Robot Lands in UK Parliament

Another wave of local elections pass with little to no interest from Britain’s younger generation. “Kids don’t care about politics” scream the Establishment. “Politicians don’t care about the kids” scream back the children. Impasse.

Enter The Voicebot. It’s an industrial machine typically used in an assembly line, which has been lovingly hacked to communicate the cares of a generation to the people in power. Created by sidekick studios for v, the national young volunteers service, The Voicebot asks young people the deceptively simple question, ‘what do you care about?’ and sends their responses straight to MPs in Parliament.

Users submit their messages online and, in a physical-digital twist, The Voicebot writes them out, word by word, in the real world. From October 12th, the robot will be inside the hallowed walls of the Houses of Parliament in the UK, writing out messages from young people direct to MPs, in real time, creating a powerful [and very cool] conduit for young people to be heard.

Using the physical Internet, The Voicebot aims to bridge the gap between those who are governed and those who govern. It also sticks its fingers up to all those who think young people are apathetic, choosing instead to find solutions to get young people involved.

After the messages are submitted and written out by the robot, they are sliced into neat postcards [15000 shall line the walls of the exhibition in Parliament], whilst online each message is photographed, uploaded onto Flickr, and incorporated into a tag cloud for people to search. Web enabled and intelligent, the clinically cold machine displays a surprising humane quality, as the perfunctory motions are starkly contrasted by the powerfully emotive messages it articulates.

Contributed by Tarik Fontenelle