How to Say in Russian "Hey, Kevin, You'Re A Dick!"? (2025-2026)
- an imaginary piece of electronic literature -
Intro:
As an AI data worker transcribing audio recordings for AI projects, I was for two years the privileged, guilty spectator of a mind-blowing, if excruciatingly boring, piece of electronic literature. I have listened every day, for hours in a row, to an immense stream of recordings captured from users of digital devices by The Client (a major tech company protected by nondisclosure agreements). I cannot reveal any information about the contents of this masterpiece of electronic literature, but there are ways of glitching this unethical legal requirement. Imagine.
In 1974-1975, avant-garde composer Octavian Nemescu started experimenting with what he called imaginary music (muzică imaginară): an anti-spectacular musical genre characterized by the fact that the music happens exclusively in the imagination of the spectators, without any exterior trace. Imaginary music starts with a score, often written using experimental notation, and it is the responsibility of spectators to study the score, rehearse it, and perform it in their imagination to the best of their ability.
I propose here an imaginary piece of electronic literature, an infrathin subversion of the regimes of surveillance and obscurity that permeate contemporary mainstream AI technologies and the AI data work contexts that they are intertwined with.
How to Say in Russian "Hey, Kevin, You'Re A Dick!"?
The piece is to be performed in a crowded public space of your choice.
First movement (3-5 min):
Remember instances of voice recording software that you have used lately. (Do you have any smart home assistant devices? Do you use voice search on your smartphone? Speech-to-text on your keyboard? Does your doctor have a phone answering machine? What about your lawyer? Have you contacted any customer service lines? Have you used any translation devices with voice recognition? etc.)
Try to remember some of the things that you said in the presence of digital devices with voice recording software.
Second movement (5-10 min):
Imagine what your parents, your children, your friends, your neighbours, or your colleagues say in the presence of such devices.
(Don’t be shy. Imagine what they are whispering under the blankets and what they are screaming in the public square, imagine what they are saying on the hospital bed, in the pub, or in the classroom.)
Third Movement (no time limit):
Look around you and choose a random person.
Imagine them being happy.
Imagine them being confused and angry.
Imagine them crying.
Imagine them masturbating and having sex.
Imagine them being excited.
Imagine them being scared.
Imagine them suffering and dying.
Imagine them in their tedious daily routines.
Imagine the fragments that digital devices are capturing from all of this. (Not only what is said, but the unintelligible sounds and the acoustic backgrounds. The breathing in and out, the musicality of the voice, the whispers, the screams, the coughing, spitting, grunting, snoring, and panting. Imagine in the background the TVs, the car engines, the rhythmic clicks and clacks of unknown devices, the computer games, the shopping centers, the hospitals, the crowds, the voice robots, the toilets flushing, the doors opening and closing, the phones ringing, the wind, the dogs barking, the songbirds, the religious services, the football matches, the traffic jams, the rain, and everything that there are no words to describe…)
Fourth Movement:
Forget it all.