Talking Marble Face

There's a frame with a glass window behind which is an alcove holding a marble bust.

You walk up to it and say "Hey marble bust. What's cooking'?" to which is says: "Nothing much. What's cooking' with you?" or possibly something clever. The lips move, the expression changes, the eyes open and close. It's real marble, not plastic or rubber.

The way it's done is there are actually dozens or even hundreds of busts arrayed behind the wall that each represent frames of the model talking and making different expressions. Each bust view is lined up with the viewing window via mirrors and lenses. The trick is that they can only be viewed when there's a light shining on them and they're in the dark unless that particular bust's light array is triggered. Picture one way glass that works when the people on the viewing side have the lights off, but they appear when the lights are turned on in that room.

So a program hears the viewer say something into the mic below the frame, then with off the shelf voice recognition/response technology comes up with something to say. It then synthesizes the voiced response and flashes momentary illumination on the correct sequence of faces that correspond to the vocal synthesizer to make it appear as if a single face is talking. An O sound being spoken would trigger lights to illuminate the face making an O sound for the appropriate amount of time. An E sound lights up the E face, etc.

Put it in a booth and charge a buck or so to talk to a statue. Stick it in an amusement arcade, haunted house, that sort of thing.

I put it under "product:mirror" because it would be sort of like the magic mirror from Snow White. Plus there's no talking statue category.

P.S. Of course you could drop the interactive part, but a talking statue is one thing, a conversing statue would be that much cooler.