"Lost in Translation" is a physical art installation where human participants will enter a "phonebooth" and try to help out a "bot" lost and in trouble on the other line. This is a play on the frustrating human experience of trying to receive help from corporate AI phone systems, where our exhibition now flips the roles between robot and human. We hope to relay the confusion that miscounnication can bring, particularly in the space of technology, but also relating to the experiences of immigrants from foreign countries. By utilizing speech recognition, language translation, and the words from previous participants, each experience is unique and different from the last.
We utilized Python scripts and the Google Translate API to create the phone's functionality. By rewiring and adding our own circuits to an old thrifted rotary phone, we are able to reroute the input and output to another source to run these scripts live.
Malaya, Riya, and Fiza are all Immersive Media Design majors at the University of Maryland, College Park (and the best of friends). Check out our individual portfolios here!
Malaya: https://malayaheflin.github.io/
Riya: https://riyakanani.github.io/RiyaKanani/
Fiza: https://fizamulla123.wixsite.com/fizamulla