Small_talk_bus_stop

Employing generative ML/AI to unlock surplus of social possibility

We are interested in using design to engage our innate capacity to re-imagine roles that objects can play in our lives, and their ability to inspire new relations with our world.

Social possibility as design resource
There is a surplus of social possibility to any object that is not revealed by current interaction patterns. Design can foster new relationships emerging directly from an object through alternative behavioral scripts.

Small_talk_bus_stop is a means of multi-species interaction employing a simple bundle of ML powered sound recognition modules. It recognizes the sounds of birds and invites people to have playful interaction akin to a “small talk” with them, through a bird tweets synthesizer. ML supports “interpreting” of this playful multi-species communication.

Small_talk_bus_stop invites means of broader interpretation of the world around us, offering tools of multi-species interaction, playful influence and imaginative participation in unfolding techno-social situation.

In a world infatuated with personal screens and escape portals from the world around us, this experience brings us into the present. We maybe in a period when small talk and basic forms of courtesy are perceived as unnecessary friction.

Small_talk_bus_stop include a possibility of inviting wild urban creatures, like squirrels and birds to playful inter-species interactions as actors with agency in shared public space.

We believe they are universal part of our inherently social nature and the way we relate to the world around us. No experience is too small to start practice our perceptive, social disposition. This kind of practice may include other creatures and may offer currency of a conversation with fellow humans and playful interaction other creatures alike.