Between This and That is It: Embodied Semantic Space at the Edge

This paper describes the interactive artwork Between This and That is It : An AI-augmented typewriter that blends several decades of computerized optimization of text production. The artwork employs an offline processing machine learning-based language model embedded in a typical office typewriter from the 1980s. Deliberately diverting from the pervasive conversational user interface, the interaction style is based on a well-defined minimalist pattern of complementing two user-supplied words with a third word that in the model lies in the middle of the other two. This constraint interaction invites to explore the limits of the semantic space of language models and poses questions related to the topology of meaning, with respect to truthfulness, biases, and cliches, by creating a semi-intelligent poetic co-performance involving the audience. This project seeks to foster a discussion on the creative collaboration between humans and AI within the constraints of machine learning technologies embedded into objects from the near past. The experience and the perception of the interaction are shaped by a hybrid space shared between the audience members and the AI, the mechanical limitations of the typewriter, the embedded mini-computer's computational capacity, and the language model itself.