About the Author
This website represents the culmination of my time at the University of Texas at Austin receiving my Masters in Media Studies.
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I first began to take an interest in machine-human interactions and relationships in Dr. Sharon Strover's "Communication, Technology, and Culture" class, where I was first introduced to the digital influencer Lil Miquela. Miquela was the start of my thinking about the ways that we integrate machines and technology into our daily lives. In following this line of enquiry, I found myself contemplating the way that in taking a recuperative stance toward technology, and in looking at our images of machines and tech through a queer lens, can reveal new modes of being in the world. I found myself transfixed by the ways that these creations are frequently the backdrop that allow humans a way to imagine a different world and a different self. More often than not, these imaginings take on a distinctly counter-hegemonic sensibility.
Halfway through “Communication, Technology, and Culture” (Spring 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic forced us into remote online courses. I’m writing this section on the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring a worldwide pandemic. Since then, I’ve completed the majority of my Masters remotely.
Her is about the blossoming relationship between a lonely man named Theodore (played by Joaquin Phoenix), and his artificially intelligent operating system, Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). Finding himself alone and without direction after a divorce, Theodore decides to download a new operating system, one endowed with artificial intelligence (AI). In short, Samantha is different from other systems because she has the ability to learn and evolve from past interactions. Samantha proves, not only capable but funny, empathetic, and endlessly curious about the human condition. As the two grow closer their relationship transitions from platonic intimacy to a romantic relationship. Her poses numerous questions about corporeality in the digital age, as well as the ability to love, as well as what makes something human.
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Corporeality and desire without a body
This section explores how Spike Jonze’s film, Her, is a text through which questions of corporeality and embodiment in the digital age can be explored. In doing so, I focus on queer theorizations of desire, liberating "desire" as a concept from the corporeal (and gendered) form.
Released in 2013, Her takes place in the near future. Set in Los Angeles, issues of pollution, poverty, and war seem to have been solved (inasmuch as they are unremarked upon within the film). The characters live in skyscraper apartments, with large floor-to-ceiling windows and plenty of lighting. With well-lit low contrast scenes, Her features a technologically advanced society adjacent to ours, but one that has not sacrificed warmth and comfort to be so. Life in Her is one of comfortable utility, supported by the costuming, set construction, and the ease by which its inhabitants adopted the artificially intelligent operating systems (OS). Her does not act as a warning about the dangers of AI or human’s reliance on machines, instead focusing on the deep and intimate connections they make with the OS’s.
While Her is a prime example of the recuperative stance I take towards technology and machine-human relationships throughout this project, there is little written on exactly how that recuperation takes place. I argue that Samantha’s voice incorporates the audience into Samantha and Theodore’s relationship, effectively bridging the boundary lines between spectator and the figures on screen. Her voice penetrates the audience’s senses and they essentially take the place of her body. This is clearest during moments of intimacy between Samantha and Theodore. Through Samantha’s voice the audience experiences an aural and haptic melding of human and machine, thus experiencing my central thesis. Aside from the significance of the aural aspects of the film, Her offers poignant moments where the boundaries between the human and the technology seem elastic, especially as Theodore and Samantha’s relationship progresses. These elastic moments harken to questions of embodiment, made especially applicable because Samantha is incorporeal. All the audience is given is her voice. In this manner, Theodore and Samantha’s voices act as the “connective tissue” between the two entities. Her is replete with moments where both Theodore and Samantha question what it means to be machine and what it means to be human.Their relationship allows for multiple joinings of the two.
 What are AI Assistants? |  Aural Haptics in Her |
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 Moving Towards a Body without Organs in Her |