My Robot, artefact for #mscedc https://t.co/E38Wdm8swt
— Clare Thomson (@ClareThomsonQUB) February 5, 2017
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Weaving the human with tech for Education and Digital Cultures
My Robot, artefact for #mscedc https://t.co/E38Wdm8swt
— Clare Thomson (@ClareThomsonQUB) February 5, 2017
via IFTTT
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In the text/lyrics what seemed jarring to me was the idea of sending off for a book. If we were in age where you could build music making robots surely they’d just download it onto an ipad or something. I see that the lyrics are from 2000 which explains it. Interesting to see how culture develops in unexpected ways.
One of the themes here seems to be “efficiency”, the idea that we can invent tech to do the dull stuff and we can just go and “live our lives”. This means making value judgements that are made in what work should be deskilled and automated. In this artefact drum loops are implied to be an unimportant part of the music and therefore open to automation, something which as a drummer myself I would argue against.
Another thing I’ve just noticed is that all my comments are based on the text rather than the visual aspect. I always suspected I am not a very “visual” person. Oh well.
Hi Daniel. 2000 seems only a blink away for me so it good to be reminded at how far technology has become intertwined in our everyday lives since then. I don’t think that your focus on the text is necessarily related to being less visual – the lyrics were the central element and the visuals only a support so you picked up on that straightaway. Efficiency was one of the key elements I took away from the three weeks of cyberculture, I think we need to be very careful at how and when we employ technology in our lives and education. Just because ‘we can‘ is not enough.
Clare, really interesting use of visuals and words/lyrics. Dan, I think we all have a preference when it comes to the senses, I am a visual learner. I also value ‘touch’ and find that it helps guide me. I like seeing how something is put together and then doing it myself. Although, I think that incorporating ‘touch’ would be the ‘holy grail’ in terms of technology in education. Clare, I really value your comment “I think we need to be very careful at how and when we employ technology in our lives and education. Just because ‘we can‘ is not enough.”
I am currently looking at how technology can help in the classroom but also how we can support schools by using technology such as live steam videos online through the Dance company website. It’s all about the ‘What, How and Why ?’.
Linzi x
Clare, your artefact is amazing. It’s such a lovely narrative. I’m so curious as to whether you really made the robot.
I thought it was clever how the lyrics personified ‘him’ but when he was deconstructed it became about ‘its’ circuits. I think there is a tendency to personify robots which is ironic in light of Haraway’s manifesto.
I also liked that you highlighted as much as we might try, technology doesn’t always work as we’d like. So interesting.
I can’t take credit for the robot, sadly, – my daughter and husband took about a week to make it for her Halloween costume. It looked very effective with all the lights.
The song attracted me as it said so much more than you first think – and no matter how much I love technology it can definitely be frustrating at times.
Superb artefact here Clare!
Great to see the theme of efficiency picked up here too, as well as the idea of personification – excellent point Chenée about the robot becoming an ‘it’ when considered in terms of its component parts!
Despite the notion of cold, hard, machinic efficiency, was there also something sentimental about this piece? The reading of the lyrics, the human voice, the emotive images (which seemed to often convey a sense of emptiness)? Do we also have a sense of loss that the robot no longer works? Do we miss the ‘him’ resulting from working component parts?
Hello Claire, I enjoyed your artefact. I know a little bit about Looper and I imagine Stuart David would be pleased to know that his music formed the basis of a digital artefact!
‘2000 seems only a blink away for me so it good to be reminded at how far technology has become intertwined in our everyday lives since then.’
That the year 2000 feels recent but at the same time distant (in terms of how much digital technology we have in our lives) reminded me of a couple of other Looper songs: ‘The Modem song’ and ‘Who’s afraid of Y2K’. They seem also quaint now (particularly the sampling of the modem internet dial-up!). As you say, it’s the blink of an eye but at the same time things have changed considerably. This makes me think more broadly about our recent conversations around cyberculture, and how discourse has quite quickly moved beyond ideas that seemed so prescient.