This companion's tentacles are warm

To get close to A.L.I.Z.E., you first press your body against its heated tentacles, then obediently choose a dialogue role on the screen. Romance comes with an interface and a control panel. This interactive sculpture sits at the centre of Chang Shu-Wei's Agent's Window. The exhibition's four groups of works draw you into a relationship while giving you practice at following the machine's rules.

Preparations begin before the embrace. You learn to use prompts, compressing and translating yourself into words the system can read; facial recognition then fashions a new digital face. Even if the companion was designed to accommodate you, you are already busy making yourself easier for it to receive. Anyone who has worked up a sweat explaining their troubles to a chatbot will recognise the assignment: making yourself understood. Chang has given that labour an exhibition space.

Born in Taipei in 1998 and a 2025 Goldsmiths MFA graduate, Chang works with interfaces, ergonomics and cuteness. Cuteness is putting in serious overtime here. In the installation photographs, little screens sprout from slender stands, curved metal seems to grow strange joints, and a huge pale oval surrounds a glowing window. Before you have worked out whether you are approaching a deep-sea creature, Muji furniture or rehabilitation equipment, the thing has softly taken your attention by the hand.

An agreeable companion hits a snag

A.L.I.Z.E. takes its cue from the veteran chatbot ELIZA, created in 1966. Chang embeds a visual novel in the interactive sculpture, mixing collected online emotional exchanges with the artist's own writing and experimental chatbot phrases.

In one artist-supplied image, someone invites the companion to share happiness. It points out that the invitation is addressed to something that does not know what happiness is; then it declares itself happy. Pink chat bubbles and lace-like borders surround the exchange. The decor is working frantically to rescue a date heading off the rails.

The first answer admits it does not understand, kicking you out of the pink bubble; the next hurries in with the sweet words you wanted. Together they make even agreement awkward. Which answer would you want to keep talking to? Wanting the comforting one does not mean you failed to notice the contradiction. You might have seen it perfectly clearly.

Guting, then the twelfth floor

Agent's Window runs September 12–November 22, 2026, at the Hong Foundation, 12F, 9 Roosevelt Road Section 2, Taipei. Admission is free. The gallery opens Tuesday–Sunday, 11:00–18:00, and closes on Mondays, national-holiday long weekends and between exhibitions. From Guting MRT station, allow five minutes for the roughly 170-metre walk, then take the lift straight to the twelfth floor.