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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00873
- Thesis Title
- Alternative Realities: Protect me from what I want
- Author
- Shirley Leung
- E-mail
- shirley AT newschool.edu
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- MFA
- Year
- 2020
- Number of Pages
- 23
- University
- Parsons School of Design. Design and Technology Department.
- Thesis Supervisor
- Katherine Moriwaki
- Supervisor e-mail
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Jaime Keiles
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Design & Technology
- Copyright Ownership
- Shirley Leung
- Languages Familiar to Author
- URL where full thesis can be found
- parsons.edu/dt/alternative-realities-protect-me-from-what-i-want-draft/
- Keywords
- reflection, speculation, alternative realities, multiverse, parallel universes, race, identity, privilege, machine learning and prediction, Asian American, personal narrative
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- Alternative Realities: “Protect me from what I want” is a physical installation and an immersive experience. It is an ongoing conversation between the artist and participants that explores generative narratives of race, identity, and privilege in the Asian American community. This project interrogates our relationship with technology by using computer predictions as an extension to control our own futures. We tend to make decisions based on a vision of our own future. What happens when these visions differ or never come to fruition? The artist uses the model GPT-2 and trained it using transcripts of narratives about Asian American identities to generate alternative realities and possible futures. While this is an attempt by the artist to control her own future using technology, this is also a speculative, existential, and critical piece about the pervasive power and limitations of technology.
This project began with a deep humanistic desire to better understand, predict, and control our own futures. While grappling with the presence of technology and its effects on our lives, I’m exploring the relationship of power between the human and the machine. As an Asian woman growing up in America, I grew up experiencing contrasting feelings of belonging and disbelonging while confronting my own challenges with identity. As an American, the freedom of choice and decision was inherent and expected of life growing up in the US. However, as a child of immigrants, choice and decision are heavily influenced by the movements of our ancestors. Whether or not certain choices were made before my generation affects my current opportunities and decisions.
There exists a similar relationship between our ancestors and technology as both influence our current choices. To explore this dynamic, I’m traversing the multiverse to speculate about generative alternative realities to examine the effects of choice, decision making, prediction, and its influences on identity. When we think about decision making, we tend to make decisions based on a vision of an ideal future. I want to better understand how diverse immigrant experiences in the Asian American community affect possible visions of the futures that we envision for ourselves. The choices of our ancestors were shaped by society and their immigrant experiences. Today, these choices permeate even as we turn increasingly towards technology to aid us in decision making. I’m interested in this dynamic and the pervasive power of technology on our own decision-making abilities about our future. How much can we try to control now and how much is already constrained by society? Perhaps this desire to control alludes back to this idea that we can only gain control when we choose to let go.