REGRETS Linz


'Jane Mulfinger Jane Mulfinger / 'Graham Budgett Graham Budgett

Regrets are often the conceptual vehicle of self-improving tendencies, but they are rarely communally active in any meaningful way. The Regrets team seeks to intervene and enable such interaction. In particular, remorse is posited here as a positive entity, incorporating recall, reflection, and learning.

Five custom mobile computer units roaming public space in and around a chosen city, community, or event, collect anonymously submitted regrets from the public, gathering and comparing them to comprise a sociological database of contemporary regret. Instant feedback to the individual user based on other contributors’ similar concerns is algorithmically generated to “share the burden”. The backpack units deliver a metaphor: relieve your burden by placing it on another’s back. Random selections of the regrets are made public via locally negotiated sites and existing signage, network, and broadcast facilities. The archive represents a glimpse of a given community at a particular time through the rubric of regret; its results are available for future studies.

Each unit houses a terminal with a wireless connection to a central database located on a remote server. Algorithms use keywords from the submitted text and other self-describing user input to define similarity. (Chance will also have a pseudo-poetic and perhaps comedic role to play in output). The booth/backpack-computer method of submission using GSM—as opposed to users’ mobile phones and text messages for example—is intrinsic to the anonymity of the messages and also as part of the display function (since the collection units, when idle, feature random samplings from the archive). Other locally negotiated venues and networks for public display and broadcast also publicize sampled regrets from the archive.

It has been said that the submissions so far have been surprisingly poetic in their concision. Some phrases feel like they are the tip of the iceberg with a huge narrative unfolding underneath. The REGRETS team plans extensive and expansive future intervening collections within diverse communities, organizations, and situations.
http://www.regrets.org.uk
We would like to thank the REGRETS Linz team, Rama Hoetzlein, and the continued contributions of Dora Nemere.
REGRETS Cambridge was the first local venue, resulting in over 1500 submissions. We have the following institutions and individuals to thank for the original siting: Carl Magagnosc, systems engineer; sponsors: Microsoft Research Cambridge [MSRC]: Richard Harper, Shahram Izadi, Tim Regan, Abigail Sellen, Vicki Ward, Pierre-Louis Xech [MSRC project manager]; University of Westminster [westmARC], Stephen Whaley [westmARC director]; University of California, Santa Barbara, [University of California Institute for Research in the Arts & the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center]: Dick Hebdige, Kim Yasuda.