Machine Fragments

Machine Fragments by Onoma Ekeh :: Needs Flash player 8+ and speakers; optimized for Internet Explorer and Safari :: Perhaps the question, "Can Machines Think"? should be re-articulated as "Is the Machine different from you or I"? Why is there a perceptive gap between our tools and ourselves? Do they also not constitute consciousness and by extension the body?

The cultural schisms that generate this differentiation between "man" and "machine" are also responsible for spawning voids and displacements --and the ghosts that inhabit them. It is these ghosts who constitute "Machine Fragments." Machine Fragments are essentially sound fictions spun from the perspective of sentient machines, testing humans for machine intelligence. Not so much to expose the machinic dimension in humans (we suspected as much), but to arouse the sense that "Machine" is also a kind of gender.

"Machine Fragments" is a 2005 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from The Greenwall Foundation.

BIOGRAPHY

Born and raised on most sides of the Atlantic, Onoma Ekeh started out as a painter, gravitated towards design and fell in love with cinema. The collusion effect is a lifelong fascination with hybrid forms of media and their perpetuation in contemporary culture. Ekeh has written for film, and literary and technological journals both in Europe and the United States; produced works for theater; and created "radio fictions." She is a frequent collaborator in a number of cross-disciplinary projects. She lives in New York City and has been the recipient of several fellowships and grant awards including the Jerome Foundation/Media Alliance (2000); Harvestworks Digital Media Center Artist-In-Residence (2002). Ekeh is currently a Fellow at the Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen in Austria.