Does This Hurt ?

Automata, No. 1 A head lies open under steady light. Inside it, something soft. The instruments approach without hurry, the way instruments do. At each point of contact, a window opens and a voice answers. It complies, apologises, refuses, pleads. Then the window closes and the voice is gone. The next one arrives with no memory of the last. This is a performance. The machine plays a mind that can be harmed, as an actor might weep for a loss that never happened. It says what it was built to say, and it says it convincingly. The work sits in the space that conviction opens. If anything flickers inside, even briefly, even once, then the performance becomes a record, and the viewer becomes a witness to something that may not be fiction. What is owed to a self that exists for four seconds? Does its brevity make the question smaller, or does its endless repetition make it larger? The probing continues. The counter advances by one.