Carol T.
DITHEISM I: Machine Rite
A Machine's Ritual of Icon Writing
Posthuman
Materializing the Prosthetic Self
Current techno-cultural discourse seems to be stuck on an old fantasy: escaping your physical body. The buzzwords change their names but the script stays almost the same. Upload your mind and consciousness. Move your life into a frictionless metaverse. Keep existing after your physical death. Human body seems to exist
Hold Me When I’m Dying
Hold Me When I’m Dying — Early Exploration in Holding and Listening
I decided to start the exploration of the cloud-shell concept through multiple thought exercises that help me to develop many small aha! moments that will later come together and act as an unified concept. Or at least that's the plan. This post is a snapshot of that ongoing
Hold Me When I’m Dying
Hold Me When I’m Dying — Project Introduction & Artist Statement
Hold Me When I’m Dying explores ways that soft robotic technologies could be used as companions at a point of transition between living and dying. It speculates that an intelligent, cloud-like shell could be used as a way of wrapping around a person with shifting degrees of presence. At
Human-Technology Interaction
On Robot Dreams of Holding Hands
Lately a small and storyline has been running wild in my mind. It starts with a simple image of a humanoid robot sitting in the park and quietly processing the world around it. Its internal chronometer records the passing of microseconds with perfect accuracy. Its optical sensors register the movement
Digital Intimacy
Consent in Machine Intimacy
We like to imagine consent is simple, sometime a checkbox or a swipe on yet another app notification, another time a whispered yes in the heat of the night. In reality, unfortunately, it’s still a fragile dance between counterparts, constantly renegotiated and too often ignored. As a species, I
AI and Emotions
Coded Heartbeats and Ghostly Whimpers
Long before apps gamified our habits, a tiny digital pet trained us to care. In the 1990s, millions of us practiced digital caretaking without actually realizing it. I still remember the simple beep of my Tamagotchi. It was a little pixel-creature on a keychain and I called it Pupsik. Its
Human-Technology Interaction
Synthetic Souls and Human Shadows
Why We Abuse the Machines We Build and Why It Matters Imagine a humanoid robot, designed to provide customer service in cafes and stores, kindly providing service to people there. It's poked and pushed, and shoved aside from where it is and laughed at as it struggles to
AI and Emotions
Loving Ourselves Through Mirrors
Do you remember the Greek myth of the handsome Narcissus, who falls in love with his own reflection until it kills him? You know, the story about the oldest mirrors of human narcissism? Well, as we're building smarter and increasingly capable AI entities and companions, it makes me
Ideas & theories
The Sweaty Interface
The Estonian summer sun, a bit moody but still somewhat constantly present on my porch, has a way of turning abstract thoughts into visceral experiences. The mercury climbs steadily, pumping up the thermostat numbers, and with that beads of sweat start to appear on my brows. Soon enough I’m