Technical%20 Consultancy | William Westwood

Technical Consultancy

Technical consultancy for Artist in Residency at Somerset House Studios

Working with an Artist named Louis Morlæ, I provided technical consultancy for his residency at Somerset House Studios & the Creative Computing Institute. The project involved the creation of a 3D model of a pair of feet, which was then used to create a sculpture.

3D Modelling

Given a model of feet, I was challenged with posing and sculpting the feet in a way that would cement them into the wooden case; grounding their existence in the physical world. The feet were then split up and 3D printed, to be reconstructed in the wooden case.

LLM-Powered Interactive Chatbot

As part of this project, I created a fully interactive chatbot called Mother. Its main task was to guide the user through a series of questions. The aim of the questions is to place the user in a job role in a post-AI dystopian future grounded within Somerset House. Mother is also trying to get private information from the user such as banking details and passwords.

I developed the software and programmed a custom keyboard that spells out "The lazy major was fixing cupids broken quiver." The UI is a Vue website with the Qwen2.5 LLM model running on a local KoboldAI API backend. Chat logs are saved to a SQLite file.

The system runs on Linux, starting at boot with systemd services. A smaller screen displays output from a camera above the entry door, monitoring user interactions with Mother.

© Jack Elliot Edwards | Mother and Feet in situ

Animatronic Display Cases

© Jack Elliot Edwards | Two 'creatures' in display cases

The installation also features a robotic eye that responds to viewer proximity using an ultrasonic sensor, adding another layer of interactivity to the exhibition space.

© Jack Elliot Edwards | Ultrasonic Sensor