Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly being integrated into embodied, tangible, and ambient forms, expanding beyond the established chatbot interaction paradigm. LLMs are inherently general and open-ended. In contrast, design practice typically stabilises artefacts by prescribing their role or function through fixed metaphors. We present Machine Eye, a Research through Design (RtD) exploration of an embodied LLM that resists metaphorical closure. Rather than prescribing a specific role or function, the artefact is deliberately ambiguous, inviting participants to explore new forms of relational engagement with AI. Firstly, we explicate our design process, revealing three key tensions encountered when designing against metaphor for embodied LLMs. Secondly, we present findings from a qualitative study (N=15) investigating how participants interpret and engage with Machine Eye. We find that as participants actively explore new and non-prescriptive modes of embodied interaction, perceived roles can be dynamically contested and renegotiated, allowing for a kind of boundless relationship to emerge.

Recent developments in prompt-based generative AI has given rise to discourse surrounding the perceived ethical concerns, economic implications, and consequences for the future of cultural production. As generative imagery becomes pervasive in mainstream society, dominated primarily by emerging industry leaders, we encourage that the role of the CHI community be one of inquiry; to investigate the numerous ways in which generative AI has the potential to, and already is, augmenting human creativity. In this paper, we conducted a diffractive analysis exploring the potential role of prompt-based interfaces in artists’ creative practice. Over a two week period, seven visual artists were given access to a personalised instance of Stable Diffusion, fine-tuned on a dataset of their work. In the following diffractive analysis, we identified two dominant modes adopted by participants, AI for ideation, and AI for production. We furthermore present a number of ethical design considerations for the future development of generative AI interfaces.

As we become increasingly entangled with digital technologies, the boundary between human and machine is progressively blurring. Adopting a performative, posthumanist perspective resolves this ambiguity by proposing that such boundaries are not predetermined, rather they are enacted within a certain material configuration. Using this approach, dubbed ‘Entanglement HCI’, this paper presents Message Ritual – a novel, integrated AI system that encourages the re-framing of memory through machine generated poetics. Embodied within a domestic table lamp, the system listens in on conversations occurring within the home, drawing out key topics and phrases of the day and reconstituting them through machine generated poetry, delivered to household members via SMS upon waking each morning. Participants across four households were asked to live with the lamp over a two week period. We present a diffractive analysis exploring how the lamp becomes with participants and discuss the implications of this method for future HCI research.

This paper introduces a new form of real-time affective interface that engages the user in a process of conceptualisation of their emotional state. Inspired by Barrett's Theory of Constructed Emotion, 'Mirror Ritual' aims to expand upon the user's accessible emotion concepts, and to ultimately provoke emotional reflection and regulation. The interface uses classified emotions – obtained through facial expression recognition -- as a basis for dynamically generating poetry. The perceived emotion is used to seed a poetry generation system based on OpenAI's GPT-2 model, fine-tuned on a specially curated corpus. We evaluate the device's ability to foster a personalised, meaningful experience for individual users over a sustained period. A qualitative analysis revealed that participants were able to affectively engage with the mirror, with each participant developing a unique interpretation of its poetry in the context of their own emotional landscape.

The aim of this art-based research is to explore the duality of embodiment and presence in virtual reality (VR) through a narrative about the South Korean narcoleptic artist, Sungeun Lee. Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder where a person falls asleep unexpectedly. A narcoleptic struggles with a blurred and unsure sense of self, as well as confusion between reality and dreaming. We used VR to simulate his traumatized dream world and symptoms of narcolepsy. However, we also investigated the fundamental duality of embodiment/disembodiment in the virtual space and its parallels in the dream world. A non-linear narrative and generative poetic aesthetics driven by biometric feedback were applied to represent a surreal and uncertain sense of self. Gesture-based navigable interaction was used to connect people with their physical bodies, the virtual environment, and Sungeun's experiences.

Mirror Ritual is an interactive installation that challenges the existing paradigms in our understanding of human emotion and machine perception. In contrast to prescriptive interfaces, the work's real-time affective interface engages the audience in the iterative conceptualisation of their emotional state through the use of affectively-charged machine generated poetry. The audience are encouraged to make sense of the mirror's poetry by framing it with respect to their recent life experiences, effectively 'putting into words' their felt emotion. This process of affect labelling and contextualisation works to not only regulate emotion, but helps to construct the rich personal narratives that constitute human identity.