ABSTRACT
The students built what Roy Ascott called ‘calibrators’: devices that would allow the user to read their instinctive responses against other possibilities, actively ‘calibrating’ their behaviour in accordance with a given situation. While the Groundcourse mind maps were essentially exercises in analysis and behaviour, another exercise took the process of self-awareness into a more interactive realm. One calibrator was evidently designed to make the student use an invented language. This calibrator displays symbols, letters and numbers in concentric circles, with the outer three rings containing an invented alphabet. In the case of a personality calibrator, the student would be able to measure their new response to a given situation against the basic information of their natural responses, so that they essentially performed an alternative response. Operating a personality calibrator requires self-analysis, with the hopeful outcome of greater self-knowledge. It is a vulnerable act, confronting the weaknesses or patterns in behaviour and analyzing what would happen if another path were chosen.
