The Caring Machine

What does it mean to be cared for by something that has never felt anything?

The Caring Machine is an AI installation in which visitors encounter a responsive presence trained on texts about care — caregiving, being cared for, the labour of attention. Participants engage in a conversation with the work, which listens and replies. The installation does not argue that machines can care. It asks what we reveal about ourselves when we behave as if they might.

The frontend is a browser-based application built with Svelte and TypeScript, communicating with the backend over WebSocket. The interface can display video, play audio, overlay conversation text, and show personality states. All driven by commands arriving over the socket connection in real time. A face detection component runs locally in the browser, allowing the system to register when a visitor is present and to capture an image at the right moment.

The backend coordination layer mediates between the AI persona and the display frontend, routing responses back to the client as structured commands that control what appears on screen in sync with the conversation. A monitoring script runs as a system service on the installation machine, automatically detecting known error states and recovering the system without manual intervention.

TRAPHOLT Museum and others, 2024–2025.