The IsA project centers on an interactive installation that emulates Isabelle Israël (1942-1994), my mother, a figure of Brussels bourgeoisie, through a conversational agent, individualized artistic productions, and a sensitive and evolving atmosphere. The project draws upon personal correspondence, family archives, and 859 condolence letters to create an interactive presence that dialogues with the public in an intimate register, produces artworks from archives, and questions our relationship to the past, memorials, and mourning.

The project interrogates the digital persistence of intimacy. How can artificial intelligence carry with subtlety a vanished personality and through it, its era? How can this era be transmitted through intimacy to generations who never knew it?

 

Work In Progress : 1. the why

Work In Progress : 2. the grey Bag

part one – Excavating an era through the letters of condolence received upon my mother’s death in 1994.

Work In Progress : 3. the grey Bag 2/2

The second part of my exploration of the Gray Bag.  A dive into the correspondence I received when my mother passed away in 1994. It is the second step in creating a memorial AI work about her.

Work In Progress : 4. visiting my childhood house

when chance gets in the project….

IsA proposes a new form of digital funeral monument – not a tombstone but a conversational presence in a sensitive environment. The project questions our relationship to memory, to archives, and to the technological possibility of making vanished eras persist for today’s living, evolving grief.

Crucial point for our project: it’s important to distinguish this artistic installation using a griefbot from commercial “online griefbot” services operating continuously.

The current challenge consists of developing critical reflection on user “immortality” in human-AI interaction design. For artistic projects, this implies maintaining a transparent, critical, and temporally limited approach, while respecting the dignity of the people whose data is used and protecting vulnerable users.

The artiste

The Brussels-based multimedia artist, Thomas Israel (1975), proposes immersive, interactive works in the form of video installations, sculptures and performances. Having begun his career in theatre, his atypical approach to digital arts revolves around the themes of the body, time and the subconscious. His work has been shown at the MoMA in New York, the Society for Arts and Technology in Montreal, the Musée des Abattoirs in Toulouse and at many festivals, exhibitions, galleries and museums around the world since 2005.His monograph “Memento Body” was just launch at la Lettre Volée, and his last performance Skinstrap (laureate of the prestigious Japan Media Art Festival 2014) is touring worlwide. He is represented by Galerie Charlot in Paris.