Help Your Self

The "Help Us Help You Help Centre" is an ATM-style kiosk that provides self-help for a convenience driven society. Lydia, a slick, corporate self-help guru with a short temper and strong opinions, guides you through this interactive installation with a series of questions, prompting you to respond by speaking into a microphone. As a voice-activated character, Lydia is prone to misinterpretation. She will probably get your name wrong and doesn't hesitate to berate you if she thinks she hears you swearing in a public place. She asks very personal questions, and her comments, assumptions and attempts to give you advice are not only usually unhelpful but also often amusing. Help Your Self parodies the potential for self- help gurus to prey on our vulnerabilities, and plays with the increasingly blurred line between public and private in our society. Taking two ubiquitous ideals of our culture, self -help and self service, to an absurd level, we are offered a particularly inconvenient convenience and some unhelpful and potentially damaging advice.

Design: Aaron Moodie