Christopher Fahey: Concentric Empathy
November 2002
Christopher Fahey: Concentric Empathy
Concentric Empathy by Christopher Fahey is an interactive webpage that explores humans’ willingness to connect emotionally with nonhuman intelligent entities by inviting them into what computer scientist and theorist Jaron Lanier called a “circle of empathy.” Users, represented as a pictogram at the center of the page, are encouraged to build their own concentric circles of empathy by dragging and positioning icons that represent robots, cyborgs, clones, or the undead (among others) around the central symbol. They can modify the orbits in the concentric circles and alter the proximity to the nonhumans to match their feelings and opinions about these entities, thereby indicating which ones feel close and compatible, or distant and different. Users originally were able to submit their “personal circles of empathy” to contribute to consensus results. Fahey’s Concentric Empathy explores the philosophical and legal debates about the changing status of nonhuman “beings” in scientific and spiritual contexts.
Christopher Fahey (b. 1983; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an artist and designer who has experimented with computational art and design since childhood. He was the creative force behind the art and design laboratories graphpaper.com and askrom.com in the early 2000s. Fahey has since worn many hats in the new media business, as a project manager, art director, game designer, interface designer, as well as information architect. He has decades of experience in UX (user experience) design, leading design teams to build interactive experiences.
Gate Pages
Every month from March 2001 to February 2006, the Whitney invited an artist or collective to present their work in the form of a “Gate Page” on artport. Each page was meant to function as a portal to the artist’s own sites and projects. The Gate Pages comprise a range of artistic approaches to the format—while some of them are designed as entry points to the respective artist’s website or promote a recently launched work, others take the form of a more complex stand-alone project.
Wherever necessary and possible, these works are made functional through emulation and reconstructions from the Internet Archive. Not all of them have been restored to their original state and their conservation is ongoing. You can also view the original Gate Pages archive to see how they were presented at the time of their creation.
artport
View more on artport, the Whitney Museum's portal to Internet and new media art.