Embodiment meets Machine

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During his research for his video work Tilikum, named after an orca, held in captivity at SeaWorld Orlando for 34 years, Jan Peter Hammer came across the story of Daniel P. Dukes, a 27-year-old homeless man, who’s dead body was found in Tilikum’s basin, in 1999. Two year before, Dukes had been arrested when breaking into the mansion of Richard Gerriott, the inventor of the legendary computer game ULTIMA. After this incident, Gerriott, speculated, that in doing so, Dukes had confused real life and the fictitious world of the game. Hammer’s video work Hooked (previously titled Dopamine) revolves around Gerriott’s conjecture, drawing connections between Dukes’ presumed delusional life in the 90s and today’s fusion of virtual and real life through video games and social media. Along those lines, Matteo Pasquinelli and Jan Peter Hammer will further explore topics such as: behaviourism, the role of reinforcement learning in today’s video games, Dopamine, digital culture, cybernetics and AI.

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