BOT°PHONE

Interactive installation for dialoguing with a work of art.

BOT°PHONE is an immersive, interactive installation that lets you enter into dialogue with a literary work using Artificial Intelligence.

Like the Théâtrophones, BOT°PHONE takes the form of a retro-futuristic phone booth. The booth invites members of the public to sit in a phonetically isolated armchair, and let themselves be fully immersed in the discussion to be built with the fictional character it houses.

Opposite, a mirror/screen completes the immersive sphere in which the experience takes place. The face of the person in the audience is captured, and thanks to face tracking, it’s the spectator’s expressions that animate the 3D faces generated by artificial intelligence. A face-to-face encounter of self as other, other as self, a game of mirrors and mirages unfolds throughout the experience, where a multitude of faces are composed and decomposed with each retort.

Above all, the spectator is invited to co-construct a scene, a dialogue generated in real time between himself and the artificial intelligence trained on a particular character or author of a literary work.

In its first version, BOT°PHONE hosts LITTE_BOT, a chatbot that embodies the character of Molière’s Dom Juan. It was created for the “Molière, le jeu du vrai et du faux” exhibition.

Studio N°130 was in charge of the visual aspect of the installation: creation of the 3D avatar and all development enabling real-time capture of spectator/user facial expressions.

The installation was exhibited from September 27, 2022 to January 15, 2023 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Richelieu).

Rocio Berenguer, design, art direction and dramaturgy

Hugo Arcier, visual creation 3D avatar

Étienne Champagne, UE4 development & Face Tracking

Léopold Frey, sound design, chatbot development and integration

Arthur Geslin, installation co-design