Wishing Well: AI Exhibition in Beijing
2019
Wishing Well ( 许愿池 ) creates an environment where visitor’s interaction shapes the substance, meaning and character of the artwork – mediated through art artificial intelligence. Upon engaging the installation, a participant speaks a wish into a pool of water that only they can hear. Their spoken wish is collected by an artificially intelligent set of software and hardware that begins to process the viewer’s hope. There is a technical document attached to the proposal that details the specific flow and technologies, but in essence, once each wish is recorded it is spoken back in a transformed in a poetic manner by text to speech synthesis in a whispering tone. The individual viewer privately hears this once – their wish then is processed to become part of a larger collection of all wishes which can be heard through synthesized voice through directional speakers. The tone of the collection of all wishes is analyzed and affects the processing of the spoken wishes, the ambient sound, and the color and brightness of the light produced above and below the pool.
Wishing Well ( 许愿池 ) engages both private and public spaces in the creation of a simultaneously intimate and collective social experience. The tone of the wishes aggregated by the system is processed anonymously and delivered into this social sculpture via synthesized whispered voice spoken in Mandarin. The water pool, or wishing well, is vibrated by a speaker underneath creating a three-dimensional dynamic sound wave image of the actual wish. Virtual lanterns will appear overhead on two flat screen monitors with each wish and will launch skyward to become part of the
larger collection of dreams.
