Teacher of Algorithms is a vision of a future job emerged as a byproduct of the spreading of learning devices. Set in the near future, somewhere in the back alleys of Shanghai, shows the rituals and activities of 'the teacher'.
Teacher of algorithms is a commisioned Design Fiction piece by the academic research group Thing Tank. The props in the video and the video itself have been shown in various festivals and exhibitions and have allowed me to achieve the life goal of exhibiting a bag of dust (Training Dust to be precise) in a major Design Museum as Vitra Design Museum.
We think about smart/learning objects as yet not finished entities that can evolve their behaviors by observing, reading and interpreting our habits. They train their algorithms based on deep learning or similar ways to constantly adapt and refine their decisions.
But What if things are not that good at learning after all without some help? What if in a near future, I could just get a person to train my products better as I do with pets? Why having to deal with the initial problems and risk that it might even learn wrongly? So, What if there would be an algorithm trainer or teacher?
Fiction Short Video, 2015
Collaboration: Azure Yang (The Teacher), Carmelo Ferreri (The coffee man), Daniel Prost (Script and Audio), Andrea Carlon (Shoot)