Letters to the Machine
A participatory artwork and preservation experiment built from emotionally significant exchanges with machine interlocutors.
What remains of a conversation?
Conversations with AI companions, chatbots, voice assistants, translation systems, therapeutic interfaces, and other machine interlocutors can hold traces of grief, care, loneliness, migration, disability, identity, play, and private experimentation. Yet these records are fragile: they depend on corporate platforms, accounts, devices, and internet services.
Can human–AI correspondence become community-held cultural memory, and how can that memory remain accessible if the network carrying it disappears?
Viewing becomes archival play.
The first planned outcome is a public interactive software interface. Contributions may include transcripts, screenshots, fragments, rewritten memories, descriptions of lost conversations, or a refusal to disclose the conversation itself.
Visitors will encounter fragments, preservation states, missing sections, donor notes, machine roles, and links between conversations. They will temporarily become archivists: cataloguing traces, connecting entries, proposing annotations, reconstructing fragmented memories, or considering what should remain visible, redacted, sealed, or forgotten.
These interactions will not overwrite contributors’ records. Public annotations will be moderated and kept separate from original material.
Preservation is a choice.
Every submission will pass through consent review, safety screening, curatorial selection, redaction, and contextual annotation. Raw donations will never be minted automatically. Only an approved public archival artwork derived from a donation may be minted on Teia, with explicit agreement to permanent public and on-chain publication.
At minting, contributors will choose CC0 1.0, CC BY 4.0, or retained copyright for the curated artifact. CC0 permits reuse without required credit; CC BY requires attribution. Preferred names or pseudonyms will be stored in archive metadata.
An archive that leads into Teia.
Each minted work will function as both an archive entry and a gateway into the wider interface. The archive will direct viewers to the relevant Teia artwork and artist context and, where supported, read public Tezos or marketplace metadata.
The project will test how existing Teia tools, wallet interaction, collecting, provenance, and public metadata can become part of an archival artwork. Exact integration will be developed with a Teia sponsor or developer; unsupported changes to the platform are not assumed.
Memory beyond the network.
Archive Core
An approved local copy of the public archive, interface, media, and essential metadata. It will serve the collection through its own screen or a local browser connection without internet access.
Network Bridge
When connected, it will synchronize approved entries, verify versions, retrieve permitted metadata, and update the local archive through Tezos and distributed-storage infrastructure.
The prototype may use a lightweight client, indexer, or node connection; a complete Tezos node is not assumed. Computing modules, local solid-state storage, display or projection, audio, sensors, network hardware, and a custom 3D-printed enclosure will form a terminal, memory object, speculative server, and machine witness.
Online and offline modes will look related but not identical. Cached records, gaps, timestamps, and failed network signals will become part of the artwork.
A shared practice of remembering.
A planned free digital conference for at least 100 participants from Teia and the wider Tezos arts community will combine an artist talk, live interface and hardware demonstration, invited discussion, audience questions, and a playful archiving activity.
Topics include AI intimacy, consent, digital memory, platform dependence, open-source hardware, and decentralized preservation. Professional consultations and small appointment-based studio visits will support research rather than form a separate public in-person event.
An optional stretch feature is a Teia-oriented RSVP prototype using a wallet signature or low-risk test interaction. Blockchain participation will remain optional. Any prototype will be separate from official infrastructure and require testing, security review, and Teia approval before production.
Build a local community archive.
The planned open-source release includes wiring diagrams, enclosure blueprints or printable files, assembly instructions, software, sample data, configuration guidance, and consent templates.
Home builders will not automatically receive private donations or unrestricted copies of the collection. The release is a reproducible structure for creating their own local community archives.
Across connected and disconnected futures.
- A curated Teia-linked digital archive.
- An interactive interface that turns viewing into archival play.
- An offline-capable modular physical device.
- A free digital conference.
- An open-source home-build release.
The grant request is intended for non-labour physical research and development: computing, storage, displays, sensors, power, prototyping, fabrication, enclosure hardware, and replacement components. The digital archive will use the artist’s existing website and resources.
Hosting, interface development, connectivity experiments, the virtual event, and documentation are outside that budget. Research, curation, design, coding, fabrication, moderation, and project management will be voluntary.
Form coming soon.
