Metaphone

Distinguishing Human and Machine

Vygandas "Vegas" Šimbelis

The Metaphone project rises from the convergence of body and machine, questioning the essentials of interaction between human and machine. The machine and participant interact in a close intertwined way, with the participant feeding the machine with biological signals. In turn the participant is strongly affected by mechanic interference. It is hard to describe who and what affects most, as Metaphone mixes all the participants' biological signal impulses into one evocative experience.

The project implies notions of affect and adaptation of an emotional world by machines and humans and vice versa, as well as how monotonic rhythms of the machine affect humans through their interactions with them. Sharing empathy between two opposite worlds, the project explores a manifold world and creates antagonistic dichotomies and one world within duality of human and machine.

Metaphone and its creative process is inspired largely by three art history movements: Formalism, where the understanding of an artifact is shaped by formal elements; Constructivism, defined by the combination of both the function and form met together in harmony with no distinction; Futurism and industrialism where new modern aesthetics such as noise and chaos are established and have burned the bridges between nature and culture.