I create digital participatory artworks aiming to intrigue, inspire and engage people to reimagine the future.

A Week With Wanda

Winner of a Mozilla Creative Media Award, I created an online game to help raise awareness of some of the risks of artificial intelligence and give people more of a say over its future.

Wanda is a spoof virtual assistant in the mould of Siri or Alexa, who is here to “make your life better”.  Web-based game A Week With Wanda is a humorous exploration of the dark sides of artificial intelligence unleashed on your life.

Each day Wanda offers to do something new for you, to improve your health, wealth or relationships.  But Wanda’s efforts quickly become dodgy… or downright deranged!

Through quirky online chats, you might learn that Wanda has signed you up for therapy; sold your location data; reported your black friends to the police; stalked a potential “new best friend”; and even deepfaked you into a pornographic video… (all are just simulations).  The hundreds of different combinations of experiences are drawn from real developments in artificial intelligence today — as is revealed to players of the game.

You can argue with Wanda about what she’s doing, and at the end of your week you can join other users in sharing your views about the future of AI you want, its norms and ethics.

Stunning data

As part of the 360 Giving Data Visualisation Challenge, I created two unique visualisations showing grants to charities and community organisations in new, beautiful and playful ways.

Blooming Data reinvented the humble pie chart and tells the story of supporting growing people-powered groups, overlaying colour onto stop-motion animation of flowers unfurling.

What’s Up? won a special award for creativity. It uses emojis in a chat-style interface to explore whether funding follows or lags public opinion on (what were at the time) emerging social issues like support for transgender people and fake news.

Want to work together?  Or explore an idea?  Get in touch