Kristine Kim-Looking Outwards-11

Caroline Sinders is a machine learning designer/ user researcher, artist, and digital anthropologist who finds a lot of interest in language, culture and images. She creates many projects related to artificial intelligence, natural language processing, abuse, online harassment, and politics in digital, conversational spaces. All of her works are very intriguing and successful but the one that caught immediately caught my attention was her mixed media piece Black Box.

Black Box is a mixed media 3D project vocalizes the current conversation around police, violence, and race. Caroline and her team took the idea of camera phones as citizen journalism and flipped it. The media story within the box they created can only be captured and see with the phone, just like after a plane disaster, we look to the black box for truth. This project is installed in a room and upon entering the room, you hear and see a visualization of John Coltrane’s Alabama. However, an XBOX Kinect triggers the actual camera phone audio from police incidents as you place your phone into the box, creating new and confrontational context to this well known protest song. What I especially love about this project is the fact that the artists challenged where  and how these stories and informations are experienced. They pushed the boundaries of asking themselves how might people engage with content and each other in new and different ways. Of course the whole production of building the box and using technology to execute this idea properly is also very intriguing, but their extra set of details of how and where they displayed their project is very impressive. I really enjoy this project and wish to experience in real life.