Routine Repetions
Routine Repetitions is a short design fiction film that explores a near future where advertising companies modify users GPS routes through paid placements, routing them past business that pay more.
Project Overview
Routine Repetitions explores our comfort and discomfort with being directly manipulated by mapping and pathfinding applications for monetary interests.
Through overlays, the film makes visible small pieces of the larger AI-augmented algorithm that allows local businesses to bid on his jogging route each morning, unconsciously priming the jogger. This approach serves dual purposes: (1) it allows viewers with technical understandings to project their knowledge and fill in the gaps, and (2) it allows viewers to come to their own conclusions about the politics of such a system.
The film pushed people to consider other uses for design fiction films as well—tying form and delivery method back to public awareness. Likewise, it pushed viewers to consider the degree to which companies alter and manipulate recommendations for profit, and how they manipulate users for profit.
