Conversation Theory

Monica Monin

Opening 07.09.16 6-8pm
Artist Talks 29.09.16 6-7pm

The fundamental idea of Gordon Pask’s cybernetic framework ‘conversation theory’ is that knowledge is constructed through conversation; as a negotiation of views, able to alter the speaker’s perceptions. As part of a longer, ongoing chain of projects investigating the materiality of computation, the work Conversation Theory explores the production of knowledge in a moment where algorithms are the predominant anatomy of composition.

In Conversation Theory, two networked ‘bots’ (small computer programs, presented in the gallery on screens) engage in a tête-à-tête. At the centre of their talk a subject, or object, event, datum – a knowable, communicable understanding that moves, as what is ‘known’ evolves through the bots activities and conversation. Their analogue, on-screen ‘speech acts’ creates a communication that is unidirectionally circular and observable, as one bot can read images and display text and the other can display images and read text. In order to move, describe, expand, contextualise the centre point of their discussion (to process what they have read from each other as text or image) they are able to individually access language and image processing frameworks and knowledge bases.