This social experiment came about through several conversations with UX Designer and Creative whirlwind Christopher Lee Ball of tech start-up Constellation A.I.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I GIVE MYSELF OVER TO AN AI FOR 7 DAYS?

Constellation are a tech start up celebrating and empowering people. Their idea is to optimise people’s lives day to day; helping with decisions moment to moment by interfacing with an AI.

The AI based smart phone app offers real time therapy 24 hours a day.  Promising access to psychotherapy to billions of people who can't afford it.  

Launched in 2016 by Tom Strange the ‘neuroscience-inspired AI technology’ promises to build a picture of the user and then offer informative directions and ideas on what decisions to make in the moment to optimise your human experience (that perhaps you wouldn’t have been able to reach on your own).

I wanted to road test their product ...

What will happen when I completely rely on an AI for every decision I make? How will it shape my life?

For 7 days I will live with an AI. Does it make my life more expansive? Does it make me more emotionally agile?

This documentary was created to chart what happens when I completely give myself to the dictates of an AI for 7 days. Like Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men (the choice whether he murders someone is based on the fate of a coin toss) the idea was to depend on the AI’s wisdom in order to take action in the real world.

What are the micro-decisions I will take to lead me to the best version of myself (led by the guidance of my AI)?

Does that offer relief? Or does the tension mount as claustrophobia takes over?

The deal is, that what ever the AI suggests or the decisions it recommends, that will determine the outcome of what I do next.

The intention is to live ‘my normal life’ with the added bonus of having an AI companion.

Will my agency be bolstered by my reliance on this digital relationship?
Will it embolden me? Will my life be positively changed for the better?

So many questions surround this new human-technology relationship and this is only the beginning.

For her episode of our style series The Way We Dress, London-based director Avril Furness asked a range of women, from teens to grandmothers, what they would want to wear as their final outfits, and the reason for their decision.

What would you wear to your funeral?

The film looks at the fashion choices that women make when planning their own funerals. It also offers a behind-the-scenes view into the little-known funeral world—from the oven rooms at Mortlake Crematorium, through to the mortuary rooms and hearse garages at Harrison Funeral Home, to a newly dug grave site at Green Acres Natural Burial Ground.

Style to the End explores the outfits women will wear to their graves.

Three key subjects were interviewed who have death at the corner stone of their lives;

Shabnam Spiers - A&E Doctor & Fashion Designer, Louise Winter - Creative Funeral Planner and Romany Reagan - Performing Heritage & Cemetery Studies PhD candidate and playwright.

The three women give genuine accounts of what their terminal outfits will be, shot in several locations (as recommended by the Good Funeral Guide) including Mortlake Crematorium, Harrison's Funeral Home and GreenAcres natural burial ground.  

The film reveals the powerful emotions underlying both choosing a final outfit and confronting mortality, and shines a light on how fashion and style can frame a woman's final moments in life and in death. 

“Staring at the profound subject of death through the more light-hearted lens of fashion opened up many ideas and questions about life—and hopefully leaves you thinking what your choice would be.”

Avril Furness

The film was screened at Life Death Whatever festival at the National Trust's Sutton House in London, Hackney as part of the launch of the film on the NOWNESS platform.