About

The Association Engine exposes the intricate and rich web of words that embody language. The connectivity of words is vast and considerably beyond the scope of any one person, but not beyond the scope of the machine. The Association Engine uses the machine to externalize this sea of meaningful associations; to remind the viewer of connections forgotten and to introduce them to new ones.

The Association Engine has many embodiments including one in particular that is based on the improv warm-up exercise called the pattern game. In doing the pattern game, the Association Engine takes a word from the viewer, or viewers, and uses that word as a starting point for a multi-system free association. A collection of machines plays the role of participants in this game, speaking their contributions aloud (with a distinct voice and animated face for each machine). Given a word, each individual machine searches for connections to other words and ideas and presents them to the viewer through both sight and sound. It then passes its contribution to the next machine in line that then repeats the process.

Just as the point of the pattern games is to get performers on the same page, or in the same idea space, the pattern game for the Association Engine creates a common vocabulary reached by the combined efforts of the individual machines. This bag of words and ideas then becomes the context in which the actual performance takes place. In particular, this performance takes the form of the individual machines doing a One Word Story. From a viewer’s perspective, this ends up being the individual machines, the individual voices trading off to weave the words from the pattern game into a complete narrative.

Video demonstration of the Association Engine.