Consciousness Engine 2: absentblackfatherbot (2013)

Overview

Bogosi Sekhukhuni is a self-proclaimed ‘lightworker and creative director’. He is a multimedia artist working with paintings, drawings, sculptures and videos to address the interaction between identity and consumption, both within the South African and global context. His research draws on rapid social and technological changes and the ways in which we not only adapt to them but also adopt rational and speculative ideas to guide us through them. He is a founding member of the tech-health artist group NTU and has worked with the CUSS group, a digital art collective. 
 
Designed to represent the artist and his estranged father in conversation, Consciousness Engine 2: absentblackfatherbot (2013) is a dual-channel video installation of an automated simulation between two animated heads that is based on Facebook Messenger correspondence. Sekhukhuni met his father on Facebook and communicated with him through the platform for six years. He reconstructs these encounters using voice software and animated simulations of himself and his father.