WeaverGirl Project
speculative enterprise, emotional labor, computer vision, optimization
(Shanghai, China · Cryptovoxels 2019 to 2022)
WeaverGirl Project is a speculative situation built around WeaverGirl™, a fictional emotion AI company selling technologies to workers whose jobs require them to feel correctly.
Its products promise a better emotional future through smile detection, emotion monitoring, and chatbots. Cuixi programmed the facial expression systems, a real time smile index, and the bots, then placed them inside a corporate world of websites, product demonstrations, launches, training programs, and performances.
For Consul General's Wife in 2021, a performer wearing a test headset was scored live while an audience watched her train for the emotional role of a diplomat's spouse. For Master, Please Weave Your Maid in 2022, visitors entered a virtual WeaverGirl temple and accessed MaidBot while former maid Meiyu Li livestreamed an eight hour workday alongside it.
The company treats emotion as infrastructure: something that can be measured, optimized, sold, and eventually learned as part of the job.
Initiator and programmer, with _ao_ao_ing.
Iterations
2022 · Master, Please Weave Your Maid · Raiden INST, Cryptovoxels
2021 · Consul General's Wife · Project Terrasse, Residence of the Consul General of France, Shanghai
2020 · WeaverGirl · InFLESH, Shanghai
2019 · Weaving x Performing workshop · Shanghai
Collaborators
Alice Chen (first user; the iteration was supported by her initiative Project Terrasse).
Performers
Meiyu Li (collaborator and performer).
An anonymous performer (product testing).