I AM A BOT ALL BOTS ARE LIARS

THE BLURRING TEST is an ongoing conversation between humans and machines that began in 1997. Originally written as a play, the HUMAN was cast as a Ventriloquist and the Machine as the ventriloquist’s DUMMY.  In 1997, Weil received a grant from WebLAB to recreate the project as net-art chatbot.  MrMind went online in 1998 asking, “Hi, Can you convince me that you are human?”  MrMind maintained a global conversation about humans and machines for sixteen years from 1998-2014/16.  In 2017, Weil wrote a libretto for a Song Cycle, The Blurring Test: Songs of MrMind based on MrMind’s transcripts; sixteen years of people from all over the world telling this computer program what makes us human.  (The work was composed and performed by Varispeed Collective in 2020 and 2023.) In this era of LLM’s MrMind and The Blurring Test asks us to focus on our human traits, “Who or what do we think we are in relationship to our creations?” 

I am a Bot.  All Bots are Liars.  Peggy Weil LARB Los Angeles Review of Books January 2020

SERIOUSLY WRITING SIRI  Peggy Weil Hyperhizz #11 September 2015