Cultural Computing and the Self Concept: towards Unconscious Metamorphosis

Abstract. We are exploring an application for a novel direction in humancomputer interaction named ‘cultural computing’, which aims to provide a new medium for cultural translation and unconscious metamorphosis. The main objective of this project is to create an interactive experience that encourages people in Western culture to reflect on their self-concept. In Western culture the self-concept is generally based on conscious perception of the self. Over centuries the book ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ’ got continuous attention, and therefore seems to be a promising narrative to address issues like logic, rationality, and self. The user in the role of Alice will go through an interactive experience and meets a Caterpillar, who questions the participant’s whereabouts of his/her self-concept. To determine the effect of this experience, we discuss a method that measures changes in a person’s implicit self-concept for we predict that the experience will have an unconscious effect towards individual metamorphosis. Using the ‘implicit association test ’ (IAT) we could find a significant effect in the hypothesized direction