ABOUT SYNTHETIC INTERVIEWS
A synthetic interview is the name for a patented technology developed by a pod of students at Carnegie Mellon University during the Spring of 2008. This technology allows an individual to have a conversation with a character or persona as if that person were present in real-time, responding to a pre-recorded series of questions. The questions are researched, scripted, and then the responses are recorded by an actor on film. An interface is then developed that would allow a person the ability to select the content they’d like, triggering a virtual conversation. These innovative web-based interviews have allowed audiences to interact with such figures as George Washington and Charles Darwin, sharing knowledge in new ways with a global community: a true example of working with the Digital Humanities.
The goal of our final project in DH is to create an immersive experience that lets anyone have a meaningful conversation with the digital persona of someone we have studied during our unit of Existence: Camus, Freud, Sartre, Tolstoy, Stendhal, and Nietzsche.