Synthetic Empathic Intelligent Companion Artefacts (SEICA) Human Interaction Labs

Synthetic Empathic Intelligent Companion Artefacts (SEICA) Human Interaction Labs' (seicalabs.org) is a speculative transmedia narrative and a 12 personae multimedia performance art project. The work attempts to thematically bridge concepts and creative processes employed within the fields of art, science and technology through hypertext fiction and on/offline storytelling. Positioned as a faux virtual organization, SEICA Human Interaction Labs is manifested through its online activities. Operated by a team of personae, the organization produces multimedia research works that reflect on how overhyped media portrayals and oversimplification of information package the modern perception towards scientific discovery and technological innovation. Blending and bending technocultural themes through tropes found in popular culture and internet vernacular, the fictive organization’s cybernetic researchers strive to orchestrate chaos and generate questions that critically engage with near-real-time discourses on human interaction in the age of companion robots. Recent multimedia research works include a study on (non)living things, hardware and intermediary interfaces, commercial user experience design and dopamine level manipulation, objects from the Institutional Cabinet of Curiosities (ICC), and a collaborative essay on re-imagining humanity inspired by Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" (1984). Disseminated through various platforms including social media, the project’s satirical nonlinear narrative unfolds through inquiry-based performances documented in the new media works, digital artefacts, speculative lab equipment, lab notes, and chat logs that further develop the ongoing dynamics between the interacting personae.