very annoying robot, 2020

In short, the WiFi Killer 2000 is an interactive WiFi Jammer that can chase people and jam the WiFi signal nearby, modified from an old WiFi router.

I am not against having online life, to be honest I spend most of my time online, too, especially in 2020. But it is just a truth that disconnecting, or living offline is much more harder now, not need to compare to 10 years ago, just compare to the days in 2015 or 2016 when IoT and social media are not such huge things.

In my vision, WIFi Killer 2000 is a light joke. The experience of being chased by a moving WiFi jammer might be a bit annoying for those who have business meetings all the time but I believe it is over all funny. I hope when people are trying to run away for it they can also think about these two questions: “Why am I doing this?“ and “Why is it doing this?”

Little Jack

A tangible twitter robot, 2020

Little Jack is a robot that reads tweets about Covid-19 from twitter and gives different responses in physical world according to the tweets it read. It will give sad faces and noise when the tweets it read are generally negative and give happy faces and noise when the tweets are positive. You can also interact with it to make it happier and it will kill it self if it’s too sad.

This idea came from the current situation: Covid-19 is sweeping all over the world and everyone is now in quarantine, meanwhile, for years we have been addicted to social media and we have let them control our life without noticing this fact. I think this is a good time for us to scrutinise what’s on social media and our relationship with the them.

This is a big, serious topic (social media and us), and I always believe that the best way to let people think about those big topics is not to make a profound speech, but to make a relaxing joke. And Little Jack is a relaxing joke, it makes you smile, and maybe have some thoughts after that, for me that’s enough.

The idea of tangible twitter robot is also very interesting, it’s like a retrograde in this more and more Matrix-like world (Think about it, now we do everything online!). Personally, I think Matrix is somewhere OK to live in, who knows this ‘real world’ is not a huge simulation? But before our technology level get to that point, I think tangible things still have their meanings.

And lastly, something about the suicide button. Here is the situation of Little Jack – it doesn’t have the courage or ability to deal with the social media control, so it can just kill itself. But we can have the courage and ability, as human beings, to make changes.