Echo Cell, May 2008.
This was a project shown at Stetson University's Duncan Gallery for the senior art show. The project was an take on John Searle's "Chinese Room". The project was divided into two sections as well as existed in two physical spaces. One for the outside observer, consisting of a hallway with two display cases on either side, and one for the participant, inside a broom closet attic.
The observer is invited, through the use of a laptop monitor in one display case, to text message "a thought, a question, a comment" to a particular phone number. Once sent it is displayed on a dismantled tv screen in the next display case down the hallway. Depending on if there is an participant in the second section at the same time the observer might see a response to their statement on a computer monitor in a display case on the other side of the hallway. Most likely the observer will not know where the response came from besides a computer algorithm. On the same side there was a small tv inviting the observer to "see the machine" and showed the point of view of someone walking into a broom closet and up a wooden ladder. Beside the tv was another monitor displaying every statement and response sent, each set color coded and connected by a line indicating a path from one to the other. This was meant to represent the thought process, or algorithm, of the machine that came up with the response based on the statement.
If there was no response to the original text message the same person could follow the path to "see the machine" and find a small space between two floors of the gallery's building. Inside the space (or metaphorical machine) there would be a computer terminal with a keyboard showing the text message statement and awaiting a response to be keyed in. In the same room there is a backlit screen showing the same colored web of statements and responses from the hallway. The observer became the participant and could stay in the space and respond to as many new statements that came in, thereby creating the illusion for newcomers that a machine is responding to their statements.