Conversation Piece is an artwork designed to explore the boundaries between virtual and real world experience. It is an intelligent room that uses speech recognition and synthesis software, a dialogue management system, microphone arrays and directional sound sources to conduct disembodied dialogues with two separate users at one time. Technology used is concealed and statements made by the machine ('Heather') can be heard only at a specific location in space, so that the effect for other audience members is of hearing one side of a telephone conversation, or the sense that an individual interacting with the work is talking to him/herself.

The installation is designed to have a transparent interface and to encourage the user to attribute human sensibilities to the machine, even in the absence of any visible human features.

In the installation two small sculptures are displayed on exhibition plinths. People entering the space are automatically tracked using webcams positioned overhead. When someone moves past one of the sculptures the disembodied voice of ‘Heather’ tries to catch his or her attention by saying ‘Hello’, or ‘Excuse me’. As an individual approaches one of the sculptures ‘Heather’ will then try to engage that person in conversation. Using keywords to interpret what is said in reply, she will try to pursue a dialogue with the user that can be heard only at a particular location in the space.

Conversation Piece raises questions such as: “what if computers could convincingly perform human emotions?” and “can humans engage in meaningful social interactions with machines?” In the installation the sophisticated technologies used to emulate human communication processes are concealed to enable an apparently seamless convergence of the real and the virtual. For each user the illusion of meaningful social exchange is mediated by the extent to which he or she projects personality or emotional content into the synthesized voice, and how much he or she chooses to engage with the projected personality. On one level the work investigates the extent to which any human interaction is concerned with projection and imagination.