mokka – Looking Outwards 04

Hello Hi There by Annie Dorsen is a performance in which a famous, televised debate between the philosopher Michel Foucault and linguist/activist Noam Chomsky from the 70s and additional text from YouTube, the Bible, Shakespeare, the big hits of western philosophy, and many other sources are utilized as materials for creating a dialogue between two custom-designed chatbots. Annie designed these bots to imitate human conversation/language production while recognizing how the optimism for how natural language programming seemed to have helped us understand the process of human language.

I really enjoyed how this study of human language production quickly turned into a theatrical performance between two instruments of technology(in this case, two laptops). It was striking to see how with all the information that these two laptops were given(seemingly like two brains communicating) even a conversation between these bots was able to digress into completely unrelated topics from the beginning just as humans could, but more humorously and incoherently.

mokka- GPT -2

I want chicken for dinner. In – N – Out is closed. The Girl Scouts cookies are nowhere to be found. It’s supposed to snow tonight and my tires on my Tahoe are supposed to be the right size, I need to get new windshield wipers, and we need to start Christmas shopping. And then I got an email from our real estate agent and she says our stuff is DONE! There were a few things that had to be fixed in the house and we didn’t get to sign the lease agreement. Bummer. We will get it tomorrow or Monday. Woo hoo! However,
– I love the energy produced here. Most of these sentences had nothing to do with chicken or dinner but were very entertaining to read! The last “However,” is such a mystery to me; I don’t know how to react to it.

I hate people. It’s like they think if they have an opinion, I have to hear it, and if I don’t agree I have to scream my head off and curse them out and all sorts of shit. It really makes me mad. I actually stopped in at work today because I needed to refill my Dunkin ‘Dogs, and I mentioned to my supervisor that I wasn’t feeling well. And it’s not that I want sympathy, I’m sick of hearing about it. I’m already sick of the flu. If someone is sick, they need to stay home. All the rest of us should have
– First of all, the words generated felt angrier than how I was initially feeling, to be honest. Second, Dunkin ‘Dogs??

mokka – mask

I tried to find an interesting way to make a fire ant look cool despite my irrational fear of them. God, I hate them so much.

I drew a design(painted on procreate) for the clear mask that the ant rests on.

mokka-facereadings

  • From Brian Reverman’s Mask Around the World video, the narrator mentions the idea of masks used to celebrate the coming of seasons. The arrival of seasons is a concept so familiar in my head that I completely neglected how special it is in some cultures. It’s also interesting to see masks almost try to portray something that isn’t tangible and become wearable.
  • “Asians and African-Americans are a 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men” In John Oliver’s video, he mentions this extremely alarming fact about failures that exist within the technology of facial recognition. Not only that, but they struggle to identify between a male and a female. When this system is used in ways that it wasn’t designed to be used, the public is surely in danger. It worries me that people may use this technology in serious situations while misunderstanding its accuracies, resulting in harming an innocent.

mokka- MobileTelematic

gnome telematica by mokka

left gnome: me, right gnome: my sister

A garden gnome hangout! This idea was inspired by my very own friend’s obsession with gnomes, especially in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons game. I dedicate this to her.

I wanted this project to be synchronous in that you can immediately interact with those who are also on the app alongside you in real-time. It should be able to function remotely as its purpose is to be able to interact with people across the world; however, I did put a limit to only 3 people(likely to change). I would like to have this as a concept of safely saying hello to anonymous people, but that is all they can do… hang out with each other. In this way, with a smaller group, I believe a sense of curious intimacy can happen rather than a large group of users. All users have equal roles which is just dragging their finger around the grass acknowledging the presence of each other.

mokka – checkin

Wack-a-Mole: Might be pretty self-explanatory but I wanted the tap movement to be able to emulate this idea of “wacking” the mole. Or, perhaps I may use this concept of wack-a-mole but metaphorize it into something else. Like maybe wack a cockroach/bug.

Problems:

  • Wanting a Title/Start Page
  • Mole Holes don’t center or resize along with canvas
  • How to implement image into it while also being able to resize it (wanting to make my own pixel characters as moles)
  • Overall, visually stunted.

mokka – Soli Sketches

 

  1. Clothing Rack Simulator/Shirt Memory Lane: The user will able to swipe right and left to simulate them going through clothes in a closet. It is a mundane action but a common one. On the bottom right corner, I initially wanted to have a space on the page where the user can see what they selected(by tapping). Then I thought of another idea where I wanted it to show either a ridiculously, deep description of that particular clothing  OR share stories, memories, and where it came from(this last part I like the most).
  2. Wack-a-Mole: Might be pretty self-explanatory but I wanted the tap movement to be able to emulate this idea of “wacking” the mole. Or, perhaps I may use this concept of wack-a-mole but metaphorize it into something else. Like maybe wack a cockroach/bug.
  3. Yes or No Trivia!: Now this may be too much of a stretch but I would still like to share. For this idea, users are able to answer random trivia questions via just swiping left for “No” and right for “Yes”.  So, for the question in the sketch below, the user should correctly swipe left(No, an apple is not an orange) and receive a number of points(not sure how I should do that yet). Should they swipe right(Yes, an apple is an orange) then they will lose that round of trivia. Once a user gets a question wrong, they are sent to a page which(maybe) shows a high-score board of all the players that have played and the option to retry and redeem themselves to beat their previously high score. I am not even sure how to implement this.

mokka – Looking Outwards 03

 

Mitgenommen(2014) is a collaborative project by Kaho Abe with Caro Blaim, Elia Tomat, Eszter Némethi, George Sinclair, Ramsey Nasser, Lilli Unger, Martin Kroll, Mascha Fehse, Sandra Panzer, and Tom Clowney. These people were a group of game designers and architects!

final public park space

The group crafted hand-made wooden boxes with found materials and made each of them function diversely(some move, some light up, and some make noises). Every box utilized solar power to function. They designed these boxes in hopes to invoke curiosity and playfulness into a park that stood in the middle of the city they were in Witten, Germany.

 

I think the most important aspect that I admired about this project is the fact that those who interact with it(the park-goers) are allowed to rearrange the boxes as they please. They can be taken away, stacked, or even hidden! The people who visit the park have agency in what the artwork can end up looking like for other later viewers.