Chat Cube

This is a cube that receives text messages and answers them. It is cast in concrete and epoxy, has a mobile number you can text, and an e-ink display that shows the answers it has sent. The electronics are hidden inside — no visible connections to the outside. How the cube works is kept secret.

As I wrote in more depth here, this project is about trust in electronics and services. How and why can we trust the machines around us? How are their workings verifiable? The short general answer: they are not.

Imagine texting with this cube. If its answers were complex and lively — would you conclude that the connection is wiretapped, or that the cube runs an advanced AI?

I showed the project to a group of people and let them interact with it. To my surprise, nobody questioned its function. They took it for granted that the claimed operation was the only way this device could work — with no proof whatsoever, and with an experience that clearly diverged from any usual chat bot. And that is the normal case with the devices around us: we rarely question whether our phones work the way we expect them to. We trust them blindly.

So this is a device built to be distrusted — a chance to experience how little you can see behind the curtain of your devices' workings. The feeling of lost control only appears where expectation and perception diverge.