From C-3PO to HAL: Opening The Discourse About The Dark Side of Multi-Modal Social Agents

The increasing prevalence of communicative agents raises questions about human-agent communication and the impact of such interaction on people's behavior in society and human-human communication. This workshop aims to address three of those questions: (i) How can we identify malicious design strategies - known as dark patterns - in social agents?; (ii) What is the necessity for and the effects of present and future design features, across different modalities and social contexts, in social agents?; (iii) How can we incorporate the findings of the first two questions into the design of social agents? This workshop seeks to conjoin ongoing discourses of the CUI and wider HCI communities, including recent trends focusing on ethical designs. Out of the collaborative discussion, the workshop will produce a document distilling possible research lines and topics encouraging future collaborations

Partying with Hello Kitty: How Electronic Dance Music and Rave Culture are transforming, commercializing, and globalizing youth culture in the twenty-first century

This thesis will demonstrate how electronic dance music (EDM) has evolved from the musical underground during the second half of the twentieth century into the mainstream, commercial powerhouse it is now in the early twenty-first-century world. EDM at its core is a musical style characterized by the use of synthetic, electronic sounds. The combination of technological devices such as drum machines, repetitive bass lines, electronic builds and releases and inorganic noises in tandem with instrumental and vocal samples makes EDM an incredibly malleable style of dance music that has branched into a variety of forms over the course of its less than fifty year existence. Innovations in technology, like the tape reel, the Moog synthesizer, the vinyl mixer and the computer have led to new ways of contemplating and creating music. I argue that the innovative musical voices of late modernism and early postmodernism set the foundation for early EDM, who were not afraid to harness the new synthetic sounds at their disposal. Electronic dance music can trace its roots back to the repetitive, minimalist structures used since the 1960's by postmodern composers such as Philip Glass and the electronic instrumentation of artists like Terry Riley and John Cage. Owing to its flexibility, EDM has also been re-contextualized in different cultures. In Japan for instance, it has been stripped of its subversive association to drugs and raves and is now used as a motor to exaggerate the youthful vitality of young pop idols, whose "kawaii" ("cute") image depends on the energy for which EDM is also famous today. Another consequence of the musical globalization of EDM is the corporatization and commercialization of the music, where electronic dance music producers and DJs are now paid millions of dollars to push products and headline enormous international music festivals. EDM is now a mainstay of popular culture around urban centers of the world, and as such it is being used by different forces for creating art as well as for profit. This study aims to illuminate these forces by tracing EDM's path throughout history, using musical examples to show its evolution as well as the ways it is being re-contextualized as an increasingly globalized commodity

Contemporary Art in Japan and Cuteness in Japanese Popular Culture

This thesis is an art historical study focussing on contemporary Japan, and in particular the artists Murakami TakashL Mori Mariko, Aida Makoto, and Nara Yoshitomo. These artists represent a generation of artists born in the 1960s who use popular culture to their own ends. From the seminal exhibition 'Tokyo Pop' at Hiratsuka Museum of Art in 1996 which included all four artists, to Murakami's group exhibition 'Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture' which opened in April 2005, central to my research is an exploration of contemporary art's engagement with the pervasiveness of cuteness in Japanese culture. Including key secondary material, which recognises cuteness as not merely something trivial but involving power play and gender role issues, this thesis undertakes an interdisciplinary analysis of cuteness in contemporary Japanese popular culture, and examines howcontemporary Japanese artists have responded, providing original research through interviews with Aida Makoto, Mori Mariko and Murakami Takashi. Themes examined include the deconstruction of the high and low in contemporary art; sh6jo (girl) culture and cuteness; the relation of cuteness and the erotic; the transformation of cuteness into the grotesque; cuteness and nostalgia; and virtual cuteness in Japanese science fiction animation, and computer games. Director of Studies: Toshio Watanabe Supervisors: David Ryan and Omuka Toshihar

Uncovering Drivers for the Integration of Dark Patterns in Conversational Agents

Today, organizations increasingly utilize conversational agents (CAs), which are smart technologies that converse in a human-to-human interaction style. CAs are very effective in guiding users through digital environments. However, this makes them natural targets for dark patterns, which are user interface design elements that infringe on user autonomy by fostering uninformed decisions. Integrating dark patterns in CAs has tremendous impacts on supposedly free user choices in the digital space. Thus, we conducted a qualitative study consisting of semi-structured interviews with developers to investigate drivers of dark patterns in CAs. Our findings reveal that six drivers for the implementation of dark patterns exist. The technical drivers include heavy guidance of CAs during the conversation and the CAs\u27 data collection potential. Additionally, organizational drivers are assertive stakeholder dominance and time pressure during the development process. Team drivers incorporate a deficient user understanding and an inexperienced team

A Broad View on Robot Self-Defense: Rapid Scoping Review and Cultural Comparison

With power comes responsibility: as robots become more advanced and prevalent, the role they will play in human society becomes increasingly important. Given that violence is an important problem, the question emerges if robots could defend people, even if doing so might cause harm to someone. The current study explores the broad context of how people perceive the acceptability of such robot self-defense (RSD) in terms of (1) theory, via a rapid scoping review, and (2) public opinion in two countries. As a result, we summarize and discuss: increasing usage of robots capable of wielding force by law enforcement and military, negativity toward robots, ethics and legal questions (including differences to the well-known trolley problem), control in the presence of potential failures, and practical capabilities that such robots might require. Furthermore, a survey was conducted, indicating that participants accepted the idea of RSD, with some cultural differences. We believe that, while substantial obstacles will need to be overcome to realize RSD, society stands to gain from exploring its possibilities over the longer term, toward supporting human well-being in difficult times

Whimsical Bodies: Agency and Playfulness in Robotic Art

This thesis examines issues related to agency, playfulness, and behavioral design in robotic art. Using the term ‘whimsical bodies’ (inspired by artist Steve Daniels’, Whimsy, 2008) as an evocative metaphor for the playful ecology and creations of robotic art, I take up historical and contemporary case studies as entry points to a multi-faceted discussion of human-machine engagements considering the lenses of philosophical, art historical and curatorial methodological research. Robotic art’s whimsical bodies are also explored through references to new media scholarship, object-oriented-philosophy, metaphysics and speculative theory. In assessing characteristic features of the art form, such as its playfulness, use of humor, and critique/reconfiguration of wonder as a mode of critical engagement, this thesis aims to move robotic art from the periphery to the center of new media art as a lively and unique field of research

Freedom of expression and the metaverse: on the importance of content creation for the emergence of a complex environment

This research analyzes the importance of the freedom of expression in the creation of the metaverse, in a context of increasing power of Big Techs in the digital environment. As its results, technical knowledge related to many areas and creativity are fundamental for the creation of the metaverse. Thus, its creation must be democratized. Public policies ensuring ways to access content creation must be developed, and such a democratization must be based on freedom of expression. And limitations to the exercise of such freedom must not be subjected to private interests of huge corporations, nor moderated solely by technological tools. Methodology: hypothetical-deductive method of procedure, with a qualitative and transdisciplinary approach, and a bibliographic review research technique