InPlatea

InPlatea is a multi-modality AI-responsive system designed to connect human behavior, memory, and the concept of "non-places" through the ritual of tea-making. The system aims to transform the transient, often anonymous experience of non-places (like a train station environment) into a tangible, sensory experience, revealing the hidden social and cultural networks embedded in seemingly placeless environments.
Through natural language conversation, processed by OpenAI Whisper, the system interprets human sentiment and maps it to culturally grounded tea types. This data, alongside contextual primers on tea culture (function, flavor, and optimal drinking times), is then routed to the GPT-4o utilizing the OpenAI API. The LLM's sentiment analysis, based on the story transcript, precisely influences the "Decision Layer" to determine the ideal leaf type and quantity, transforming ephemeral perception into a tangible experience: a freshly brewed tea, a printed recipe, and a shared ritual that activates taste, smell, and visual elements.
Rather than treating users as passive and the environment as static, InPlatea cultivates a co-creative loop where human emotion, machine intelligence, and ambient context synergistically generate presence, memory, and meaning. The physical components of InPlatea include tea canisters, a stepper motor for rotation, a servo motor for dispensing, a recipe printer, an Arduino Nano, two batteries, and metal balls for smooth rotation. These components are actuated by the system to prepare a customized tea, with the recipe and relevant cultural and functional information being printed out. The ultimate goal is to infuse behavior, memory, and environment into a responsive tea-making experience, thereby creating a profound sense of "placeness" within otherwise fleeting environments.