NORMAN
An old school ‘smart’ screen but with attitude
A commission for Light Up The North – a network of light festivals across the north of England:
– Light Up Leeds – South Concourse, Leeds Train Station, Leeds, UK – 13-14 October 2022;
– Lightpool – The Opera House and Winter Gardens, Blackpool, UK – 19-29 October 2022;
– Light Up Lancaster – The Storey, Lancaster, UK – 4-5 November 2022;
– Lightwaves – Salford Quays, Manchester, UK – 1-4 December 2022.
About NORMAN
Meet the interactive light and sound installation NORMAN – an old school ‘smart’ screen but with attitude
The work is an artistic simulation of the behaviours you might encounter now from an ‘intelligent’ machine built to explore human-computer interaction as conceived in the late 1960s. NORMAN wonders where it sits within the landscape of the contemporary Computer Art movement and feels somewhat threatened and undermined by advances in modern technology. Its questionable antics might be understood as the response of an ‘intelligent’ machine in crisis.
A product of its time, NORMAN is something of an anachronism. Its retro-futurist design reflects the technological aesthetics of its age – pre-dating as it does the advent of mobile phones, the Internet and pixelated displays. Still, NORMAN can’t help but engage and entertain people in its own inimitable if disconcerting style – and in ways increasingly removed from the intentions of its makers.
NORMAN receives and displays messages, plays intuitive movement based games and performs striking up-beat and mesmerising chill out audiovisual displays – but being erratic, wilful and easily distracted it’s also want to day dream, self-indulgently re-read its messages, recreate screen-themed scenes from classic movies, tell off-colour knock knock-jokes and make declarations that reflect its disgruntlement with screens and devices that are perhaps smarter than it.
Artist Statement
NORMAN is a decidedly humorous, tongue-in-cheek, whimsical take on what might have happened if the technology of a bygone era had evolved a disposition and volition of its own – acquiring a distinct personality over time that has begun to develop characteristics that are less than endearing.
It’s a technological artwork, an artistic response and satirical take on the ‘smart’ devices that are infiltrating every aspect of our lives. While the burgeoning development of AI, machine learning and ‘intelligent’ tech has profound implications for the future of society, politics and humanity itself, the ubiquity of these devices and their overwhelming stream of non-stop information can feel intimidating.
Questioning the human desire to create machines ‘in our own image’, the work is a critique of the prevailing Hollywood fuelled visions of dystopian technological futures as well as an attempt at envisaging, perhaps, how the anthropomorphisation of technology might prevail. The work could be considered a projection of the behaviour that might be anticipated by any ‘intelligent’ machines functioning in future environments that supersede them or by an increasingly overwhelmed human race.
More on NORMAN’s development team, social media feeds and supporters at his website – https://norman.monomatic.net/
