In the game "chinese whisper", known to some as "telephone", the first person tells a secret to the next. The secret is passed down the line and by the end, it tends to be a different secret. somewhere in that process, there was a miscommunication, accidental, or perhaps intentional.
This children's game shows, on a small scale, something which happens every day in real, "grown up," life. Cultural difference, age difference, and gender differences could be said to contribute to miscommunications. Our own perceptions of things will create personal bias. Or maybe it's that the information we are presented is biased to the point of view of the author, as might be said of some media sources. Maybe certain truths are omitted to avoid lies, creating in the mind of the receiver of information, a preconceived truth, which is perhaps not true at all; this has long been an issue in romantic relationships, parent-child relationships, and others.
Some people might have once (and maybe still do) referred to me as naïve, and too trusting. As I've "grown up," I find that I more skeptical, less tolerant, less trusting, and perhaps even a little mean. Maybe this is a just part of growing up and a natural survival mechanism – i mean how many times can i go to the ATM to get out $40 for the guy on the street believing his story about the hospital and the taxi and the bike and the theater and that he'd pay me back (long story short, i was naïve and ripped off).
I guess my question really is, how can we parse all this information we receive on a daily basis and retrieve a little truth?
Can we? And if not, are we (am I) just going to turn into a paranoid, skeptical, distrusting human being(s) in order to not be taken advantage of, or brainwashed?
SOLUTIONS?
These thoughts was actually spawned from an affinity toward mannequins; the eerily lifeless yet life-like, what is it about them?... then one day on ebay, an addiction of mine which i am trying to ween myself off of, i came across an auction, well, three, for sets of six styrofoam heads! "18 styrofoam heads!" I exclaimed at the result of the mathematically computing i just calculated, "oh my!" And so after I won the auction and received the heads, i admired them awhile, arranged them in different configurations, placed them around the house. I imagined them talking to each other - they are after all representational of humans, who talk to each other, sometimes.. Anyways, i was also taking a physical computing class so as I looked at them, i wondered i could animate them somehow. I thought of communicating information to one which it would pass to another - like a game of chinese whisper - and it would change. the user would somehow see this information changed - be it auditory (though i don't really want to deal with sound), or maybe textual. i have a more detailed description of this idea on my blogger site. the heads probably would be just be an iteration. they may later take the form of cast bodies. (why...?) this might also give me more control for the wiring etc.
but...is this a problem to be solved by merely commenting on this issue by creating a gadget or environment which mimics this preëxisting phenomenon?
i came across a dude who did a very similar thing to my proposed solution already a few years back called self-portrait at the center of the universe...curse you ken feingold
feingold's The Animal, Vegetable, Mineralness of Everything also relates to issues of communication, and also of the self. (also relevant precedent for the self&communication idea.)
panasonic emotions testing line (via wmmna) by Jirì Cernicky users wear their emotions on the outside on a little portable device so they don't have to experience, or display, real emotions. i feel this is relevant because touches on communicating what is actually meant regardless of what appears to be true. (also a relevant precedent for the love&miscommunication idea)
mouthpiece (via wmmna) by Krzysztof Wodiczko is similar to the above, here users are immigrants who aren't comfortable or feel threatened by society to speak up and say what they want to. this exaggerate device they wear on their mouths speaks for them. (also a relevant precedent for the love&miscommunication idea)
