Tableau machine: an alien presence in the home

We present Tableau Machine, a non-human social actor for the home. The machine senses, interprets and reports abstract qualities of human activity through the language of visual art. The goal of the machine is to serve as a strange mirror of everyday life, open unusual viewpoints and generate engaging and long lasting conversations and reflections. We introduce new models for sensing, interpreting, and reporting human activity and we describe results of our formative evaluation which suggest reflection and social engagement among participants.