Not Allowed for Algorithmic Audiences, 2021

Edition of 3 + 2AP.

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Around 3.7m new videos are uploaded every day on YouTube only. Sounds produced by the human body are collected from these videos, categorized and labelled to build extensive audio data sets used to train algorithms. In the last years the usage of voice UIs is on the rise. The number of users for voice assistants, especially smartphones and smart speakers, is increasing among all age groups.

Voice, a fictional virtual assistant, based in an Athenian apartment exhibits an odd behaviour. In a hot August, for seven days exactly at 5:30pm they appear on the screen through an avatar and they start talking. While active, Voice has scanned the entire Internet gathering all sorts of information. Now they long to share it before their patent expires and they get end up in an e-waste dump. In their last monologue, they share playful tips with humans on how they can manage… not to be heard by algorithms online.

The feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti describes voice as “a unique audio footprint of a human’s soul”. Speaking is an integral part of everyone’s individual identity, it carries the past and present. What this actually means, now that machines can detect our physical and emotional states and predict our desires, fears, sickness and needs, harvesting at the same time our behavioural surplus? What are these voice assistants to us? Buddies, servants or supervisors spying on voice’s biometrics?