PastPresence
The Work
One construct underneath all of it: real-time, unscripted conversation with a conjured presence, invented, historical, a living legend, or a figure out of lore. The branches change with the audience. Some stand in physical space, met face to face. Others are built for the browser, for readers, students, and audiences at home.
HEARSAY
Real-time interactive fictions
Interactive fictional encounters on a computer or in a headset. Participants meet characters through a frame and steer the story by what they say. The Knock is the flagship.
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Echoes
Site-specific conversational heritage installations
Representations of historical figures and regional archetypes in live, face-to-face conversation, housed in objects of regional stone, brick, or wood. Echoes of Indiana is the first commissioned work.
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Kindred Spirits
Conversational presences for institutions
A single author or cultural figure, researched and prepared for conversation at the museum, house, or library devoted to them. A single figure, anchored in the record.
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Reading Companions
Author-grounded conversational study tools
A browser-based companion that sees the page the reader sees and talks it over in the voice that made it. Reading becomes a conversation.
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Tall Tales
Playful conversational characters
The same engine, off the clock. Legends, cryptids, and folk characters that hold up a conversation, charming on the surface and grounded in the nature and lore of a place. SquatchChat is the first, a friendly Sasquatch on a dusk trail-cam.
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The Oracle
A virtual fortune cabinet
A coin-fitted cabinet with one apparition inside. Drawn from ouija boards, old oracles, and Surrealist play, it brings the visitor face to face with a presence summoned by a coin. For amusement only.
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Great Panes
Episodic interactive fiction
A stylized episodic series about residents, animals, unfinished business, and the information that comes from looking again.
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Tenants
Mixed-reality domestic fiction
A room with an ongoing social life. Residents return from elsewhere, and shared scenes unfold through a household of bodies.
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