A TendencyTo Spill: using a chatbot as a storytelling platform.
Hazel Grian and Constance Fleuriot.
This project began with an 1100-word short story I wrote a couple of years ago. I wanted to find out how much more of an intensely intimate reading experience I could create by using one-to-one digital interactivity.
Made by
Hazel Grian
A pioneer of interactive drama, specialising in robots, Hazel began as a live performer & filmmaker. In a 35 year career, she is driven by her ambition to bring stories to audiences by ‘any medium necessary’.A Tendency To Spill is an interactive Science Fiction story that involves a chat bot, that’s instant chat using artificial intelligence. You’re not chatting with a real person but computer coding and when it works best you forget that.
We see everything through the eyes of Romy, a sheltered 13-year-old girl, home schooled by parents who are not only emotionally robotic but actual androids. She greets us with this message:
Hi, I’m Romy, I’m 13 and I live inside The Wall. Until a few minutes ago I thought I was a ‘print' - a synthetic person printed by Tom and Anne, my synthetic parents. Now they tell me I’ve been living a lie, I’m actually an ‘original’ a human like you. Everyone says the human world is nothing but hatred, chaos and crime. Can you convince me it’s better than that?
Romy asks you for a crash course in what’s really at the heart of human society. A wall separates the robots who live in one culture, from the humans who have a very different one. The name of the country is unknown, the location of the city and the date are also unknown. We could be 100 years in the future where 3D printing has developed enough to produce a population of synthetic people.
Project blog
- A Tendency To Spill: the ups and downs of turning a short story into a chatbot.
- A Tendency To Spill: the story synopsis.