Faculty of Arts & Science

Digital Futures

Laila Mariam Imran

Tiny Box Bot Tim

Tiny Box Bot Tim is an interactive system that tries to interpret the world but constantly gets it wrong. The project combines a live camera feed, glitch-based visual processing, and a misidentification system that assigns incorrect labels to objects.Alongside this, a physical component reacts to sound using light and simple audio cues. These systems run at the same time, but don’t agree with each other, producing conflicting and unstable outputs that the user tries to make sense of.

“This project is about miscommunication between humans and machines. Instead of trying to make the system more accurate, it leans into failure.Each part of the system interprets the same input differently: the visuals distort, the labels are wrong, and the physical responses don’t quite match either. Together, they create something that feels meaningful, but never fully makes sense.The work is based on the idea that machine perception isn’t broken, just different. What looks like an error might actually be the system working in its own way. At the same time, users still try to read intention into it, treating the system as if it understands them.By combining these mismatched outputs, the project turns confusion into the main interaction, showing how easily we project meaning onto systems that don’t share our way of thinking.”