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RE-IMAGINING THE GALLERY GUIDE WITH AI
Many of us will have used an audio-guide when looking around an art gallery or museum. University of Southampton researchers have been asking how AI technology could make these devices more sophisticated, fun and engaging.
Associate Professor of Digital Culture and Design Dr Seth Giddings was inspired to reimagine what a digital gallery guide could be by his research background in video games. “Since the 70s, games have featured nonplayer characters powered by AI. They would guide you, but they wouldn’t just dispense information. They had their own motives and personalities, so they might conceal things or even lie.”
The pilot project, funded by the Web Science Institute (WSI), brought Seth together with Professor of Literature and Visual Culture Dr Sarah Hayden, whose previous project ‘Voices in the Gallery’ looked at how voice, text and access intersect in contemporary art. Seth and Sarah ran a workshop at the Winchester School of Art (WSA), bringing together PhD students from WSA, Humanities and Computing to playfully imagine how an AI gallery device could look and behave.
“We played with craft materials and created these alien characters, which seemed to give them a sense of otherness. We talked about their backstory and what ulterior motives they might have for the information they were imparting!” The researchers imagined that the characters would sit on gallery visitors’ shoulders and chat via voice recognition or a mobile phone Bluetooth connection.
The workshop combined critical approaches to game genre and AI in character design with expertise in gallery settings and computergenerated dialogues. Seth, who is now seeking funding to develop the project further, envisions applications not only in the arts but in the therapeutic space too, such as improving chatbots used for mental health and mindfulness. “I want people to have a rich, challenging and maybe even funny experience with AI beyond the screen.”
