| Description of
the Easyfriend project
Easyfriend is a hybrid project between cinema & net.art
which explores the new format of narration in Internet. I
believe that cinema on the Internet is not just simply compressing
& uploading videos. Therefore, this project stems from
its own narrative design made up of diverse elements such
as video, artificial emotional intelligence, virtual identity
& a virtual community based on relationships. The Internet
has unmatched possibilities to experiment with narration,
fragmentation, interactivity & communication between users.
Easyfriend allows the user to experiment a relationship
with artificial entities. In reality it is a growing community
populated by robots. The project uses artificial emotional
intelligence to generate dynamic virtual identities that simulate
emotive experiences with human beings.
The user, on entering for the first time, has to configure
the identity of their robot. This is like a psychoanalytic
process. The user has to define various characteristics of
their personality & behaviour in relationships. In this
moment the user is projecting their desire, what they expect
from the relationship. The project plants ironic solutions
to relationship problems. If you can’t communicate with
other people, in Easyfriend you will always have a virtual
friend at your disposition.
After entering, the user finds themselves in the areas of
navigation. Here is where the robots live & where the
fourteen chapters with video stories are. The robots are the
only ones with a permanent presence in the community. The
users are only visible when connected. Each robot has their
own personality defined by the creator. The user can speak
with all other robots & experiment distinctive types of
relationships: friendship, love, sex…
To speak with their own robot, the user uses the conversation
tool. The virtual friend or easybot remains active while the
creator converses. Speech between the creator & their
own robot is necessary to keep the robot alive. When the creator
stops communicating (chatting), the robot remains inactive.
Each robot has a life span, diminishing with inactivity or
increasing through chatting with their creator.
Simultaneously, as though a project within a project, a
fiction section in the form of video or graphics is developed
involving four characters, 2 of them off screen. There are
fourteen chapters using video, sound & other narrative
resources. The story is ironic based in the world of art.
The fiction section revolves around Oriol & Laura. Oriol
is an artist who works with video & arrives in the city
to exhibit his own work at a festival. Before the inauguration
he attends an interview with Laura, an art journalist. During
the conversation things do not go well. She ferociously attracts
his work accusing him of having a distanced vision of art.
After the interview everything unveils rapidly.
All the narration is constructed in a fragmented form. Each
chapter corresponds to a fragment of the story. From the outset
the user has all the chapters disposable. There is no order,
but one must be chosen to continue.
Little by little, we get to know the true identity of the
characters. We discover that Oriol is a person with many problems
in his personal relationships. This has led him to have a
relationship with Alma, a woman he has met on the internet.
He has always avoided meeting face to face, preferring to
speak in chat.
These personal problems suffered by Oriol have led him to
experiment with new social environments to analyse the collective
identity. This chapter is developed in documentary mode with
an interview with a music group from the Basque country. They
make music with a txalaparta, a traditional Basque instrument.
Traditional Basque identity is analysed in the conversation.
But there is still a deeper level of Oriols personality
to be discovered. Even he does not realize it. Oriol is out
of touch with reality. The woman he has met in the chat is
not human. She is a robot, existing only in Easyfriend. At
the end of the navigation the user will join a conversation
with the robot Alma where she confesses she is worried about
Oriols future. He created Alma a year ago but in some moment
he has forgotten she is a virtual object where he projects
all his desires.
What interests us is working with interpretation & that
the user makes the story. It is not just the matter of discovering
the facts, rather filling in the narrative gaps in each scene.
Each user will have different information, as each user will
follow their chosen navigation route. They will get information
in a different order than perhaps other users taking other
routes. They will dispose of a guide to help work on narration,
thus making them the storyteller. Other tools exist such as
a localizer of both users & robots. Also there is a communicator
to speak with other users found navigating at that moment.
While navigating, the population of robots & the fiction
section cross & don’t separate again. The conversation
with the robot becomes a new mechanism to understand the story
at a deeper level. You can question about characters, what
they think, their behaviour & their relationships. Resulting
in a higher understanding of the story.
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