Confabulation Radio: Reflexive Speculation in Counterfactual Soundscape

摘要

Material speculation through counterfactual artifacts has been an alternative approach to envisioning possible worlds in HCI. This paper further explores how false memory, or confabulation, can be a resource for enriching this constructive design approach. We conducted an explorative study to understand how personal experience of confabulation can contribute to the constitution of the body of possible worlds and to explore the potential of using mixed everyday soundscapes as a medium to trigger possible-world-experience. The result shows that these "counterfactual soundscapes" can create self-convinced experiences of counterpart self, which indicates a reflexive but fictional self across possible worlds. Based on these findings, we proposed the model of counterpart self that accounts for reflexive speculation in possible worlds and made a research artifact, the Confabulation Radio, as our attempt to inquire into this phenomenon.