‘Alice’s Tea Party’ explores the contradictory
views people hold about machines. People tend to treat machine
like a human being but denied the act when asked about it explicitly.
This contradictory view can be best shown by media equation (Reeves & Nass
1996.) According to Reeves & Nass, (1996) people threat computers
like they treat people but when asked about it, denied the act
completely.
The purpose of ‘Alice’s Tea Party’ is to give
cultural provocation to our view of machines, a view that we unconsciously
hold dear, but deny it when we think about it explicitly. The provocation
is achieved by constantly reminding the participant of the absurdity
of this belief throughout the interaction cycle of this piece by
displaying the streaming video image of the participant having
a tea party with a TV.
The piece also wants to explore the beauty of individual participants’ emotions
and responses, which are evoked by a machine that is unintelligent
but disguises itself on the surface with intelligence – an
implicit attribute people give to computers. Whether or not people
realize the machine is unintelligent, will only added to the richness
and complexity of one crucial part of this installation piece that
is human behaviour.
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