JANE MULFINGER & GRAHAM BUDGETT: REGRETS Cambridge 2005 [video 15.48]
Recipient of a major research award from Microsoft Research Cambridge [MSRC]
REGRETS Cambridge [Linz, Paris, Santa Barbara]:
an interactive archive, public conceptual artwork and action-research study
regarding the human capacity for remorse
regrets.org.uk ยท team@regrets.org.uk
NOVEMBER 2005, ENGLAND: Mobile units roaming public space in Cambridge collect and display anonymous regrets from the public to comprise a sociological database of time- & site-specific sentiment in the community. REGRETS Cambridge is an interactive archive, a public conceptual artwork, and an action research study of communally shared, but typically private recollections.
private
Instant feedback to the individual user based on other locals' similar concerns
is algorithmically generated and calculated to 'share the burden'. A wireless
connection queries a central database located on a remote server. Using keywords
from the submitted text and other self-describing user input to define
similarity, the server returns to the user the five most similar of others'
regrets. An incongruous element to some of the returns lends a
thought-provoking, poetic character to the user feedback.
public
Through existing signage, text, network, and broadcast facilities, random
selections and groupings of regrets sampled from the archive are made public
across the city. The Cambridge Public will encounter fellow citizens' most
personal misgivings in the spaces usually occupied by communal information,
advertising, publicity, & entertainment. By engaging local users in revelations
of a problematic but potentially constructive nature, REGRETS Cambridge aims to
bring specificities of individual lives, in this case personal regrets, into the
realm of public debate, shared learning, and community. In particular, remorse
is seen here as a positive entity, incorporating recall, reflection, error
correction and learning. Far from retrograde, remorse promises change for the
better...
below: regrets.org.uk screenshot
below: Cambridge Guildhall [City Hall] animated projections