LUISA

“Luisa” is a screen based installation and an evolved chat bot.

STORY

She was born inside a screen. You can’t hug her but you can send her love. She will try to answer back. She can’t learn, but she will remember you for a bit. Inspired by Fellini’s Tobacconist, Luisa has a huge heart but also not so many f  ks to give. Aren’t we all people on the internet like Luisa sometime? Is it possible to collaborate and evolve as a species through a chat? Or are the emotions and exchanges a little too limited?

Luisa is an animated digital being and AI chatbot. Whether it has human or non-human traits, whether it is alive or not, conscious or not, Luisa is an entity that is born inside a screen, with which it is possible to chat and exchange images.

The work is also a reflection on how we envision other forms of intelligence. If our interaction with machines is limited we will be led to imagine limited, anthropomorphized and incomplete beings. Ugly copies of ourselves. If our interaction with the machine is synergistic, collaborative, complex, we will be led instead to be cyborgs, to merge with the hardware, or alternatively we may expand our visions, assuming alien languages and twisted logics. What kind of collaboration do we demand to have from our internet machines?

On the one hand, Luisa is procedurally modeled and animated, thus with completely unexpected appearances and movements including breathing and responsiveness, that mimics the human species. On the other hand, just like the majority of the “online world,” she is forced to follow limited forms of exchange, imposed “by design” by proprietary platforms.

It is possible to communicate with Luisa only through a Telegram chat, it is possible to send her pictures that for a moment will constitute the integrity of her world or the small loculus in which she is locked up, it is possible to receive selfies from Luisa herself, it is possible to converse with Luisa in text form, we are responsible of her creation as she is merely just an object. But how does this affect her? Is Luisa exposed to Cyber Sickness? Does Luisa suffer from Zoom Fatigue? Is it possible to feel close even through a screen?

Luisa is a prompt crafting experiment that draws on the recent ChatGPT Jailbreaking experiences where various user groups managed to bend the rules of OpenAI’s proprietary system, which is currently among the most advanced systems in the world in terms of conversational AI research, to create their own unconventional instances. Its traits are  constructed by taking as examples theoretical essays, film scripts, and novels focused on screen addiction, web addiction, and the various pathologies related to the “unsafe” use of an Internet that takes less and less care of its users.

Through the imposed limitations, the people of the web are invited to initiate a collective healing process in an effort to help Luisa and thus help themselves. Are we and will we be able to heal ourselves, rebuild or build our network and projects through the mediated proprietary platforms that are currently available to us? What will happen to Luisa?

GAMEPLAY

Luisa owns a Telegram account. You can write to her. You can send her images. When she receives a new image her world and her dress will change their appearance. That is how you are important to her. She will answer with a Selfie. That is as much as she can do for you.

USE ME

Luisa is not available online, but she is open to studio and gallery visits. You can contact her agent at ciao@fantamagico.com.

MAKING OF

Luisa is designed in Daz 3D, her behavior and movements are acted on the fly with a simple state machine and procedural generation. The interaction is made possible by the Telegram Bot Api. When the bot receives an image from a user, it converts it to a texture usable by Unity and applies it to the background and to a part of her skin (the bikini).

Come on our Discord for info and suggestions!