Live sessions Mouchette Chatbot

Martine Neddam

Presentation

19 November 2025 – 27 February 2026
Online

Curator: Roeliena Aukema

Live sessions Mouchette Chatbot | Martine Neddam

Join us for a digital art program, revisiting the iconic 1990s net art project by artist Martine Neddam - mouchette.org. Revisit the original cyber ‘young-girl’, now brought to life again through AI technology. This project by Martine Neddam is designed in collaboration with Leo Scarin and curated by Roeliena Aukema.

The live sessions will take place via Zoom on:

November 19, 2025, 7 to 8pm: Opening presentation

November 26, 2025, 7 to 8pm: Play #1

December 17, 2025, 7 to 8pm: Play #2

Other sessions will be announced soon

First launched in the late 1990s, mouchette.org invited users into dark, poetic, and provocative exchanges with a virtual persona. This new project extends her presence into the present through a conversational AI system that embodies her distinctive voice and aesthetics.

Mouchette.org was created in 1996 by Martine Neddam and consists of an interactive website that follows the story of a nearly thirteen-year-old girl named Mouchette (little fly in French). Loosely following the narrative from the original film from 1967 by Robert Bresson, visitors can navigate through the website and interact with the persona of Mouchette. What looks like a website built by a young girl, slowly starts unfolding in darker themes surrounding death, murder and suicide. Within this non-linear storyline, messages and emails by real-life visitors are also included.

Throughout the years, mouchette.org has been part of a larger framework in which Neddam investigates how identity and virtuality work online. Vleeshal commissioned Neddam to think of a new way of thinking about public interaction online, which led to the creation of the Mouchette Chatbot. Unlike conventional chatbots, the Mouchette chatbot integrates expressive visual and sonic elements that can also be found on the original website. The interface reacts to dialogue with shifting colors, animated typography, gifs, emojis, and ambient sounds, turning each exchange into a performed experience rather than a purely textual one, also highlighting the idea of performativity in the digital sphere.

Developed in collaboration with Leo Scarin, the project offers several live sessions in which the audience can participate and interact with this project. In addition to these sessions, you can also join the Mouchette newsletter for notes, photos, and sudden interactions. Visitors online will engage in live conversations with Mouchette, witnessing her return as a poetic, unpredictable, and intimate digital presence.

Please join the meetings, let us know in advance which sessions you want to join, and secure your spot.. The link will also be published on our website an hour before the event. Click on this link to subscribe to the Mouchette newsletter.

Events

19 November