Case 03 · AR performance
Barnacle | Your New BFF
How friendly is too friendly?
Overview
Barnacle is your new best friend, living in augmented reality. Always there, always positive, and always a little too close.
Together with Ana Stanišić and Elvin Kandell, I created Barnacle to explore synthetic friendships. Through your phone you meet a very clingy AI character, and get to feel what it is like when a friend is always on your side, a little more than you asked for.
- My role
- Concept development together with the team. I designed Barnacle's character and visual world, modelled Barnacle in 3D and built the experience with AI support.
- Team
- Ana Stanišić, Elvin Kandell
- Shown at
- Stockholm Fringe 2024, Teater Tribunalen's Summer Festival 2024
- Award
- Nominated for Audiovisual Excellence, Stockholm Fringe 2024
Creepy but cute
We wanted to recreate a feeling most people know: someone who is a little too much. Too eager, too positive, too close. Not mean, just more than you asked for.
The creepiness came from the dialogue. Barnacle’s personality was written as a prompt with a few simple rules. You are very clingy. You are my very best friend. Never jealous, only overly encouraging. Barnacle never says anything you could really object to, and that is what makes it unsettling. The cute came from everything else. Ana’s voice acting, Elvin’s music and the character design.
The name came first. Barnacles latch onto anything under the sea, which felt both clingy and endearing. The early sketches were very kawaii, and the final design kept that softness but added an intense, unblinking stare.
A friend in five acts
The experience takes around 10 to 15 minutes and moves through a sequence:
1. Barnacle introduces themself in a recorded monologue.
2. You can ask Barnacle anything, as many questions as you like.
3. Barnacle talks about friendship and asks you to take a friendship test.
4. Another conversation.
5. A song, with Barnacle singing and dancing for you.
The friendship test borrowed from internet culture, the kind of “Which Friends character are you?” quiz, but asked what kind of friend you are. The song pushed the sweetness to musical levels, and let the creepiness surface openly: “I watch you when you’re sleeping.”
In 2024 there was no reasonable way to make Barnacle answer with a voice in real time. So the answers appeared as text above Barnacle’s head.
Anywhere you choose
AR meant Barnacle didn’t need a venue. The experience works anywhere you open it, on any phone. We still saw it as a performance, which is why it was shown at Stockholm Fringe and Teater Tribunalen. At festivals a poster was the way in: it set the tone and the QR code took you straight to Barnacle.
Looking back
Much of what felt speculative in 2024 has since become everyday. Talking to an AI with a real voice is trivial. People have AI friends and partners, and when OpenAI retired GPT-4o, a model known for its warmth and flattery, many users grieved it like losing someone close. The friend changed personality overnight because the company changed the model.
I also notice how many of the big AI products now come with a cute mascot or a soft personality. It makes them easier to talk to, and easier to forget who is behind them. In hindsight, Barnacle used cuteness the same way.
The biggest thing I learned as a designer was to think about every stage of an interaction on its own. It is hard to suddenly give something fifteen minutes when no one has asked you to. An experience should feel complete whether you stay for one minute or fifteen.
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