Wishing Well (许愿池)
Wishing Well (许愿池) by media artist John Fillwalk and IDIA Lab, is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) installation that was invited into the 5th Arts and Science International Exhibition and Symposium (TASIES 2019) at the National Museum of China in Beijing located on Tiananmen Square. The exhibition curated the work of international artists engaged in the pioneering use of AI in the creation of art-making. The Wishing Well installation creates an interactive environment where visitors' spoken wishes shape the substance, meaning and character of the artwork – mediated through artificial intelligence.
Upon engaging the installation, a participant speaks a wish – spoken in Mandarin – through a microphone which is then processed through a series of AI software and various procedural techniques. The spoken wish, in Mandarin, is input into IBM’s Watson and Amazon’s Lex services to process speech and tonal analysis which informs the sound, lighting and imagery of the environment.
There is a technical document, linked in the sidebar, that details the specific flow and technologies, but in essence, once each wish is recorded, it is spoken back in Mandarin via 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 historical collection of all aggregated wishes that are heard as synthesized AI voices through directional ultrasonic speakers. The sound of the wish feeds a transducer under a bowl of water that creates a rippling disturbance (cymatics) in the brass container of water. Overhead, spot lights dynamically change color based on the tonal analysis of wishes relative to Chinese cultural color associations: i.e., red = happiness, etc.
The AI processes of the project have since been adapted to English language for further exhibition.