On a recent Tuesday evening, the experimental musician Julianna Barwick checked into Sister City, a new two-hundred-room boutique hotel on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. If you're having the sort of day that makes you want to minimize human interaction, Sister City is a merciful oasis: there are self-service registration kiosks in the lobby, and each floor features a supply closet containing the sorts of sundries that you'd usually have to request from the concierge. The lobby has sparse but careful décor--clean white walls, cherry-wood furniture, floor tiles in muted shades of green and gray--suggesting a Scandinavian sauna, or perhaps the careful serenity of a Japanese stationery store; the vibe is "Serenity Now!" filtered through Instagram. Barwick, who has long, dark hair and inquisitive eyes, is using the sky immediately above the hotel as a source for a new composition. A camera mounted to the roof of the building sends information about the goings-on in the airspace above the hotel (rain, clouds, pigeons, airplanes, wind, sun, moonlight, drones, helicopters, constellations, what have you) to Pereira's program, which uses Microsoft's artificial intelligence to cue sounds written and recorded by Barwick.

The rise of the bot has been one of the dominant tech trends of 2016, but apart from ordering you flowers or an Uber, the automated systems could also deliver a history lesson. News Corp Australia has launched a chatbot on Facebook Messenger that allows users to interact with Tasmanian soldier Archie Barwick, who fought in World War I. The chatbot was created by AnzacLive, an interactive project that helps users learn more about the personal experiences of Australians on the frontline. While the project has so far allowed people to interact with veterans, including nurses and soldiers, via Facebook posts, the chatbot will allow for a more private conversation with Barwick as he battles on the Western Front. "We did it to mark the July 1916 battles of Pozieres and Fromelles, the Australians' first major clashes on the Western Front," Justin Lees, editor of AnzacLive, told Mumbrella.