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Language Games

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Language Games
Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Volume 23 Issue 1

Description: The goal of this issue is to bring together a range of perspectives — including those from philosophy, linguistics, computer sciences, digital humanities, and the creative arts — in order to examine the particular role of language in creating the interface between humans and AI/machine learning technologies. It will address languages’ role in getting us to accept these technologies, investigating how the creation of believable/convincing linguistic parallels to human forms of language (via mimicry), invites us to engage with machines as social beings, and builds trust in machine utterances (written and spoken).

Senior Editor: Lanfranco Aceti
Editors: Lanfranco Aceti, Sheena Calvert and Hannah Lammin

Reference this volume: Aceti, Lanfranco, Sheena Calvert, and Hannah Lammin, eds. Language Games. Cambridge, MA: LEA / MIT Press, 2019.

Published Online: March 15, 2021
Published in Print: TBA
ISBN: TBA
ISSN: 1071-4391
DOI: TBA
Repository: TBA

Acknowledgments:  The Leonardo Electronic Almanac is a collaborative effort supported by MIT Press, Leonardo/ISAST, Goldsmiths, New York University (Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development), OCR (Operational and Curatorial Research), and CAC (Contemporary Arts and Cultures).

Please Note: This volume is being published online. We are no longer accepting papers on this topic.

 

REAR PSYCHO: HITCHCOCK’S HORROR LANGUAGE MEDIATED BY AI
by Eleanor Dare
To create a strong AI (one which replicates human intelligence) would necessitate an understanding of the relationship between language and thought; but human languages encompass more than written and spoken communication, they are also manifest in images, sounds, artefacts, places and practices.
[IM]POSSIBLE ALPHABETS, OR WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MEAN IN THE AGE OF AI?
by Pedro Zylbersztajn
Artificial scripts have been developed for millennia. These are (usually politically minded) conscious efforts to constitute or crystalize a set of meanings through the establishment and operation of written code. Cryptographers use statistical analysis to unveil hidden meanings not only in purposefully occluded messages but also in long lost natural and constructed scripts.
THE VOICE OF THE UNDERWORLD: MAGICAL AND POLITICAL NARRATIVES OF THE SMART SPEAKER
by Wesley Goatley
This essay interrogates the use of language in describing machine learning-enabled smart speakers and voice assistants, such as the Amazon Echo and its Alexa technology, arguing that particular dominant narratives obfuscate the deeper function of these devices, an obfuscation compounded by the limits of access inherent to their design and operation.
NURA YAMAN (‘COUNTRY SPEAKS’): LANGUAGE, PEOPLE AND PLACE IN SERIOUS GAMES
by Andrew Burrell, Rachel Hendery, and Danièle Hromek
This essay focuses on Barrawao, a version of the game based on the region now known as Sydney, Australia—a region consisting of complex language ecologies, in which speakers are often multilingual in a variety of traditional languages, and are connected to this traditional linguistic landscape through protocols, beliefs, and identity.
MISUNDERSTANDING AS POETICS: COLLABORATING WITH AI TO REWRITE THE INNER CRITIC
by Sarah Ciston
Language gets morphed continuously by the changing platforms and practices that contain and distribute it—including increasingly prevalent use of AI techniques such as natural language processing (NLP). This calls for new approaches to digital writing, both in criticism and practice.
TALKING WITH A VIRTUAL HUMAN: TRANSDISCIPLINARY DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS FOR SPEECH-BASED INTERACTION IN THE AUDIENCE WITH A HERO PROJECT
by Marsha Courneya, David Jackson, and Roger McKinley
To Exchanges with digital assistants, such as Apple’s Siri, have a functional aesthetic related to asking informational questions, such as for weather updates. However, when these human-machine conversations include recorded testimony by real-life people, the identity of our conversational partner changes our relationship with these talking machines.
WHAT ARE BOB AND ALICE SAYING? [MIS]COMMUNICATION AND INTERMEDIATION BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND CODE
by Hannah Lammin
Natural language interfaces enable intuitive conversational interactions with computational devices, whilst rendering the inner workings of these technologies opaque. However, such interfaces can also produce events of miscommunication between computers and their human users, which draw attention to the nonhuman logic operating inside the black box.

 

Lanfranco Aceti is known for his social activism and extensive career as artist, curator, and academic. He is a research affiliate and visiting professor at ACT @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the Arts Administration Program at Boston University. He is also the Editor in Chief of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac, The MIT Press. He has exhibited numerous personal projects including Car Park, a public performance in the UK at the John Hansard Gallery; Who The People?, an installation artwork acquired in its entirety by the Chetham’s Library and Museum in Manchester; Sowing and Reaping, installation artworks acquired in their entirety by the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Cyprus; and Hope Coming On, a site-specific choral performance he designed for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with the collaboration of the Boston Children’s Chorus, and realized in front of Turner’s Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On). In 2017, Aceti prepared a series of new artworks for an exhibition entitled Shimmer and curated by Irini Papadimitriou (V&A) at the Tobazi Mansion in Hydra, a new large choral performance titled Accursed for the Thessaloniki Biennial in Greece; and Knock, Knock, Knocking a public space installation in the Mediterranean Garden Pavilion of the New Sea Waterfront of Thessaloniki.