BIRD - Webcam Augury
︎︎︎BIRD - Webcam Augury (2024)
BIRD (Bird Informed Remote Divination) is a collaborative, chat-based augury experience (divination through observation of birds and sky). You are connected through webcams to birds across the world and are tasked to interpret the signs with an augur chatbot.
The BIRD Message Map spatialises conversations with the augur in a three-dimensional environment, where virtual birds sing participant messages.
Commissioned by (2024) and in collaboration with AIXDesign.
BIRD was exhibited at the Slow AI festival May 1-3 2025, in Amsterdam. At the Festival, I conducted a participatory Augury bird walk and performance.
BIRD augury walks were held with Elisava school of Design, and at Watershed in Bristol in 2026.
Credit:
Above: Talk image: Asia Giuliani
Walk images: Elisava School of Design and Engineering
Below images: Credit - Asia Giuliani
Technical details / implementation: LLM-based conversational AI, automated safeguarding and moderation, SQLite database, public webcam integration, external APIs (eBird bird sightings, stock market data), physical computing (Raspberry Pi), hardware prototyping (vacuum fluorescent displays, LCD, CRT), vector embeddings and 3D semantic mapping of conversational data, sentiment analysis, sound synthesis and spatial audio.