“Consensus Gentium” is an interactive film that harnesses the facial detection technology available in smart devices and uses AI to create a new type of narrative experience.

The participant’s objective is to visit their sick Nana in a different part of the city, however in order to request increased mobility, they have to download a Global Citizen App. The App determines if the participant is a trustworthy enough citizen to receive increased mobility and digital citizenship status. Through various tests, their receptivity towards dissidence or compliance is calculated, by monitoring the data for their conscious and subconscious eye gaze interactions.

At the same time, various characters from techno-activists to friends interact with the participant through the Apps and the functionality of their smartphone, to reflect the consequences of their decisions on themselves and the wider community.

By placing the participant at the center of this interactive storytelling experience, the objective is to enable them to become conscious of this subconscious behavior through experiencing how their acquiescence or agency impacts the narrative world, and how their agency can affect the narrative of their life in the same way. Consensus Gentium promotes the idea that the future is not something that happens to us, but that it’s something that we create together.

Consensus Gentium’s interactions are based upon the principles of traditional Mandala storytelling. In every culture, they serve the same purpose of centering an individual or community on a given narrative, in order to encourage introspection and ultimately, an awareness of one’s place and purpose in the world.

The Consensus Gentium application for IOS mobile devices is an application for hosting immersive augmented reality (AR) film experiences that change the narrative of a film based upon the user’s eye gaze on the screen and their facial features. Currently, it hosts one film, Consensus Gentium Part I. This application streams film content from an AWS CloudFront instance that distributes the film content across several countries for optimal streaming performance.

Using Apple’s front-facing true depth camera system (consisting of an infrared sensor and optical camera) and Apple’s ARKit, it locally tracks over fifty-two unique facial features and eye-gaze. This information is used to determine where the person is looking on the screen and determines the pathways of where the film will go based on where the user is looking on the screen.

The immersive film experience will be experienced as a live site immersive installation and eventually be released publicly on the Appstore.

Alongside the Consensus Gentium app, an educational program aims to engage youth audiences with the key themes of the piece and explore approaches to activism and civic engagement.