Tenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

I describe how different technologies and incarnations of the image have contributed to my work on the role of regret in addiction which began in Neuroscience. From a gallery installation of the National Facility for the Regulation of Regret (2015 and accompanying 360 tours) to an Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASSF) selected film (2016) and online reality (VR) experience associated with the quasi-facility, I have exploited technologies appropriate to the rich storytelling seam that regret opens up. The Regret-o-Tron (2016) was a reinvention of digital psychological testing for Festival of the Mind, ostensibly uncovering individuals’ propensity to regret. I have also recently proposed telling the story of lives lived with compulsions in an embodied VR experience. My latest project, ”Bouquet” is an audio documentary of my family’s understandings of their own and each others’ various addictions. Using photographic and video examples, I focus particularly on how comedy can enhance a meaningful interface with technology and heighten rather than diminish immersion in story-worlds.