Diotima is a project being developed by Manuel A Hernandez
and Glenn Kaino to use the Internet as an interactive
tool for understanding and challenging common assumptions about
interpersonal stereotypes, communities, and how they influence each
other.
By seeing, speaking to and guessing about others and recognizing
the way the participant is being perceived, the artists are
constructing a scenario that compresses large amounts of
information into a small amount of time and space. The participant
is decompressing the same codes and interpreting them into their
pre-existing, socially particular idea of expectations.
By having
the opportunity to examine the interpretation besides the codes on
a personal level, information is redistributed along parallel
tracks of vision, hearing and decisions. The hardware becomes
secondary, and the images and purposes should be clear: to offer
individuals an experience that challenges them to consider and
question the way they perceived others and how they were perceived
so they might also understand how society mistakes cultural
expectations as tokens of meaning.
The viewer of the Diotima project will participate in a survey,
answering questions from the Meyers-Briggs Personality Test, a
common test used by businesses and the United States federal
government to codify, group, and thereby pre-determine worker
compatibility and individual aptitudes. Diotima will then record a
short sound segment and an image of the participantŐs face.
The
participant sees a group of three faces from the database and based
only on the image and sound categorizes these people. Choices will
include: the person most likely to be a friend, least likely to be
a friend, and to fill out the survey as accurately as possible for
the third person.
The option to see results of the three peopleŐs
surveys and how accurately others have been at guessing compared to
the Meyers-Briggs index will follow.
The viewer will also see
statistical results on assumptions about their personality. The
participant will have the option to try the survey for themselves
again, guess about another group of individuals from the database,
view statistics of guesses, or to chat with other viewers who are
on-line via the Internet or at the other Diotima site.
The technical requirements of the physical piece are nominal. It
will be software running on a Macintosh computer with a mouse,
connected to a local standard Internet connection through a high
speed modem over an analog phone line. Also connected to the
computer will be a software controlled microphone and video camera.
Ideally, the hardware should be part of an on-going installation,
between a number of community centers. Presently the artists can
only accommodate two sites at a time, one at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago and the other at the University of California
in Irvine. The only foreseeable cost at these sites would be the
expense of a standard phone line installation, about $65, or the
use of one existing line for the installation period of the
project.
Any site with a Macintosh computer hooked into the
Internet will be able to participate, taking advantage of the
database created from the initial two sites. Being on the Internet
will allow other sites to create compatible settings that can use
the Diotima software to interchange data. A video input, camera,
and microphone can allow these sites to add to the database supply
of image and sound. Presently, the artists are seeking grants to
expand the project regionally, to represent the makeup of the
United States more accurately.
The reason the Internet is vital to this project is that the
Internet is potentially a breeding ground for the questioning of
stereotypes, since there is no visual standard communication
between users. Since the visual dimensions of Virtual Reality are
still in the development stage, computer scientists are the sole
proprietors due to equipment costs and education factors.
Allucquere Rosanne Stone and others offer theories about the role
technology plays with individual relationships in Virtual Reality,
but not many people have actually had the opportunity to test
interfaces looking for alternatives or methods of using technology
to influence individuals.
The Internet, by nature of it's text based services, allows anyone to influence the
way they are perceived, due to its non visual interface. By
realizing and controlling this image, you can begin to understand
and deconstruct the way society works in the larger population.
Cyberspace is an extension of the idea of Virtual Reality. Instead
of seeing computer data converted into pictures that come from
human experience, as in a flight simulator, or extensions from
human experience such as the "desktop" metaphor used with personal
computers Cyberspace comprises computers, telecommunications,
software and data in a more abstract form relating the
transmissions taking place between them.
At the core of Cyberspace
is the Internet: the existing global collection of interconnected
regional and wide-area networks that use IP (Internet Protocol)
allowing intercommunication between computers over large geographic
distances. It does this by connecting the worlds local networks, in
effect "inter-networking" them. The Internet is the most powerful
computer network on the planet simply because it's the biggest. It
encompasses 1.3 million computers that are used by up to 30 million
people in more than 40 countries.
There have been many recent portrayals of computer users in the
media. Films such as Lawnmower Man, Sneakers, and Jurassic
Park have shown society images of computer users, each being of
similar race, sex, and culture. This project will be an aid to the
Internet community, as it will challenge the legitimacy of these
stereotypes. It will also affect non Internet users, by exposing
them to people who use and have knowledge of computers, yet are not
necessarily unethical hackers. The way the Internet community has
been labeled by the mass media is very similar to the way minority
cultures are also labeled. Thus, to question this one stereotype,
the idea of challenging others is positively reinforced.
This project was displayed at the University of California, Irvine,
for display in the Fine Arts Gallery from December 7, 1993 - December
13, and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery
2, Opening Pandora's Box, from December 17, 1993 - January 28,
1994. It is pending notification from the Social and Public Art
Resource Center of Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Exploratorium.