Tocsin, conceptualized by artist Naomi B. Cook, is an innovative online karaoke machine and interactive installation that explores how emerging technologies shape our experiences and identities. It does this by critically examining the "information reorganization revolution" through research into the Enron Corpus, the LAION Dataset, and modern image-tagging practices.
The title Tocsin draws inspiration from warning sirens, referencing France’s SAIP (Système d’Alerte et d’Informations aux Populations) and Singapore’s SIGNAL program, known as “Voice of the Battlefield.” This work serves as a clarion call, urging viewers to reflect on the invisible forces and narratives shaping our digital world.
The Tocsin karaoke machine features a cast of luminary musicians who contributed to a dynamic database of songs, and is complemented by a stochastic lyric generator. The Enron Corpus, valued as one of the few public archive of real emails leaked online by a disgruntled lobbyist and used to train technologies like Siri and spam filters, underpins the project’s research. Laion Dataset used for imgery inspiration is a massive dataset of images that is used to train AI image generation models. Image tagging practices inform the project’s exploration of data-driven systems and reiteration of the theory of thought hypothesis.
If you would like to get involved or have any questions, you can contact Naomi (here).
