Eliza Redux
Robots, green robot stand, website
11.25 x 11 x 6 in
2003-2012In Eliza Redux, three robots serve as online pseudo-psychoanalysts, offering 5-minute private sessions. Eliza Redux celebrates the phenomenon of Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum’s linguistic 1966 computer program ELIZA, developed at M.I.T., which allowed for text-based human conversation with a computer program as psychotherapist. The program applied pattern-matching rules to the human’s statements to figure out its replies. Each robot has its discipline, i.e. either Freudian, Lacanian or Jungian. Together they form the centerpiece of a global “therapeutic” control center.