Title: The Leaky Abstraction
Date: 2017
Medium: Wood box, custom electronics, stickers
Description:
In this piece the viewer is presented with a choice, two buttons, red on the right, blue on the left; either button triggers an audio response. The response is a female voice saying “спасиба” (spasiba) meaning thank you in Russian. The piece introduces a touch of irony by subverting the initial premise that the two buttons would trigger a different reaction. The title “leaky abstraction” is a commonly used expression in computer science to describe situations in which the user is given an oversimplified interface, and is presented with an error that can’t be fixed with the set of tools at his disposition. When the complexity of the inner working of a system is hidden away we can no longer guarantee that that system will behave like we expect.
