ai-powered spambots scribe the stories of their fate
Combining found objects with technology in an unexpected union, Neil Mendoza’s small fleet of AI-powered Spambots narrate a whimsical response to Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World. In a live installation powered by AI models, the robotic Spam cans band together as they become empowered to tell their tales to the audience through the written word.
Each bot is equipped with a four letter keyboard connected to a main screen, and through a neutral network trained on the novel’s prose they retell the chapters, randomly replacing nouns and verbs with pig-related alternatives.
Spambots scribe their stories in a whimsical installation | all images courtesy of Neil Mendoza
neil mendoza’s whimsically dystopian installation
Once simply branded cans of cooked pork, artist Neil Mendoza’s Spambots now take on the role of storytellers. Connected to a main computer screen and with their own small keyboards in hand they collaborate to type the whole alphabet along with some punctuation.
The Spambots’ porcine prose is generated by a deep learning-based large language model, fine-tuned on a specially altered ‘piggy version’ of Brave New World. In this novel each character is unwittingly born and boxed into a caste in much the same way industrial farm animals — such as those that end up in Spam — are born into fates they did not choose. Now, the discarded pork cans live to tell their tale in a whimsical yet dystopian installation.
AI models train the bots to type an alternate ‘piggy’ version of Brave New World
Neil Mendoza’s small fleet of robotic Spam cans band together with their small four-letter keyboards
project info:
name: Spambots
designer: Neil Mendoza
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edited by: ravail khan | designboom