ROBOTME

Through my work I am critiquing the way most people rely on social media today and how it impacts us. Recent statistics posted on Oberlo.co.uk show that about 42% of the world´s population use social media daily with an average of 2 hours and 22 minutes spent on it a day and the numbers just keep increasing as time goes by. Based on this and my own experience I believe that it is becoming more common for people to socialise and network through their phones than in person.

My work is set in a not so distant future were people have upgraded from using their phones to communicate with each other to using robots. I was recently made aware that robots have already been used in this way with children who are ill at cannot live the hospital or their home. The robot goes outside for them and it livestream back to them and they can react back through the robot. While the intention of this technology is good, I feel like similar to phones, once this technology becomes more mainstream people prefer to use their robots to communicate with other people.

Video

My video is a commercial like my Marbie Commercials from last year. The commercial is promoting the product which I named RobotMe. RobotMe  is a robot you can purchase using your phone by downloading an application once the application is installed you can customise your to your liking like how now days we can use avatars in our profile pictures instead of a pictures of ourselves in social media (for example snapchat with bitmojis). Once the customer has finished their robot will arrive in a few days. The purpose of this robot is to attend event when the customer does not feel like going in person or has to be somewhere else at the same time. The customer is able to control their robot using their phone.

The video shows this futuristic world which I achieved using a greenscreen. This commercial is edited to resemble a typical infomercial. Usually the purpose of a commercial is to make you buy the product and will try to convince the customer that it is good at that they needed it. However, while the RobotMe commercial has the same intention as your average commercial I have edited in way that suggests that this product might have more of a sinister impact than it is meant to have. I have shown this by use of music to set the atmosphere and glitches throughout the commercial as wall as the last few scenes which involve a questionable customer review and a customer fainting after trying to interact with the robot. The costumer’s future robot appears over her in form of a glitch at the beginning of the video, this represent her future image as through the use of her product people will identify her with the image of her robot.

Performance

Like in the video I am able to control my robot using my phone. During the exhibition I plan to be dressed like the customer in the video (which is dressed like my robot).  I will be walking around by myself looking at the work and every time someone tries to talk to me, I will use my robot to talk for me. Apart from using my robot to talk to people I will approach people using my robot and have small talk with them.

The performance will show what outcome of using this product would look like in a distant future according to me.