I don’t have you but you’ve still got my heart
Single channel projection, two channel stereo audio, openFrameworks code
2018
“I am now utterly convinced of the impossibility of neural nets ever producing coherent contextually-sensitive verse, yet as language play, and a window into the inherent biases within humans, it is impeccably intriguing and occasionally nourishing.”
-David “Jhave” Johnston
I don’t have you but you’ve still got my heart explores the intimacy and banality of artificially intelligent predictive language. The language in this work was produced through the generative process of repeatedly tapping a single predictive text option on the smartphone keyboards of 42 people’s smartphones. Your smartphone’s predictive text feature uses machine learning to learn your writing patterns over time, so that if you were to only tap a singular predictive text option—without typing anything in for the machine to predict from—a pseudo-coherent babble of machine/human language pours out to reveal a phantom-like impression of the phone’s user.
This work was included in the two-person exhibition Playing Chess in the Chinese Room.
Details of the development of the work.