Topic Refresher
& Atelier Sharing


For the upcoming week back at school, we’re starting off with short presentations on everyone's topic, and I think this is good to see where we’re all at. It’s also a good opportunity to get feedback from peers and teachers. I’m looking forward to hearing what everyone else is working on as well.



Where's My Topic At?


Background & Rationale

For my dissertation & grad project this academic year, I will be exploring how AI-driven chatbots affect interpersonal relationships. In this area, I want to explore how AI changes the way people form and perceive relationships. I am looking specifically at AI-driven chatbots, which retain memory, learn from user language, and mirror behaviours back to us, simulating human behaviour.





I think of chatbots as mirrors of human interaction. Something I realised is that while many users might first approach AI out of curiosity, they may continue engaging out of convenience and because the responses are increasingly natural and personalised. This can lead to users forming emotional attachments to AI, which can impact their real-life relationships. I want to explore this dynamic further.

Personal Situatedness

This is something I have observed in people around me, like my friends and family, who shifted from rejecting AI to relying on it daily. We are quickly seeing how this technology is becoming more normalised over time. While AI has become quite natural and personalised, I also want to look at the ways we adapt to this technology. I think it's interesting to see how people’s expectations and behaviours change as they interact more with AI chatbots. I think this is important because it can reveal how technology shapes our social norms and communication styles.

Literature Guiding my Current Research



Books

  • Book Cover 1

  • The Second Self
    Turkle, Sherry. The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. MIT Press, 2005.

  • I particularly looked at chapter 4 about how people project emotions and identity onto machines, especially in adolescence. It explores how computers become extensions of ourselves, shaping our self-perception and social interactions.

  • Book Cover 2

  • Relationships 5.0
    Kislev, Elyakim. Relationships 5.0: How AI, VR, and Robots Will Reshape Our Emotional Lives. Oxford University Press, 2022.

  • Discusses the rise of AI companionship as a new form of relationship, questioning intimacy and authenticity. It provides insights into how AI is changing human connection and our perceptions of these AI-driven companions.

  • Book Cover 2

  • Updating to Remain the Same
    Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media. MIT Press, 2016.

  • Highlights how habit and repetition in digital media shape user behaviour in daily life. It discusses how our interactions with technology become ingrained routines that influence our perceptions and relationships.

Existing Precedences


Mirror Ritual by Nina Rajcic & Jon McCormack

Mirror Ritual is an interactive installation that explores the theory of constructed emotion. As the user approaches the mirror, a generated poem appears based on the facial expression the user is portraying. The work hopes users can use this as a way to think internally about their emotions and create a co-construction between human and machine. I took this work as a precedent because I feel it somewhat relates to my topic. Not very directly, but it touches on the way AI and human both interpret emotions, and how the AI relies on the user to generate its poem, and how the user relies on the AI's poem to do some deep reflective thinking on their own emotions. I also like that it is a physical artefact, and I am inspired by how they used AI to make something for people to think on while interacting with it.




Everyday Precedences


Past works

Fruitful Decisions


This group project examines how people make purchasing decisions when buying fruit. By observing real-world behaviours, I explored factors that affect perceptions of freshness and how these choices contribute to food waste. Through field data collection I analysed patterns in selection habits and decision-making processes. I chose to present this past work because I enjoyed this mode of storytelling. It feels playful with our stitched up orange artefact but informational with the data we collected and presented through our zine.


Yutaka Packaging Website


This project involved redesigning the website for Yutaka, a Singaporean packaging supplier. The goal was to improve user experience and modernise the interface. I focused on creating a clean, intuitive design that highlights their product range and services. I chose to present this work because it showcases my skills in web design and user experience that I learned over the course of my internship. While this was only a proposal design, it was the last major project I worked on during my internship and I am proud of the outcome, and feel I can use my knowledge from this in upcoming works.

What would I like to learn right now?


As for skills I would like to learn more about, at the moment I'm quite interested in TouchDesigner as I like the way data can be visually expressed through it. In Year 2, we only touched on basic noise and how it works and I think there are areas for me to explore more kinds of visualisations using it.

Though I do have some concerns about this being my main skill to learn, as I am not sure how relevant it will be to my topic. However, I do think learning a new software and way of working with data could be beneficial to my overall skillset.

Presentation Feedback

Interested in looking into TouchDesigner (interactivity). I can consider how this interactivity relates to something conversational, which already has a very standard texting interface.

Can explore ways we can communicate with AI without the standard conversational way, eg through motion, etc.

Look into Lauren McCarthy.

There is a big difference between my academic work and my internship work. Is there an overlap, and will I be linking them? Can they link?

Lit review covers everything but design — can look into readings about speculative design, interactive design, and user experience (not UI/UX but experiential design).

Some websites to check out!


  • NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression)

  • TEI (Tangible Embedded Interaction)

  • SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer

  • Graphics and Interactive Techniques)

  • xCoAx (Computational/Experimental Aesthetics, Communication and Aesthetics)