2. Chinese Whispers by Saurabh Datta
Chinese Whispers is a physical computing work which records the user input audio and transmits it 'telephone' game style between and across four "gossiping" heads. The message or story is distorted and changed at each repetition, resulting in a final telling very different from the original one one that is difficult to understand and "impossible to encrypt". I really like how this piece looks at the errors that can occur in the transmission of data in a very human way, and points with humor to the misinterpretation and mis-processing of data that can occur in the in-between. The construction of it, and use of the human heads as figures also humorously points to the misinterpretation and morphing of data through gossip and human retelling, and how even technology, although we so often see it as a reliable means of reproducing information, is susceptible to this.
