Paper short abstract:

Disputing intelligence as traditionally pertaining to the tech industry, I research idiotic machinic agents imbued with curious intelligences in order to reconfigure the human-machine encounter. The open-ended absurdity of idiocy might facilitate creative interactions beyond automated functionality.

Paper long abstract:

Human-machine interactions are usually centered on a specific kind of intelligence that meticulously designates roles, agencies and operations. However, this intelligence is a human-centered and tech-driven construct deficient of encapsulating the complexity of human and non-human diverse ecologies pertaining to our world. The intelligence embedded within advanced tech entities might be commendable in the sense of being able to converse with human cognition but it is nonetheless limited to that which can be algorithmically computable for the sake of operationality and the tech industry’s evolution. On the everyday scale, this suggests both limitedness in human-machine interactions, but also a deprivation in the creative potentialities of these interactions. It shouldn’t be only intelligence that characterises human-machine encounters, but absurdity, creativity and controversy too.

What if human-machine interactions operated on the opposite of intelligence? Looking at idiocy, as that which lies outside the norm and speaks from a non-deterministic stance open to potentialities rather than measurable facts, I am looking at 'idiotic' human-machine encounters beyond automated functionality. Through participatory methods engaging multidisciplinary designers in collective speculation around ‘other-than-functional’ machines, I channel their feedback into explorations with materialities to devise 'idiotic' machinic agents. Idiotic artefacts of unpolished form are imbued with absurd intelligences exhibiting curious behaviours in order to explore how they might foster ingenious, non-pre-scripted interactions. I explore the unquantifiable absurdity of the human-machine symbiosis and its co-constituted agency in impacting the everyday creatively. I research creative interactions beyond the gallery space, taking place within the everyday realm of the domestic.