Sybil: A divinatory home device (WIP)

Sybil is a divinatory technology that offers a critical and playful way of interacting with the mystery generated by technical systems around us. It delivers AI-generated prophecies based on the participants' breathing patterns. By layering two modes of prediction -oracular traditions and machine learning- it invites the extramundane into daily domestic experience. Sybil's design cultivates attention, attunement and physical presence, and invites a ritualization of our interactions with digital assistants. Its aim is to explore relationships with technical objects and systems that are less based on utility and more on playfulness, interpretation, and care. This project is part of a larger project to develop a toolkit for re-enchantment, after Max Weber's description of modernity as the "disenchantment of the world."



DIS' 20 Companion: Companion Publication of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, July 2020, pages 275-279.