E.L.I.S.A (Emotional Logic Interface for Spatial Analysis) is an interactive
installation by Zoey Stollberger. In homage to the first chatbot in history, it recreates a
psychotherapy practice from the 70s.
At the center of the work is the tension between the analog warmth of the room and the ice-cold,
binary logic of an algorithm. The visitor's experience is built on two levels: A first screen,
controlled only by two buttons and a rigid decision tree, encourages reflection on one's own inner
"Happy Palace".
At the same time – based on these answers – an abstract visualization is generated in VVVV and
displayed on a second monitor.
The installation is a critique of the current trend of outsourcing complex psychological processes
to inaccessible AI systems. In the end, the hoped-for "Happy Palace" remains just a flickering,
barely adapted wireframe model. E.L.I.S.A makes palpable exactly that discomfort which inevitably
arises when human empathy is replaced by machine efficiency.
Visitors are invited to take a seat and become part of a system that ultimately allows for hardly
any real individuality.
