Captain Godfrey
A life-sized historical character visitors could speak with at the Georgette 150th exhibition.
Visitors asked Captain John Godfrey, master of the SS Georgette, their own questions about the ship, the wreck, the rescue and his responsibility. The installation answered in real time, making room for each visitor to choose the next topic.
See the conversation
Developed from research and performance
I developed Captain Godfrey in collaboration with Dr Marcia van Zeller and local actor Errol Beere. The character draws on historical research, including Dr van Zeller’s thesis and the court of inquiry transcript, to support conversations about the Georgette story.
Godfrey is an AI interpretation of a historical person. His responses are generated, rather than recordings of the historical figure, and can contain errors. Historical sources and interpretation remain essential to the work.
Presented to the public
Captain Godfrey made his public debut at the Georgette 150th exhibition during Margaret River Region Open Studios in the Margaret River region. The engagement report covers 15 gallery days within 12–27 September 2026.
What the exhibition recorded
- 990
- visitor questions
- 9.7 min
- average merged encounter
- 207
- spoken-visit records
- 159
- estimated merged conversations
- 7.8 min
- median merged encounter
- 4.8
- questions per spoken-visit record
The report records 207 spoken visits split by Welcome events and 990 visitor questions. A Welcome is an arrival-card event, not proof of a new person. Merging likely post-goodbye re-greets within four minutes produces an estimate of 159 conversations, with an average duration of 9.7 minutes and a median of 7.8 minutes. Rapid succession can merge different visitors. These figures describe recorded interactions, not unique visitors or gallery-wide dwell time.
The results show sustained questioning during this exhibition. They do not establish an increase in museum attendance, a learning outcome, or a comparison with other displays.
Source: Captain Godfrey Installation Visitor Engagement Report, Georgette 150th Exhibition, 12–27 September 2026.
Visitors chose the questions
Visitors explored the causes of the wreck, the rescue, responsibility, the ship’s construction and what happened to Godfrey afterwards.
- What happened to the Georgette?
- Was it your fault?
- Was the inquiry fair?
- How big was the ship?
Representative phrasings from the report’s documented question groups, normalised for readability. These are not presented as verbatim transcript quotations.
What this suggests for your museum
A historical character can offer a shared starting point while allowing visitors to explore different interests. Your collection might prompt questions about a person’s choices, daily life, technology or the evidence behind a familiar story. A commission begins by considering which subject and source material could support that kind of encounter.