Art bot, 2016
Link to bot: https://www.facebook.com/BuddhaBot-164521797360633/
Conception of communication changes rapidly by modern technology. Chatbots are common now for many purposes, their popularity can be explained by its narrative nature. This work tries to predict the new art of interactive text and it’s marginal forms like religion and philosophy.
Buddha bot answers a totally empty message on any request, simplifing representation of buddhist views on the void and its importance in thier phylosophy. Something without content force users to fill the emptyness with their imagination.
Here is some questions people asked Buddha bot:
Funny incidents happen during the implementing and developing the Buddha bot.
First, I have had a long struggle with Facebook Review Team, trying to explain the idia of Art Bot. They rejected several times my request on approval, with messages like this:
I've answered multiple times: "UPDATE: I'm sorry, HAVE YOU READ the Notes for the Reviewer? IT IS IMPORTANT to understand the empty answers of bot." and finally got approval to run my bot in public.
Second, Facebook several times changes the policies and API rules, so suddenly empty message become unappropriate. I solved it with Unicode symbol, that still contains nothing, but doesn't seem to be empty for Facebook. Here is example, how "old styleemptyness" looks now:
Dedicated to John Cage, of course.