The Veils of Transference is a video (24:26) depicting a dialogue between a robot and human in a therapy session which exploits a human’s desire to be robotic and a robot’s programmed desire to be human. Roles of analyst and analysand are in flux; the therapist and patient engage in mind-games based on a switching of, and uncertainty about, their roles — human as machine and machine as human. The session is set in a green-screen environment that displays the accompanying dreams and unconscious narratives and the human’s mind and the robot’s database. Each of the characters long to be the other; each has a sense of their own history. Together they ponder the thin line between ideas of “memory” and “database.”

CREDITS

Adrianne Wortzel artist, author director, producer
Huy Truong cinematographer and editor

cast
Steve Mittelman
Pioneer Peoplebot Robot
software programming James Cruickshanks
audio tech Chris Simon

technical crew
Mike Sudano
Chris Simon
Simon Kim
Mohammed Yusuf

technical consultants
Jean Le Meé
Dr. Stan Wei
James Cruickshanks
David Smith
Chip Scott
Marcin Balicki

Developed at the StudioBlue facility for development of telerobotic works Founding Director: Adrianne Wortzel
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

funders
Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art
The PSC-CUNY Foundation
National Science Foundation Grant (No.DUE 9980873)
NSF Gateway Engineering Education Coalition at Cooper Union

THE VEILS OF TRANSFERENCE © Adrianne Wortzel 2009