Are We There Yet? (2016-2017)

Year: 2016 -2017

Interactive holographic Installation.

Image: Highways Performance Space and Gallery, Los Angeles (2016)

Are We There Yet? Is an interactive hologram named The Grand Turk. The project is in reference to Wolfgang Von Kempelen’s Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing automaton unveiled in 1770, at the height of Orientalism, and symbolized colonial Europe’s technological triumph. This project revisits the idea of “Western triumph” by creating a contemporary reimagination of Kempelen’s Turk, who engages audiences in real time conversations. Depending on visitors’ input, their conversations shift between varying degrees of humor, tension, confrontation, and even apathy. Ultimately, the project contemplates a future where humans, and robots build their futures together.

Much like the original, The Grand Turk is a human performer (myself) hidden behind the technology. The project further references other contemporary appropriations of Kempelen’s automaton, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and the more recent “humanless” Amazon stores that were discovered to be offshore sweatshops powered by real humans. The phantasmic quality of the hologram feeds into audiences’ suspension of disbelief, strengthening the illusion of artificial intelligence. Numerous emails from visitors confessed their realization of the hoax upon watching the videos they had captured on their phones. During the performance, however, the audience were swept away by the technological charm.