New Media Artist Lynn Hershman has worked in a wide variety of different media ranging from photography to video to interactive installations. Hershman's newest video released in 2002 is titled Agent Ruby's EDream Portal. This interactive video allows the viewer to communicate directly with the computer as if they were holding a conversation with an actual human being. The computer or Agent Ruby tries to learn more about the person by asking questions such as "What are your likes and dislikes?" "What is your occupation?" or "What is your favorite movie?" However, I found that for many of my responses the computer could not comprehend what I was saying and a disclaimer would appear stating that "The remark was either too complex or too simple for me" and then just jumped to another question. After awhile questions also started to repeat and re-filter through. Also at times Agent Ruby's response did not correlate with what I had said. I think that the idea behind Agent Ruby is very intriguing in that a computer can be personified to be able to hold a conversation with a human. However, I do not think that the quality of the conversation and understanding could ever compare to a conversation between two people, nor should it because people are by nature interactive and should interact with each other not with a computer.
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