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  • Boris [AI-Generated Policy Speech]

    London, V&A Museum

  • Performance

    2019

In this algorithm-assisted performance of political satire, we speculate on the potential of listening smart technologies to inform political rhetoric and policy. Using CharRNN (a multi-layer Recurrent Neural Networks [LSTM, GRU, RNN] for character-level language models) and a data set that we built from UK & EU stakeholders including European Union policymakers, UK MPs, Irish diplomats, and the British public, we can generate rhetoric in response to characters and speech format.

Here at the V&A Late performance, ‘Boris’ presents a speculative Brexit policy speech. Legrand Jäger stand to either side of the lectern reading the data set softly into a series of amplified smart home devices. The Sniff.mp3 national anthem (see archive) acts as an intro and outro.

Credits
Dave Selley, Boris Johnson drag
Rob Clouth and Jakab Pilaszanovich, sound engineering for Sniff.mp3
Parag Kumar Mital, AI engineering
Natalie Kane & Jenna Mason, V&A