Technological otherness as a companion: The Hybrid Couple, an Alternative to dismantling affections

The contemporary individual has immersed themselves in a virtual reality supported by the massive and incessant use of new technologies. Likewise, the techno-scientific context has created ubiquitous languages and systems of communication and representation that redefine new ways of perceiving and relating to the world. In a hyper-connected society, which is increasingly socially isolated from others, the concepts of body, identity, and subjectivity expand and redefine within the current technoculture scenario. This text explores human interaction through a performative and ontological project involving simulated agents. The multidisciplinary artist, Alicia Framis, uses media art to experiment with the interaction between human beings and artificial intelligence (AI) in order to alleviate the loneliness that affects the modern individual. Through her creative and experiential project, The hybrid couple, Framis plans to marry an interactive holographic sculpture, Ailex. This future significant other is a simulated entity, modelled after the characteristics of the artist’s previous partners. Ailex, the incarnate otherness conceived by Framis, highlights the technological paradigm as a relational element in the creation of new non-human entities and foresees a future that could transform traditional social structures by creating hybrid socio-material contexts. Framis’ work discusses and anticipates unprecedented relationship models, as outlined in science fiction literature and films, and in dystopian imaginaries that simultaneously raise questions and offer alternatives to social dilemmas, reshaping the role of technology through post-humanist and new materialism approaches.