LRV2066 ForwardFacing-B (2023)

Ongoing digital performance on Twitter

digital image 1059 pixel x 761 pixel (screenshot), courtesy of SFMTA and WIRED

digital videos 1059 pixel x 761 pixel, color, sound

text generated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4, March 23 2023 version

audio generated by ElevenLabs’s Speech Synthesizer thesis tool, 2023

On September 30, 2022, a Cruise autonomous vehicle nearly collided with a San Francisco light-rail train carrying 50 passengers. Both vehicles abruptly stopped, causing the train driver and some passengers to express their alarm. As a result of the incident, the train was delayed, and the train driver had to file a report. According to a detailed analysis published by WIRED magazine on April 2023, one passenger stated that the experience left the driver shaken. Numerous pedestrians and passengers gathered at the intersection to take pictures of the Chevy Bolt blocking the train car’s front side. A transit rider flipped a middle finger at the car and yelled something before storming off. This episode was captured by the LRV2066 ForwardFacing-B camera installed on the SFMTA train. The image below shows the moment in which the woman raised her middle finger to communicate her frustration and defiance. The caption stated: “A train passenger shows a middle finger to a Cruise autonomous vehicle after it almost collided with a light-rail train. COURTESY OF SFMTA”.

We fed this caption to the March 23 version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4 and asked the AI to rephrase it in the style of:

  • Allen Ginsberg

  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  • William S. Burroughs

  • Jack Kerouac

  • Jack Hirschman

  • Herbert Hunke

  • Lucien Carr

  • Richard Brautigan

  • Gregory Corso

  • Carolyn Cassidy

  • Rebecca Solnit

  • Jenny Odell

We subsequently used ElevenLabs AI voices to recite the extended caption using the premade voices of

  • Adam

  • Antoni

  • Arnold

  • Bella

  • Domi

  • Elli

  • Josh

  • Rachel

  • Sam

in various configurations.

Finally, we combined the image, the AI-generated text and audio to create a series of short videos, which you can see in the artwork page.

Several AI-generated poems were shared by Matteo Bittanti (@matteobittanti) on Twitter on April 11, 2023.

COLL.EO, 2023

References

Paresh Dave, “Dashcam Footage Shows Driverless Cars Clogging San Francisco”, WIRED, April 10 2023. URL

“A train passenger shows a middle finger to a Cruise autonomous vehicle after it almost collided with a light-rail train. COURTESY OF SFMTA”