How to Build a Lie

Abstract

“How to Build a Lie” is a lecture/video by Jamie Allen and Moritz Greiner-Petter, the final part of an apocryphal technologies artistic research project into media objects and technologies associated with “lie detection” and “truth verification”. The arc of this research includes a physical recreation of a voice stress analysis machine that analyses the self-read audiobook versions of presidential autobiographies, The Lie Machine (2014); a residency with the Media Archeology Lab in Denver, Colorado; a thematic exhibition at Dateline gallery; a publication with Counterpath Press upon which this lecture/video is based. Texts contains excerpts of writing by Ursula Le Guin, Avital Ronell, Paul Feyerabend, Geoff Bunn, Charles Darwin, amongst others. Video materials were culled from various online sources, including “The Old Typewriter”, “Die Wiege des Kinos” and “Der Mensch als Industriepalast”, also amongst others. “How to Build a Lie” lecture/video was commissioned by the Archaeologies of Media and Technology (AMT) group at University of Southampton, Winchester School of Art (Dr. Jussi Parikka and Dr. Ryan Bishop) for the group’s public launch event, Future Past Tense on October 26, 2016, organised in collaboration with the transmediale festival.