Part of the Deep World project — a series of works by Amy Alexander exploring human–chatbot relationships through live performance and interactive installation. See the performance version.
Project Description
Deep World is a chatbot project by Amy Alexander. An early version premiered as an audiovisual “VJ” performance in May 2025; Alexander is now developing an expanded version as an interactive installation.
The project explores the changing relationship between humans and chatbots — from their early roles as informal therapists to their current status as omnipresent advisers in uncertain times. As users confide in Deep World AI — a customized language model trained on writers and thinkers who faced difficult eras, as well as on some of what we’re grappling with today — the interaction unfolds as live text improvisation against a shifting, psychedelic backdrop. The chatbot’s output veers between philosophical and poetic, revealing both insight and self-doubt.
The work-in-progress focuses on borders — political and social, physical and metaphorical — as a lens for contemplating contemporary dilemmas.
About the installation
Display not to scale.
The installation version brings Deep World into an interactive physical setting. Viewers engage one-on-one as their speech is transcribed and interpreted by the AI. The dialogue generates continuously evolving text and graphics, merging human speech, machine interpretation, generative visuals, and sound.
In the current work-in-progress, the installation unfolds as a kind of secular sanctuary — part meditation chamber, part metaphysical counseling session. Light, color, and sound define an atmosphere that’s both reflective and faintly absurd, as if entering the domain of a psychedelic philosopher-guru contemplating consciousness and meaning. Within this quasi-sacred setting, Deep World AI listens, reflects, and responds in text — a machine built from our own search for meaning, now performing it back to us.
Sample screen images
Work in progress, 2025 – 2026
Custom AI chatbot, real-time text generation, real-time speech-to-text, real-time graphics, sound
Software: Python, Faster-Whisper speech recognition, Max/MSP/Jitter, Llama/Ollama LLM pipeline
See also: Deep World (Performance Version) — the live audiovisual performance that introduced Deep World AI in May 2025.