Gaze to the Stars: AI and Public Art from Personal Affect and Collective Empathy

Behnaz Farahi, Sergio Mutis, Yaluo Wang, Suwan Kim, Chenyue Dai, Haolei Zhang

Track: Paper

Keywords: participatory art, public art and AI, Affective, global empathy, conversation AI, eye tracking, encoding

TL;DR: Gaze to the Stars turns the MIT Great Dome into an AI-powered canvas for collective emotional storytelling, transforming personal reflection into a shared civic experience.

Abstract: Gaze to the Stars is an AI-mediated participatory public art installation that transforms the MIT Great Dome into a platform for collective emotional storytelling. 200 Participants engage in reflective conversations with a large language model, their responses encoded as Braille into their iris videos and projected onto the Dome. Using affective narrative embedding, iris segmentation, and emotional clustering, the project visualizes both shared and personal affect. Through Gaze to the Stars, we frame AI not as a tool for efficiency, but as a companion—inviting self-reflection and fostering civic empathy within public space.

Submission Number: 74