Phantom Gallery

An AI-powered museum experience where artworks come alive through conversations with ghostly curators, built on DigitalOcean Gradient AI.

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Inspiration

Museums are full of incredible stories, but most visitors walk past masterpieces without ever learning the human drama behind them. We wanted to change that. What if the artworks could talk back? What if a Renaissance master could explain his brushwork, or a Victorian critic could tear apart a painting while you watch?

What it does

Phantom Gallery is an AI-powered museum experience where artworks come alive through conversations with ghostly curators. Users can:

  • Choose a Ghost Persona - Pick from Lorenzo (Renaissance scholar), Claude (Impressionist dreamer), or Edmund (Victorian critic), each with a unique perspective on art
  • Chat with the Ghost - Have natural conversations about famous paintings, getting insights shaped by each curator's personality and era
  • Watch Live Debates - Trigger real-time AI debates between Lorenzo and Edmund as they argue over masterpieces with opposing viewpoints
  • Talk to the Art Itself - Switch to Living Subject mode to speak directly with the figures painted on the canvas

How we built it

The project uses a React frontend with an Express.js backend, powered by DigitalOcean Gradient AI running Llama 3.3 70B. The architecture includes:

  • An Orchestrator Agent that uses reasoning to classify user intent and route queries to the right persona
  • Custom Agents for each ghost persona, dynamically prompted to maintain character and conversation memory
  • A Debate Engine that runs multi-turn sequential arguments between two AI personas
  • The OpenAI SDK configured to work with DigitalOcean Gradient's inference endpoint

Challenges we ran into

  • Getting the AI personas to stay in character consistently across long conversations
  • Building the real-time debate system with proper turn-taking and coherent responses
  • Configuring the DigitalOcean Gradient endpoint and managing API authentication
  • Designing the spooky museum UI to feel immersive without being distracting

What we learned

  • How to build agentic AI workflows with multiple specialized personas
  • The power of system prompts and dynamic context injection for character fidelity
  • How to integrate DigitalOcean Gradient AI as an OpenAI-compatible inference backend
  • Real-time streaming and typewriter effects for a more engaging chat experience

What's next for Phantom Gallery

  • Adding more ghost personas from different art movements
  • Voice synthesis so the ghosts can literally speak to you
  • A gallery walk mode with guided tours through curated collections
  • Mobile-responsive design for museum kiosk installations

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