arXiv subjects

Karola Köpferl

Publications and source records attributed to Karola Köpferl.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Oracle of Chemnitz: An interactive art installation to reanimate old things in a garage featuring a rotary phone

Garages have a long tradition of tinkering, creativity and innovative change. School of Garage, a participatory artistic summer school project in Chemnitz, the European Capital of Culture 2025, took up this tradition and turned old Eastern Bloc garages into temporary ateliers for collaborative making and discussion. In our HackLab garage we conceptualized and created the Oracle of Chemnitz within one week. It gives a place filled with history back its stories. It is an interactive installation of artifacts from the past typically found in garages: an old typewriter, radio, desk, tires, mixer and a rotary-dial telephone. Each got a name, personality and story to tell. The phone rings when a visitor approaches. Once answered, it asks for name and month of birth before a story about a device is told, along with hints to other places in the city. Around 2,700 visitors interacted with the system over three months.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

Machines, AI and the past//future of things

This essay explores a techno-artistic experiment that reanimates a 1980s East German typewriter using a contemporary AI language model. Situated at the intersection of media archaeology and speculative design, the project questions dominant narratives of progress by embedding generative AI in an obsolete, tactile interface. Through public exhibitions and aesthetic intervention, we demonstrate how slowness, friction, and material render artificial intelligence not only visible but open to critical inquiry. Drawing on concepts such as zombie media, technostalgia, and speculative design, we argue that reappropriating outdated technologies enables new forms of critical engagement. Erika - the AI-enabled typewriter - functions as both interface and interruption, making space for reflection, irony, and cultural memory. In a moment of accelerated digital abstraction, projects like this foreground the value of deliberate slowness, experiential materiality, and historical depth. We conclude by advocating for a historicist design sensibility that challenges presentism and reorients human-machine interaction toward alternative, perceived futures.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Ein Typenrad auf der Überholspur: Die Kult-Schreibmaschine "Erika" trifft KI

In the 15th century, printing revolutionized the dissemination of information. Innovations such as typewriters and computers have increased the speed and volume of information flows over time. More recent developments in large language models such as ChatGPT enable text to be generated in a matter of seconds. However, many people do not understand how this works and what the long-term implications are. That is why we have "hacked" an old typewriter so that users can interact with an LLM chatbot, which over 1,200 participants have now been able to experience. It helps to understand the possibilities and limitations of AI. It gives us researchers insights into participants' concepts of AI as well as their expectations and concerns. It raises questions about these technological developments and stimulates discussions about the social impact of the intensification and acceleration of information and communication flows.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

From Simple Sensors to Complex Context: Insights for HabiTech

We relate our previous as well as ongoing research in the domain of smart homes to the concept of HabiTech. HabiTech can benefit from existing approaches and findings in a broader context of whole buildings or communities within. Along with data comes context of data capture and data interpretation in different dimensions (spatial, temporal, social). For defining what is 'community' proximity plays a crucial role in context, both spatially as well as socially. A participatory approach for research in living in sensing environments is promising to address complexity as well as interests of different stakeholders. Often it is the complex context that makes even simple sensor data sensitive, i.e. in terms of privacy. When it comes to handle shared data then concepts from the physical world for shared spaces might be related back to the data domain.

cs.HC↗