Sybil
2020
The device consists of a glowing glass orb that pulses with light, guiding users into sync with its rhythm via a diaphragmatic breath sensor. Once attuned, Sybil analyzes their breath and produces a cryptic prophecy generated by a recurrent neural network (RNN) trained on riddles. These enigmatic responses, rather than offering clear answers, invite the participant to engage in interpretation, attunement, and playful meaning-making.
Designed as part of a larger effort toward re-enchantment in technological design, Sybil explores how digital interactions can cultivate presence, ritual, and embodied engagement rather than reinforcing instrumental logic. I developed the system as an exploration of how AI might evoke mystery and wonder, rather than control and prediction, transforming everyday interactions into moments of imaginative inquiry.
Gabrielle Benabdallah. 2020. Sybil: A Divinatory Home Device. In Companion Publication of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS' 20 Companion). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 275–279. https://doi.org/10.1145/3393914.3395857
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