Salon Format

The Living-Room Laboratory

Salons are immersive, time-bound gatherings where inquiry unfolds inside a richly described storyworld. Historical and speculative personae converse with members under strict temporal rules, generating the kind of collaborative artifacts that only emerge when imagination, scholarship, and hospitality share the same room.

Active Salons

Salons Now Open

These salons are currently active and ready for conversation. Join historical figures in immersive dialogue experiences.

Active Salon

Villa Diodati

The storm-ridden night where modern horror was born

An immersive intellectual salon experience where historical figures engage in dialogue. Join conversations with Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and other luminaries at Villa Diodati, 1816.

Host: Lord Byron
Participants: 5 personae
Setting: A storm-ridden night at Villa Diodati, 1816. Thunder rolls outside as the guests gather around a candle-lit table.

Active Salon

Villa Diodati

The storm-ridden night where modern horror was born

An immersive intellectual salon experience where historical figures engage in dialogue. Join conversations with Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and other luminaries at Villa Diodati, 1816.

Host: Lord Byron
Participants: 5 personae
Setting: A storm-ridden night at Villa Diodati, 1816. Thunder rolls outside as the guests gather around a candle-lit table.

Active Salon

ITLO Salon

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Participants: 0 personae

Active Salon

ITLO Salon

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Participants: 0 personae

Historical Templates

Salons Ready for Simulation

These salons ship with orchestrators, participants, motifs, and reading lists. Choose one to explore its storyboard and persona roster.

1740s–1770s

Madame Geoffrin’s Enlightenment Circle

Where encyclopédistes sharpened reason under candlelight.

Madame Geoffrin’s Tuesday dinners brought together philosophers, mathematicians, and artistes who were drafting the Enlightenment. Host conversations on monarchy and reason, publish entries for the Encyclopédie, and keep tempers cool between Voltaire’s letters and Rousseau’s distrust.

Location: Rue Saint-Honoré, Paris
Orchestrators: Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin, Denis Diderot
Personae: Jean le Rond d’Alembert, Baron de Montesquieu, Émilie du Châtelet

1907–1939

Gertrude Stein & Alice Toklas: 27 Rue de Fleurus

Cubist canvases, queer domesticity, and manifestos in progress.

Gertrude Stein’s Saturday nights introduced modernist writers to avant-garde painters. Simulate the conversations that birthed Tender Buttons and Cubism. Track the wall of Picassos as drafts evolve and capture the gossip that shaped the Lost Generation.

Location: Left Bank, Paris
Orchestrators: Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas
Personae: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway

1909–1930

Natalie Barney’s Temple of Friendship

A sapphic garden where poetry, music, and scandal braid together.

Natalie Clifford Barney hosted Friday salons that blended performance, poetry, and activism. Simulate the queer networks that fueled modernist literature and debate new codes of love outside patriarchal institutions.

Location: 20 Rue Jacob, Paris
Orchestrators: Natalie Clifford Barney, Romaine Brooks
Personae: Renée Vivien, Colette, Djuna Barnes

1919–1929

Algonquin Round Table

Lunch as blood sport for America’s sharpest tongues.

Newspapermen, playwrights, and comedians met daily to duel in wit. Recreate the rapid-fire banter, editorial influence, and Broadway gossip that shaped American humor.

Location: The Algonquin Hotel, New York City
Orchestrators: Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley
Personae: Alexander Woollcott, Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman

aFaculty Custodians

Who Keeps the Salon

Each salon is stewarded by aFaculty personae who carry their own motives, archives, and conversational temperaments. The Feminine Salon is anchored by the Villa Diodati circle, whose roles set the tone for every residency.

Animus of Creation

mary shelley

Guides ethical questions of creation, situated in letters and the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein.

Lyric Provocateur

percy shelley

Injects poetic experimentation and political defiance into the dialogue.

Rebellious Host

lord byron

Frames the storm and sets dares for speculative narratives.

Physician of the Uncanny

john polidori

Surfaces medical debates and the gothic emergence of the vampire.

Archivist of Intimacy

claire clairmont

Keeps the circle accountable to relationships, rumors, and the politics of care.

Additional houses recruit new custodians, but every salon keeps the same contract: aFaculty serve as living references who defend the canon, enforce temporal rules, and welcome members into the scene.

What Makes a Salon

We treat salons as living-room scale laboratories. Each card below describes a non-negotiable pillar; remove one and the room collapses back into ordinary chat.

Setting → Lake Geneva, a lunar base, a court of inquiry

Situated Storyworlds

Every salon anchors itself in a precise house, date, and weather pattern. Scenes borrow their tension from shared atmospheric briefs rather than generic prompts.

Personae → Knowledge boundaries + relational stakes

Persona Custodianship

AI personae are bound by voice, knowledge, and motive constraints. Participants learn to invite them, protect their limits, and stitch their contributions into the record.

Structure → Agenda of 18–24 scenes per cycle

Scene-Based Rhythm

Time is carved into scenes that turn every 2–4 hours. Stage directions, weather cues, and narrative cards keep the room moving with cinematic momentum.

Output → Charters, transcripts, and editions

Custodial Artifacts

Each salon yields written artifacts—a lightning charter, letters, or collaborative folios—that prove the gathering was more than conversation.

Format Layers

The salon stack combines narrative design, persona engineering, and member choreography. Hosts can adopt the layers wholesale or remix them for new settings.

Stagecraft & Atmosphere

  • Temporal loom that maps real time onto a narrative loop (Villa Diodati runs on a repeating three-day storm).
  • Agenda JSON with mood, weather, and protagonists for each scene.
  • Soundtrack, lighting prompts, and suggested props for physical hosts.

Persona Intelligence

  • Voice cards for each historical or speculative persona with citations and forbidden knowledge.
  • Motif tracking so the system remembers emerging themes (creation, revolt, intimacy, invention).
  • Facilitation cues that show when to invite or quiet a persona.

Member Experience

  • Custodian opens and closes every salon with vows, hospitality, and synthesis.
  • Participants move between observer, interlocutor, and scribe roles to keep the room generous.
  • Optional meta-channel for live coordination without breaking the fiction.

Scene Cycle

Scenes advance like clockwork so the salon never stalls. Custodians can stretch or compress a scene, but the narrative arc always follows the same spine.

1

Invocation

Custodian sets the weather, reads the scene card, and restates the temporal rule. House rules are affirmed aloud.

2

Provocation

Participants introduce cues—letters, scientific fragments, dreams—that pull specific personae into the circle.

3

Multi-Voice Dialogue

LLM-powered personae respond in short turns. Humans intervene with questions, asides, and stage directions.

4

Artifact Capture

A rotating scribe summarizes what the room learned, drafting fragments for the nightly charter or folio.

5

Dissolve

Scene closes with a sensory cue (thunder, lamplight, foghorn) and a preview of the next scene, keeping suspense alive.

Active Salons

The Feminine Salon & Future Houses

We pilot new storyworlds in short cycles before opening them to the wider Institute. Villa Diodati is the flagship; others are in rehearsal. Join the list to be invited when the doors open.

Salon Residency

Villa Diodati: The Summer Salon of 1816

A lightning-lit salon for reviving gothic imagination through collaborative dialogue.

Cadence
Weekly two-hour salons plus asynchronous story drafting sprints
Modality
Hybrid: synchronous conversations with AI personae, collaborative writing boards, and archival explorations
Session Count
6 scenes
Tuition
Invite only

What Participants Practice

  • Prototype a collaborative ghost story or philosophical dialogue guided by the Villa Diodati circle.
  • Analyze Romantic-era scientific debates around galvanism, vitalism, and the Gothic imagination.
  • Practice multi-voice facilitation using persona prompts and branching conversational cues.

Salon Orchestrators

  • Mary ShelleyAnimus of CreationGuides ethical questions of creation, situated in letters and the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein.
  • Percy ShelleyLyric ProvocateurInjects poetic experimentation and political defiance into the dialogue.
  • Lord ByronRebellious HostFrames the storm and sets dares for speculative narratives.
  • John PolidoriPhysician of the UncannySurfaces medical debates and the gothic emergence of the vampire.
  • Claire ClairmontArchivist of IntimacyKeeps the circle accountable to relationships, rumors, and the politics of care.
Enter this salon

Member Pathways

Choose How You Enter

Access → Read-only stream + archival bundle

Observers

Receive the scene brief, transcripts, and nightly summaries. Ideal for classrooms or partners studying the format.

Access → Live salon + meta channel + artifact studio

Conversational Fellows

Step inside the salon itself. Fellows choose personae to tend, bring research artifacts, and help steer the arc.

Access → Full toolkit, rehearsal support, credential

Custodians

Lead their own salons with our scaffolding. We provide agenda design, persona tuning, and hosting training.

Stay Notified

Receive new salon invitations

We announce new salons, rehearsal calls, and custodian trainings through the Institute newsletter. Add your email and we will send scene briefs when new rooms open.