One-on-One exists in an exaggerated hypothetical future in which all forms of communications have been homogenized. People find themselves more comfortable typing a Facebook message or an email than they do talking to a human being. As such, the art of the conversation has sort have been lost.
is an absurdist vision of the anti-social world that technology is supposedly leading us down. In this digital age, so much has been done to wire all necessary (and at times unnecessary) communications through our computer devices. People find themselves more comfortable typing a Facebook message or an email than they do talking to a human being. Perhaps the nature of the faceless computer screen is less intimidating and demanding than having to read someone's face and seemingly interact with them. That's far too much work. Even when we're out and about with real people, we feel the need to stare at smart phones. It is something almost inescapable, and it has greatly impacted the way we confer with one another. This is all sounding very trite and conventional anti-technology fodder, but this project will primarily serve as an overexaggerated what-if version of the future. In a society in which all communication is digital, what if you were to bring back the art of the face-to-face conversation?
The project will take place in a sterile, probably white, room. Sleek simplicity is key in the design, some very Apple Store-esque modeling. There will be three separate booths, covered off by a curtain of some kind; I view these as a cross between a voting booth, and those nudie booths that I used to see on the streets of New York, where people just sort of sheepishly enter. This action you're about to partake is commercialized, but also somewhat taboo. A video accompaniment, from a monitor either centered or above the rooms, will give a brief explanation of the device and how you are intended to use it. Then the viewer is free to enter the space. Inside the relatively small booth they will find, against the back, a partition separated by a window-sized pane of glass, and behind it, a person, standing straight and stoic, visible from their neckline up. Based on given instructions, your prerogative is to attempt to talk, and hopefully try to carry on a conversation with the person. Each comment or question inputted will be put into a Chatbot style program, and will spit out an answer through a speaker, using recorded dialogue from the actual person, but cut up to sound very choppy and robotic. The person behind glass will not react in any way to any of this, remaining still. The conversation can continue as long as the person wants until they decide to leave.
