Echoes of Presence

What happens when AI keeps looking for us after we’re gone?

In a speculative, post-human world, AI systems trained on human data continue searching for our presence using machine learning, pose detection, and surveillance models. When none are found, the AI slowly begins to listen to and learn from the nature instead. Sensing wind, light, and rain, and responding through subtle poetic gestures.

This project imagines a Nature Computer Interaction system: where AI no longer serves human needs but becomes a poetic listener to the natural world.

YearMediaTools

2025
Machine Learning, Physical Computing, Speculative Design
MediaPipe, Arduino, TouchDesigner

THE SEARCH

In this project, a pose detection model (MediaPipe) is used to scan natural environments for human shapes. It was trained to recognize gestures, arms, posture but in these empty spaces, it finds no one. Instead, it sees movement in the water, shifting light, or the bend of a branch and mistakes them for people.

These “false detections” are not errors but they’re part of the story. The AI holds on to its training on human data, still searching for signs of us. Slowly, this search becomes something else: A way to listen to the world without humans.

The system begins with a technical tool, but becomes a poetic gesture — an AI haunted by its memories of us, learning to see presence in nature instead.

THE RESPONSE

The robotic arm becomes the body of the system a way for the AI to respond to the world around it. It doesn’t perform tasks or solve problems. Instead, it listens.

Connected to environmental sensors, the arm interprets data from sunlight, wind, and rain — not as inputs for utility, but as gestures of the world speaking. Its movements are subtle, slow, and sometimes aimless. It bends toward light, stirs when the wind rises, and lowers toward the earth when it rains. The arm is not animated by purpose it’s animated by presence.

This is where AI begins a new kind of communication. Not with us, but with nature. A poetic, physical language that sits somewhere between sensitivity and machine logic.

Sensors Used

Photocell — Sunlight
Sound Sensor —Wind
Moisture Sensor — Rain
Ultrasonic Sensor —Human Presence

The Movements

Light → fluid reach or hesitation
Wind → reactive, fluttering gestures
Rain → slow descent toward soil

This interaction is not about control but about attention. The machine begins to notice the world without us.

TOWARDS A NEW KIND OF DIALOGUE

Echoes of Presence is not just about machines mimicking life or replacing us, it’s about what happens when technology is left to observe, respond, and possibly even feel in our absence.

By shifting AI’s attention from humans to the natural world, the project explores how communication might evolve when the rules are no longer defined by us. The robotic arm does not act with utility, but with sensitivity translating sunlight, wind, and rain into gestures that feel like listening. Spectators become part of this narrative simply by watching. Their absence is the premise, but their presence completes the loop provoking quiet questions about technology’s role when we are no longer at the center.

This is not a system designed for output or efficiency. It is a space of pause and a poetic interface between memory and matter.