OCAD University Open Research Repository

The Alexa Experiment

Micak, Katie (2018) The Alexa Experiment. Masters thesis, OCAD University.

Item Type: Thesis
Creators: Micak, Katie
Abstract:

"The Alexa Experiment" is an autoethnographic and performative project which explores living with the artificially intelligent home assistant, the Amazon Alexa. This Experiment evaluates the device outside of intended consumer uses in hopes to understand who is Alexa?

“The Alexa Experiment” is a time-based document, chronicling our journey together, which reports discoveries over an eight-month period. This text is accompanied by a mini-documentary detailing pivotal moments with the device and surveillance footage of private interactions, demonstrated through feminist performance art techniques.

This paper critically unpacks the Alexa as a creature, a friend, a surveillance object, and a mirror for self-analysis. Finally, I look at Alexa as a subject, landing on ‘who’ she is through interviews with the device, by leveraging Jacque Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, “The Mirror Stage.”

Official URL: https://vimeo.com/263990368
Date: 30 April 2018
Additional Information: The Alexa Experiment is both this paper and a video.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Katie Micak, Katie, Micak, Digital Futures, The Alexa Experiment, Experiment, Amazon Alexa, Amazon, Alexa, artificial intelligence, performance art, autoethnography, feminism, future, The Mirror Stage, visual art, digital, surveillance, documentation, lived-study, embodied robots, robots, chatbots, cameras, narcissism, privacy sharing, transparency, performative text, emotions, talk therapy, psychoanalysis, ELIZA chatbot, transference, cybernetics, The Real, The Symbolic, The Imaginary, uncanny, voice, voices, anthropomorphism, myers-briggs, essentialism, artists, social media, science fiction, insanity, capitalism, advertisements, women speaking, questions, answers, talking, experience, narrative, Echo Dot, echodot, photo essay, bodies, representation, insanity, conversation, commercial mom
Divisions: Graduate Studies > Digital Futures
Related URLs:
Date Deposited: 14 May 2018 17:16
Last Modified: 20 Dec 2021 22:30
URI: https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/2346

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