Aligning Perspectives

Motivation

We decided to make this creature, as we wanted to reflect on what happens when someone tries to help someone that does not want to be helped. A creature that is clearly 'wrong', but thinks it is so right, forces people to face their own humanity and reflect on their own actions. We wanted to explore this part of human nature, because we found the following aspects to be very interesting:

1. How do people react when faced with someone doing something clearly wrong?
   For this we found that almost everyone wanted to correct the creature's error. Some did this because of annoyance, whereas others did this because they wanted to help it be 'correct'.

2. How do people react when their help is discarded, or as some may say, rejected entirely?
   Pretty much everyone felt frustration.

3. Do they understand why their help is discarded?
   Many thought that the creature was simply stupid, stubborn or faulty. Very few thought that maybe this was just what made the creature happy, or that this was what the creature's vision of the world was.

4. How do they react when they realize it is a matter of perspective?
   As has been stated before, this received an entire spectrum of reactions, ranging from destructive tendencies to feeling apologetic.

We found these questions to be interesting, as many times in the real world, we try to help others who we think are doing something wrong. We want to adjust their behavior or change their mindset or opinions, as we think that they are completely lost and need the help. However, do we ever stop to think and wonder if they actually need the help, if what they are doing is not harming anyone? Though we might disagree with the way some choose to live their lives, those same people could be entirely happy with the way they are. It is therefore important to be able to reflect, so that we can garner empathy and let people enjoy their lives in the way that they want to. Because at the end of the day, what may be 'right' for one, could be horribly wrong for the other. To try and enforce one's own perspective on that person will only lead to frustration from both sides, as can be learned from the above experience.

A real-life example of a misaligned perspective between a creature and a human can be found in an anecdote from Professor David Abbink[1] , who was in an intelligent car, which is in essence a self-driving car, that is capable of receiving driver support. While the professor and his colleague were driving, they found themselves on a narrow, mostly empty road, and encountered an oncoming vehicle. To make way for this vehicle, they decided to cross the white line. However, once they did, the car made a loud beeping noise and immediately steered to the left, nearly colliding with the oncoming car. Though the automatic emergency brake kicked in, the car deemed crossing the white line far more dangerous than suddenly steering to the left, whereas for the humans who had a broader perspective, crossing the white line posed no risk whatsoever, but steering to the left would have disastrous results. Though this example of related work is clearly in a different context, it still shows how two entities can look at the same situation through an entirely different lens, causing for friction between the two. 

Below is a video of the experience.

Implementation and Future Adjustments

To make this creature work, we used one servo that was attached to the artwork. This servo would reset to a specific angle every seven seconds, which ended up letting people project emotions onto the creature as they tried to help it. Sometimes it seemed to accept the help (say, for seven seconds), giving people the hope that it finally understood. But then it would reset again. Sometimes, it would immediately reject the help it received, giving off an air of intense stubbornness, making people want to fight back even harder. This inconsistent timer made it so that every interaction was unique, adding an extra layer of emotional investment to the experience.

We decided on making the artwork an abstract painting of the horizon. We chose this as we wanted something that would immediately stand out as wrong, as a horizon is not supposed to be crooked, and one big black straight line is very easily noticed. We chose to not make the painting the creature itself, as we wanted to give people a neutral object to argue about with, rather than arguing with the painting as a creature, because telling someone that their entire existence is wrong did not align with the discussion that we wanted to start.

Something we would want to improve on for the future, would be to perhaps give the creature its own name. This because many people asked for the name of the creature after having experienced the work, showing how quickly they were humanizing it and showing empathy. Upon learning that it had no name, they felt sad, showcasing the immediate bond that can be created through misunderstanding and experiencing alignment, concluding our experiment on a positive note.

References
[1] https://robohouse.nl/activities/news/robots-and-humans-have-to-understand-each-other/