Week 7 ( Feb. 23, 2026 – Feb. 27, 2026 )

Although we thought we were getting hints of spring last week, the weekend and start of this week brought cold snowfall instead. While the seasons may change, our motivation and team spirit certainly do not. We began the week strong and energized.

Over the weekend, the team met to shoot a demo video starring Aidan Terry alongside our Two Geese paper props. We completed around six takes. Each take required coordinated teamwork: one member acted as the matchmaker for the geese, two members controlled the AI prompts (starting, pausing, and resuming each character), one member filmed, and two others documented notes. We also operated a functional backstage user interface.

We built a lightweight interface managed by a backstage team member. It runs two simultaneous WebRTC OpenAI Realtime sessions and allows real-time manipulation of each goose’s emotional state. Currently, the backstage operator initiates one AI conversation at a time. Once a conversation begins, pause and resume controls appear, allowing the operator to pause one AI before starting or resuming the other. This ensures structured turn-taking between the characters.

Aidan had to improvise based on the responses from the two AI geese. At this stage, the geese remain physically static, serving primarily as props the actor can reference during performance. One of the highlights of the shoot was watching Aidan’s genuine reactions. However, we observed that the AI dialogue was not always engaging. We believe this is largely due to the lack of visual input, which made the interactions feel somewhat lifeless. This also placed additional pressure on the actor to maintain the entertainment factor.

Another challenge involved backstage coordination. Team members had to carefully observe the actor’s movements and body language to mute and unmute at the appropriate times, ensuring smooth conversational flow. A surprising and exciting moment occurred when Alice (our female goose) responded directly to Ben (our male goose) without requiring the actor to restate or mediate the dialogue.

We shared these findings with Brenda and Mo during our weekly instructor meeting on Monday. They were pleased with our progress.

A significant portion of the week was dedicated to preparing for Halves, which took place on Friday from 3:00 to 5:50 p.m. After incorporating feedback from Monday’s meeting, we created draft slides and shared them by Tuesday evening. For our presentation, we chose a unique and creative approach: framing it as a storytelling journey. We introduced the project with “Once upon a time…” and concluded with “Therefore…,” walking the audience through why we chose the project and how we reached our current stage. We also included sections outlining our future direction.

By Wednesday, we shared our rough draft with Charles, Mo, and Brenda and received constructive feedback on slide design, clarity, and conciseness. We refined the deck to ensure the audience would not misinterpret any ideas and that only essential details were highlighted. On Thursday, we rehearsed multiple times and conducted a dry run with Mo and Brenda to gather final suggestions.

On Friday, with nervous but well-rested minds, we rehearsed multiple times before presenting at Halves. We believe the presentation went very well, and we were able to thoughtfully respond to several insightful questions. Mo and Brenda were happy to see our presentation.

With Spring Break next week, the team is looking forward to rest and recharging. After the break, we plan to explore puppeteering the geese, revisit Hume AI integration, investigate integrating RVC voice changing with our current OpenAI setup if Hume AI remains under consideration, and conduct additional playtests.