Creative Tech Week

How can we use technology to automate the surface content of our interactions, gaining the freedom to explore deeper layers of connection between each other? What do we lose and what do we gain by giving up our social agency to a computer program? Randomly Generated Social Interactions, a participatory performance first organized for Happenings for Na Kim's SET in Doosan Gallery in New York City, playfully brings the absurd repetitiveness of our digital communications to our physical, real-world interactions. Each participant is given a set of earphones and is asked to visit a website prepared for the performance, where they are assigned an identity consisting of a random name, age, occupation, and personality quirk. Following that, each participant is randomly matched with another participant, and is instructed to interact with them, receiving commands for exactly what to say and do during the interaction. A computer program randomly generates those instructions by mixing a number of "conversation routines"; together. Some routines are entirely verbal (e.g. a discussion about the 2016 presidential election, or about creating art), while others are more physical and comical (e.g. an exercise routine, or a routine in which one participants faints and the other is trying to rescue them).