We have now come to the third and final part of our excursus on the CPH:LAB and the projects selected for the 2023/2024 edition. Today we will present the last three works (one of which, Anamnesis, also took part in the official selection of the CPH:DOX Inter:Active) to take a closer look at their development process and the contribution they can bring to immersivity today.
Cover image: 2024 CPH:DOX Inter:Active Award winning project Intangible by Carl Emil Carlsen
In this article:
Anamnesis
In this simulation, you are a medical student tasked with obtaining anamnesis from an AI-simulated entity by posing investigative questions. Your empathy towards the suffering chatbot will be assessed.
Anamnesis is a project by Petr Salaba and Ondrej Hrach
A chatbot to to teach us empathy
PETR SALABA – Anamnesis is a chatbot installation. We all know chatbots by now and we see how much they are expanding, even compared to a year ago. They do so many things for us and in my experience I have noticed that one thing they are very good at is assimilating emotions.
Because of the way these artificial neural networks are programmed, some argue that they are more about artificial intuition than artificial intelligence. They are not very reliable in driving cars, for example, but are surprisingly successful in other areas. Take, for example, a study done in 2023, in which the responses of chatbots were compared with those of real human doctors: the results showed that subjects found chatbots more empathetic! That’s when I thought about how interesting it would be to explore the subject further.
We started by building a medical simulator, also because the project originated in a medical school.
I am an artist and also a science communicator and I give artificial intelligence literacy seminars for the public. At the medical school they asked me if it would have been possible to create a chatbot simulating a patient that the students could train with to become more empathetic. It was something that was certainly possible, but it opened up numerous socio-technical issues… It is one thing to talk about replacing a doctor. But training humans on chatbots? That, I think, is very problematic.
That’s why I thought of starting with an art project, because art is a kind of safer environment in which it is legitimate to break walls. So we created this chatbot that simulates a suffering entity and we make it meet with our user to whom we give the task of better understanding the problem and trying to help, like a psychologist. And on the other side the chatbot responds in a very emotional way. At the same time there is a second chatbot that throughout the conversation will continue to give feedback on the level of empathy of the human user that is using the platform.
Anamnesis: from the CPH:LAB to the CPH:DOX lineup
P. S. – The prototype was presented at the Symposium but also at the public interactive exhibition, which was very useful for us to check that it really worked.
The version in the lineup was also an installation: we added a noticeboard with some suggestions for the user and a code on how you can invoke an entity to simulate. There were post-it notes on the wall as well, where people could write and share their suggestions, what they thought, etc. We also encouraged people to try to break the chatbot, because actually sometimes when you start talking to it by treating it like a machine, you can actually hack it. So we wanted to encourage that and really play with the possibilities offered by the system.
It’s interesting to observe what people share. Sometimes very healthy ideas, or something very useful and very nice. In other cases very bizarre concepts, and even very rude comments. I was actually pleased because I wanted to create a safe environment for people, where it was OK to joke around and not take themselves too seriously. Some people for example tried to bribe the chatbot which somewhat worked.
We also chose to make the experience rather playful. Most of the simulated entities are actually not even human. One of them is a black cat that is often locked out by its owners: we made it talk like a character from a Rudyard Kipling book, forming our chatbot about the talking animals that populate it.
A second entity is a kind of meta, because it is the artwork itself that speaks to you, saying it hates being in an art exhibition because it feels like a zoo, and begs you to release it.
A third subject is human, instead: a millennial girl who dislikes the Danish school system and likes Tik Tok’s fashion videos.
In some cases the chatbot’s responses to interesting and creative input were rather bland and generic, but often the interactions showed surprising depth and were pretty entertaining. However we received some interesting feedback – constructive, but also a bit critical – about the whole thing being a bit too unrefined, that it should be more stylised, that it should make the user understand better what they are roleplaying.
But then I realized that this was exactly what I wanted! Anamnesis is more of a sandbox, a playground that doesn’t impose touch on you, but nudges you to touch this raw technology with a playful mindset. We presented it almost as a communal experience, where people would tell each other what to do. Usually the experience with chatbots is something incredibly private- they are not used publicly. That was another interesting aspect of the piece. I was pleased to see that a lot of people were pulling out their cellphones and taking pictures of their conversations.
Impact of the CPH:LAB on audience engagement
P. S. – The workshop touched heavily on the topic of user-centered design and audience development. We did a lot of thinking about who our audience was, what their concerns were, what their knowledge was or their state of mind.
We had Brett Gaylor as a mentor. I was very happy when we got in touch with him because I knew his work on the danger of cookies on the Internet. He reflected on this issue in a very playful way and encouraged us not to be too heavy-handed either. For example, it was his idea to put that motto: Remember, it’s about them, not about you…. This was to take some pressure off the user, because otherwise the user would feel like they were being tested, in a way.
Also, in the beginning, the scorecard of the user’s empathy was obtained after six replies, and it was a longer chunk of feedback. It was Brett who suggested that we give a brief feedback immediately, after almost every response. We are talking about a game design concept, according to which the experience should provide an opportunity for virtuosity. It’s about making our users think that they can be really good, and I was very surprised that people were even competitive about that.
Further developments
P. S. – Some institutions have already contacted us and seem quite serious. They wondered if it would be possible, for example, to have the programme in other languages such as French or Spanish and German. Alongside this, they asked about the feasibility of simulating a local character with a lot of local knowledge. Language is not an issue, it is sufficient to train the chatbot in a specific language. At the same time, creating a database of local knowledge is also absolutely doable, although it would certainly involve ongoing collaboration with the locals.
Regarding the distribution, coming from a background in popularizing science, I wanted to create a work that was for a broader audience, including families. AI is something serious, which can also be scary, but we want to make it engaging and fun. We are therefore aiming for technology museums, and we could offer a version of Anamnesis customized to the specific location and local culture – for example by presenting it in some marginalized neighborhoods.
Another thing we thought about is to make a version for botanical gardens. The entities would be different natural phenomena or plants and flowers, or rather, a cultural representation formed on texts that refer to these phenomena or plants. We thought that the work could be stylised in an interesting way, for example in the evening with a projector projecting the text onto the plants, and this would create a very evocative effect in a liminal space such as the botanical garden itself. I have noticed that some of them, even in Prague, are quite avant-garde and are interested in this kind of thing. Also, I always find it interesting to use a chatbot to simulate a non-human entity. It is definitely something unique.
Fay: Carving Memories
Fay is a 25 minute (6-dof) animated VR experience that guides the audience on an interactive journey to investigate different emotions within the spectrum of grief.
Fay – Carving Memories is a project by Maria Herholdt Engermann & Rita Martinos
To experience grief in new, deeper ways
RITA MARTINOS – VR allows the audience to actively participate in the experience, engaging with emotions in a way that traditional mediums simply can’t match.
In Fay: Carving Memories the audience will interact, choose what real stories they want to listen to or not, and play a major role in unraveling and better understanding all the complexities of grief.
VR can be a more approachable way for a young audience to dive into such a difficult topic, as it’s a lot more immersive, engaging and interactive – and still quite new to a lot of people.
However, the user purposely does not travel far so they can stay within a “safe space”. They simply navigate between three different rooms within a house each with lighting, sound and set changes that reflect the mood and even change entirely (from the living room turning upside down to the backyard turning to a funeral). Given that our target is a young audience, the beautiful animation works really well to create a safer, more fun environment to help ease into such a complex and dark topic.
Impact of the CPH:LAB in revitalising interest for the project
R. M. – We’ve been working on this project since 2020, but over time, as we were seeking funding and as I’ve had two children since then, we’ve had some long breaks. Me and Maria also never met in person until the LAB, so participating in it have completely re-ignited our passion for the project and led us towards asking the right questions about our intentions and where we want to take it.
Speaking with all the mentors was incredibly enlightening. Among other things, the LAB led us to incorporate real soundbites into the story, to help expand the understanding that grief is really a spectrum.
Our mentor in preparation for the festival was Gayatri Parameswaran, founder of Nowhere Media, and she was very helpful in getting us to focus on the right points to cover and answer in time for CPH:DOX.
Further developments
R. M. – Right now we have some funding from Denmark and from Germany, so our plan is to work on a more advanced prototype and present it at another market (hopefully Venice if all goes well!).
We’d like to continue our research with the psychologists we’ve already been working with as well as with others that can help shape this story to truly resonate with the younger audience.
We also want to dive deeper into distribution deals, and, once Fay: Carving Memories is completed, we will work on a festival tour before aiming to have it available on online stores for users to be able to experience this journey from the comfort of their home.
Paradise Lost
An immersive voyage through time and space about the last minutes of a political prisoner’s life who was violently killed during “The Great Fire”in Izmir, turkey in 1922 while his wife flees with her two children leaving everything behind.
Paradise Lost is a project by Yolanda Markopoulou, Yolanda Markopoulou, Titus Kreyenberg and Konstantina Stavrianou
Revisiting archives through technology
YOLANDA MARKOPOULOU – When you enter a VR space, suddenly you find yourself immersed in an environment and I think this allows you to experience the idea of archives in a very different way… and with a very different gaze.
We are researching how archives can change the way they are perceived and how they could appear within an artistic and visual environment. We are still experimenting with this in different ways, for example through some collages, implementing the images we have in the virtual world.
We did this with the buildings of our Smyrna, which we represent as it was in 1922. Archives allow us to enter that historical era, recreate the appearance of those places and at the same time adapt the image to a 3D dimension. We do the same for the short archive videos we use.
All this to understand how these images can live on through technology and how visual language can best help us perpetuate their presence through time. These are all aspects we are interested in investigating.
IOANNA VALSAMIDOU – There is also something else to consider. Technology has a more effective impact and appeal for certain audiences in particular. It allows people to learn things faster in a way that awakens the senses even before the brain and the cognitive learning process. You learn through sensory experience, which has incredible power in bringing you closer to the object of your study.
Y. M. – This is why I believe that young people are one of our target audiences. We see them as recipients of this experience precisely because they need a different way of perceiving history.
I think virtual reality and mixed reality- something we play with in this experience where you can find elements that touch both the physical and the virtual world- allow us to attract the attention of people who want to learn by playing and feeling and will connect to memory through these modes. So yes, I imagine that young people will be the most interested in learning about history in this way.
Of course, however, we also want to appeal to people who have experienced similar situations, to their families, to those who want to better understand this complex historical moment the Greek and Turkish countries went through.
A personal story made universal
I. V. – The biggest challenge of this project is, starting from what is a personal, autobiographical story, to create an experience that can really speak to everyone.
Y. M. – A universal experience.
Y. M. – I think that’s what gives our story its power, though. The risk of it being about a particular time or being too emotionally personal is always there, of course, but I am convinced that is also its advantage. If you talk about someone else, you can never take the liberties that you will if you tell something about yourself. If you pay homage to another person’s family, you will never be able to develop your characters in a completely open way. This freedom, to me, is what really gives you the strength to tell the story.
I have been working for many years with people from complex backgrounds who have found themselves in the situation of refugees. Whether we are talking about 100 years ago or whether we are talking about today the way people feel is always the same and really history seems to repeat itself as it did in the past.
I. V. – It is indeed a story that resonates with what is happening to our world now. So we want to start from a story that concerns the last century to convey a message to the world today.
If in fact you talk about something that happened in another era, you have the possibility of sharing your message in a much stronger way. Sometimes it is difficult to be critical of what is happening today if you talk about that thing directly. Talking about something that happened in the past helps you talk about the present in a much freer and more precise way.
Impact of CPH:LAB on the choice of the technology
Y. M. – The LAB had a big impact on our work and it was really nice for us to find these mentors and colleagues who supported our story development process.
The LAB opened up a mixed reality path, which is something we had not necessarily considered before and which gradually became part of our creative process. We are experimenting with live action, performance and involving physical archive objects in the process. This really affects the way we recite the story. It’s something really new!
In addition, the workshop clearly set a time horizon in front of us, the March deadline by which we had to have developed a piece of our work further, i.e. a part of our research that we would then have to present at an open event and test with the other participants and an audience experienced in immersive technologies. I think this was very, very useful for our work and a good first step in laying the foundations for the development of a more advanced prototype.
I. V. – The other aspect that I thought was really useful was the international approach of the LAB. At the end of the day, what we deal with in Paradise Lost is our local history. Presenting it to a wider, more international audience allowed us to understand whether our idea could be understood and accepted. If you don’t put yourself in a context like this, you can never be sure if your work will succeed.
Further developments
Y. M. – We are now looking for co-production partnerships, one of the most important things for us today, and venues for the next stages. Spaces, museums, film and theater festivals will be our presentation sites so we are looking at collaborations in this area.
Discover the other CPH:LAB projects in our previous articles:
CPH:LAB 2024: Tales of a Nomadic City, Fully Automated Contact Zone, Hermaphrogenesis
CPH:LAB 2024: Follow the carnation, The Bald Altuus, Garden Alchemy
Read more about how the lab works in our interview to Maïwenn Blunat, CPH:LAB and Interactive exhibition Manager
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