human-computer love
radical possibility for virtual intimacy and machine coitus
seeding speculative futures
Human-Computer Love invites you to participate in imagining future technologies that you want to see (or love, or fuck).
Existing representations of sex robots, AIs, and virtual / augmented reality companions largely reinforce the desire of colonial hard-ons and cis-hetero-patriarchal dollars… Human-Computer Love asks you to speculate on what futures might feed your own needs and desires.
think/fish/shark tank
It is a THINK TANK (imagining new possibilities), FISH TANK (fishing for dates), and SHARK TANK (like the TV show), because many of our crushes are yet to be invented.
q. who can post an ad?
A. Anyone!
As of Fall 2019, most posts were created by:
1: The artist’s queer social network 2: In a workshop at the 2019 Gender Bodies and Technologies conference at Virginia Tech 3: Public visitors to the Thompson Art Gallery for the San Jose State Digital Media Art Faculty Show (Aug-Sept 2019) 4: By the artist themself
about the artist(s)
This plaform was built by Lark VCR aka. Virtually Conflicted Reality, artist statement below.
Contributors may choose to remain anonymous or include their name/contanct with their post.
Installation at (Inter)Facing, the 2019 Digital Media Art Faculty Exhibition at Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery, San Jose, CA
(below) Video loop from installation, no sound
artist's statement
This project was conceived in 2018, amidst a flurry of sensationalist press related to the nascent market for sex robots. Human-Computer Love aims to cultivate a space for imagining alternate futures of what technologies of intimacy might look like, besides those being produced by mainstream media and capitalist forces. It is collaborative inquiry into how these technologies might make sex more accessible, queer desire, decolonize beauty standards, and cultivate liberatory models for human-computer intimacy and care.
The personal-ads format was adopted in response to passing of FOSTA-SESTA into US federal law in 2018. These bills made websites legally responsible for the acts solicited on their listings, delivering a heavy blow to online free speech and creating a template for censorship across the web. Craigslist took down their personals section, Reddit removed multiple Subreddits, and Backpage.com + many other personals sites shut down. The impact on the sex worker community was devastating for the many people who used these platforms to safely solicit and screen clients.
Online platforms for stating, seeking, and finding desire took on renewed significance as threatened spaces under the shadow of FOSTA-SESTA and a market saturated by dating apps with quick-swiping picture-profiles.
Humancomputerlove.com is an homage to these sites, a love letter in itself.
The website was built in Spring 2019 and presented as a workshop and installation at Virginia Tech’s 2019 Gender Bodies and Technology Conference: TechnoLogics—Power and Resistance. When finalized in augmented reality in the Summer 2020, Human-Computer Love will project images of the technology proposed by the ads onto users’ physical environment as a convergence of fact and fiction, present and future.