Friday, December 7, 2007
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH AS ART
information arts: art as an independent center of research
Deconstruction as Art Practice: Postmodern and structuralist analyses of contemporary culture have provided concepts, themes, and methodologies for creating art works that examine and expose the texts, narratives, and representations that underlie contemporary life. Technology and its associated cultural contexts are prime candidates for theory-based analysis because they play a critical role in creating the mediated sign systems and contexts that shape the contemporary world. In this kind of practice artists learn as much as they can about working with the technologies so that they can function as knowledgeable commentators. In one typical strategy, artists become technically proficient so they can produce works that look legitimately part of the output of that technological world while introducing discordant subversive elements that reflect upon technology.
Continue Modernist Practice of Art with Modifications for the Contemporary Era: Many in the art world reject substantial portions of critical theory, upholding the validity and cultural usefulness of a modernist, specialized art discourse with claims to universal aesthetic truth. They believe art can have an avant-garde function, that individual vision and genius are still relevant, and that artists can transcend their particular niches in cultural discourse. The work of some artists with emerging technology can be viewed as continuous with the work of artists who work with traditional media. They see themselves engaged in specialized aesthetic discourse and nurture their personal sensitivity, creativity, and vision. They aspire to be accepted by the mainstream world of museums, galleries, collectors, and critics (or for some, cinema and video). They work on concerns and in modes developed for art in the last decades such as realism, expressionism, abstraction, surrealism, conceptual work. Indeed, they see themselves as essential to progress in art, and seek to cultivate the unique and "revolutionary" expressive capabilities of their new media and tools.
Invention and Elaboration of New Technologies and their Cultural Possibilities as Art Practice: This century is characterized by an orgy of research, discovery, and invention. Branches of knowledge, industries, social contexts, and technologies have appeared that could not have been anticipated. These developments are affecting everything from the paraphernalia of everyday life to ontological categories. Artists can establish a practice in which they participate at the core of this activity rather than as distant commentators or consumers of the gadgets, even while maintaining postmodern reservations about the meaning of the technological explosion.
As I have described in previous works, artists can participate in the cycle of research, invention, and development in many ways, by becoming researchers and inventors themselves. From the time of Leonardo until recently, the merger of scientific and artistic activity was not uncommon. Free from the demands of the market and the socialization of particular technical disciplines, artists can explore and extend the principles and technologies in unanticipated ways. They can pursue lines of inquiry abandoned because they were deemed unprofitable, outside established research priorities, or strange. They can integrate disciplines and create events that expose the cultural implications, costs, and possibilities of the new knowledge and technologies. The arts can become an independent center of research.
A Fundamental Category Error--Research and Development as Cultural Concerns: Art derived from all these stances will continue to prosper and coexist. Art as research, however, is the most undeveloped and ultimately most crucial to the culture. The implications of scientific and technological research are so far reaching in their effects on both the practical and the philosophical planes, that it is an error to conceive of them as narrow technical enterprises. The full flowering of research requires a much wider participation in the definition of research agendas and in the pursuit of research questions than is provided from those in technical fields alone. It needs the benefit of the perspectives from many disciplines including the humanities and the arts, not just in commentary but in actual research.
This kind of artistic practice is not easy and its outcomes are uncertain. It requires that artists educate themselves enough to function non-superficially in the world of science and technology. They must learn the language and knowledge base of the fields of interest and be connected to both the art and technical worlds--for example, by joining the information networks of journals, research meetings, and trade shows. It asks artists to be willing to abandon traditional concerns, media, and contexts if necessary. We have called this approach Information Arts.
I have worked as an artist for the last thirteen years within this tradition of information arts and made the monitoring of scientific and technological research a basic element of my art practice. To that end, I have read research journals, attended scientific meetings, received a patent, acted as a developer, been a co-principal investigator in NSF projects on new technologies and education, and been a co-editor of Leonardo, the international journal of art & science published by MIT Press. I have identified several areas of emerging technology that I feel are important such as: telecommunications, artificial intelligence, hypermedia, body sensing, new biology, and material science. This paper focuses specifically on my work with artificial intelligence as an exploration of one kind of art as research practice.
artificial intelligence as an art inquiry
I undertook to learn what I could about the research agendas, accomplishments, and unresolved problems of the field. I read extensively, took courses, dived into LISP, attended meetings, and corresponded with researchers. I identified areas of research that seemed undeveloped and entertained questions derived from this contact with the field. I produced art installations that focused on issues in artificial intelligence research. The sections that follow present some of the results of this research both in art works produced and critical analysis of AI research issues.
The section that follows focuses on my own personal art research. The reader should note that there is a growing number of artists addressing AI issues and that this article is not a comprehensive review. For example, Harold Cohen, Peter Beyls, and artists represented in the journal Languages of Design are exploring the possibilities of developing algorithms that enable computers to generate behaviors that would be called creative. Extensive work has been undertaken on the automatic composition systems in music. Joseph Bates and his assoicates are working on a graphic world called OZ in which autonomous objects interact with each other trying to achieve private desires, reacting emotionally to events that occur, and forming simple relationships with other creatures. Naoko Tosa is working on a project called "Neuro Baby" in which a graphic creature responds to feelings it detects in a human's voice and synthesizes appropriate facial expressions. Artistic activity in this area will undoubtedly continue to increase.
art installations exploring issues in artificial intelligence
The artificial intelligence techniques used in these installations are often primitive; there are no breakthroughs for long-standing research questions. Often the installations use low level Eliza-like tricks or simulations of programs that will perhaps one day exist. Nonetheless, the works do provide new perspectives on long-standing research issues and identify fruitful areas for future research.
IS ANYONE THERE was an interactive telecommunications event that explored issues such as the linkage of telecommunications and alienation, and the possibilities for contacts with artificial characters. The installation was shown at the 1992 SIGCHI art show in Monterey, California, the 1992 SIGGRAPH art show in Chicago, Illinois, and at the 1993 Ars Electronica Show in Linz, Austria. It won the Golden Nica Prize of Distinction in Ars Electronica's international competitions for interactive art.
Five locations in San Francisco were chosen on the basis of socioeconomic diversity and their significance to the life of the city. For a week a computer-based system with digitized voice capabilities systematically called pay phones in these spots, at a particular time every hour, 24 hours a day. It used intelligent response programming to engage passersby curious enough to answer a ringing pay phone in a short discussion and digitally recorded the conversations. The topics focused on the lives of those who answered and whatever they consider noteworthy at that particular location. At other times video was used to capture representative images of the locales of the phones and the people who typically spent time near them.
Stephen Wilson. Is Anyone There? (Interactive Telephone Installation). SIGGRAPH 92 Art Show, Chicago; SigChi 92 Art Show, Monterey. A computer called five San Francisco pay phones every hour on the hour, 24 hours a day for a week. Digital characters tried to engage those who answered in conversations about their life.
An interactive video installation set up months later allowed viewers to explore life near these phones by using this bank of stored sound and digital video to selectively call up recorded responses and images. Visitors used voice recognition to interact with the computer. An interactive hypermedia program encouraged viewers to devise strategies for exploring this information--for example, using a spatial/temporal framework to choose to hear the record of the people who answered a financial district pay phone location during the midnight to 3 a.m. period. Typical digital video of the phone locales accompanied the recordings and digitally manipulated images became metaphors for information about the recorded calls--for example, dynamic colorizing used to indicate the depth to which a particular answerer went in a conversation.
The installations challenged the safety of passive art viewership by shifting occasionally into real time mode and automatically placing live calls to the pay phones, linking the viewer with a real person on the street at the location on the screen. The event explored a variety of conceptual issues:
Telecommunications & Telematic Culture
Interactivity, Art Audiences, and the Safety of Art Spectatorship
Hypermedia and the Structure of Information
Artificial Characterization & Intelligence
Telecommunications & Telematic Culture: The telephone system is an artistically under-explored feature of contemporary culture. Telephones allow almost instantaneous linkage between people anywhere on earth. They enable new kinds of communication including linkages between people who wouldn't ordinarily know each other and the creation of unprecedented kinds of social interchanges such as wrong numbers, answering machines, telemarketing, and the like. IS ANYONE THERE explores both the concrete technological possibilities and the poetry of using pay phones to overcome anomie in contemporary mass society.
Interactivity, Art Audiences, and the Safety of Art Spectatorship: This event challenges two common features of art viewing: the typically elite nature of high culture consumption and the passivity of much art appreciation. All those on the street who answer the ringing pay phones--many who would be unlikely to attend any conventional art institutions--become participants in this art event. The drama of their dialogue with the computer system is an essential aesthetic focus. In addition, the event systematically questions the safety of passive art viewing by requiring viewers to generate strategies to search the images and sounds of the stored calls. More radically, the event periodically shifts the viewer in the gallery from the safety of spectator to the challenging position of full participant. It places live calls to the phone that the viewer had been vicariously experiencing and demands that the viewer engage in a real conversation with a live stranger.
Stephen Wilson. Is Anyone There? Digital characters embedded in an automated computer telephone calling program varied the gender of their voice and the conversational strategy they used in an attempt to engage those who answered pay telephones to talk to them.
Hypermedia and the Structure of Information: New computer systems enable the storage and non-linear retrieval of vast amounts of information including text, image, video, and sound. These systems, which can dynamically adapt to the idiosyncratic inquiry styles of each individual user, raise questions about the most fruitful ways to organize, interrelate, and access new kinds of multimedia information spaces. IS ANYONE THERE explores an innovative kind of "hypermedia" art in which the structure of information and the navigational interface design are as much the artistic focus as the images and sounds.
Artificial Characterization & Intelligence: Many fears and hopes are raised about the possibilities of computers simulating the full range of human intelligence and characterization. This event investigates some aspects of these possibilities by exploring how self-revealing those who answer the phone will be with the various digital characters programmed into the computer device and how gallery observers feel about these exchanges.
The calling program lacked any real language parsing capabilities; it did not understand what the people said. It did have to be sufficiently engaging, however, that answerers would continue with the increasingly personal discussion. To accomplish this, I incorporated information about typical conversations. I studied the phrasing, pacing, and repartee that was typical of telephone conversations. I tried to make the conversation believable as an interchange. Although most answerers seem to recognize the canned nature of the calling voice, a significant minority seemed convinced that the telephone computer was listening and understanding.
EXCURSIONS IN EMOTIONAL HYPERSPACE was an interactive installation that explored issues including artificial characterization and motion in a space as a way of communicating with computers. It was shown at the NCGA Art Show in San Jose, California in 1986.
Visitors entered a room inhabited by four mannequins dressed to represent four different characters. Each held a particular pose; each represented a different fictional person who had a specific set of attitudes. One of the characters was angry and rebellious; another was happy to be part of the event; another was reluctantly submissive; and another was philosophical and tried to take the big view.
Each mannequin wanted to tell its story and express its perspectives on being part of the event. Visitors were invited to walk around the room and look closer at the mannequins. Standing in front of a mannequin caused it to start talking about how it felt about being there using a digital voice. Continuing to stand there caused it to go deeper into those perspectives. Walking away caused it to stop talking. Visitors could direct this small ensemble by their physical movements. A computer was reading sensors to determine motion and controlling speakers located inside each mannequin.
Stephen Wilson. Excursions in Emotional Hyperspace. (Artificial Character Discussion Installation). CADRE Art Show, San Jose, 1986. Four computer controlled mannequins tried to speak their opinions and reacted to each other as they were activated by the movements of visitors. Stephen Wilson. Excursions in Emotional Hyperspace. A mannequin went deeper into its feelings as long as the visitor stood near by.
Walking to another mannequin, however, did not cause it to just start anew. The new mannequin would comment on what the previous mannequin had just said from its own perspective. The mannequins seemed to be actively listening to each other and tracking the conversation. It would then enter into its own comments.
Visitors thus had the experience of encountering artificial characters with intelligence and points of view although this system lacked any real AI capabilities. The mannequins could not really recognize voice or parse the words of their fellow characters. All possible combinations of motion sequences were predetermined and all appropriate comments on previous statements were prerecorded. Nonetheless, the experience for visitors did simulate contacts with artificially intelligent characters and encouraged thought about these future possibilities.
TIME ENTITY was an interactive computer graphic animation and sound installation that modeled an artificial creature. It was invited to be part of the CADRE computer art festival in San Jose, California in 1983 and was later also shown in the gallery of the Art Department at San Francisco State University. Altogether it ran for a month. California artists Matthew Kane, David Lawrence, and Eric Cleveland collaborated with me in its creation.
AI, focusing on the simulation of human intelligence, inevitably raises questions about the nature of non-human intelligence. As an artist I wanted to explore the creation of fictional intelligent species. I studied research on interspecies communication and SETI (Search for Exterrestial Intelligence). I began to search for models of non-human intelligence. Simultaneously, I had been experimenting with the clock-calendar technology that had become available for microcomputers. I was fascinated with this capability of designing programs that knew the exact time and date much more precisely than humans could.
I decided to create a computer simulated creature that was obsessed with time. It would "know" how long it had been alive and be obsessed with its future and its "mortality." It would have intrinsic genetic predispositions to change as it grew older. Similar to biological organisms, it would have monthly, diurnal, and heartbeat length rhythms. It would interact with human visitors around this issue of time.
Stephen Wilson. Time Entity. CADRE Art Show, San Jose, 1983. Visitors interacted with an artificial creature which was obsessed with time. The entity lived in accordance with heartbeat and diurnal rhythms and a focus on life path issues of birth, development, and death. Stephen Wilson. Time Entity. CADRE Art Show, San Jose, 1983. Visitors try to decide how to interact with an artificial creature.
Our design team spent months debating the nature of the creature. We surveyed the biology of time as manifested by real plants and animals and we played with open-ended fantasies of how organisms might relate to time. We probed the capabilities of the clock-calendar technology we were using. Examples of some of the questions facing us were: Should the creature sleep? Should it dream? Should it develop gradually or in punctuated stages? Should its pace get more excited or calm as it interacted with humans? Should there be events that occurred at the millisecond level that were beyond the perceptive capabilities of the human visitors?
Physically, the Entity was a computer graphic animation that moved on a video projection screen accompanied by computer synthesized sound. It also had a tactile and kinesthetic life. Humans interacted with it by touching specially constructed, pleasant-feeling touch pads. It lived in a forest of upside down pine trees. The smell was overwhelming and many visitors remarked it was the first good smelling computer art they had ever encountered. Its appearance and behavior changed with its age since birth, the time of day, and time of month. It had a regular heart beat rhythm that pulsed its visuals and sounds.
Visitors could observe it move and grow or could actively affect its time life by touching the pads. For example, they could speed or slow its pace or choose to make part of it grow or die. They could choose to make the action happen immediately or at a specific minute in its future. At any given moment, its visual and sound appearance was the result of its intrinsic growth tendencies and all the interactions up to that point.
The intelligence of the program was rudimentary although it does point toward interesting future research directions. Visitors reported that they indeed had a sense of an encounter with an unusual creature. Our work as artists was discontinuous with the prevalent artistic traditions. The integration of concepts from other disciplines and the probing of the technology were as least as important as the sensual qualities of the final products. We were constantly forced to invent new extensions of the technology and ended up discovering capabilities of which even the manufacturers were unaware. We were working simultaneously as artists, programmers, engineers, biologists, psychologists, and AI researchers. Inevitably, artists working with technology in the new context will have no choice but to integrate this kind of role diversity.
DEMON SEED was an interactive installation selected to be shown in the 1987 SIGGRAPH Art Show in Anaheim, California. Viewers controlled four computer-choreographed, moving, and talking robot arms. The robots moved on platforms in front of galleries of digitized images of demons from various world cultures.
The installation reflected on the perennial tendency of humans to project images of demons onto things they don't understand and explored the idea of kinesthetic and tactile intelligence. There are signs that robots may be the next recipient of our demon-projecting fears. Moreover, because the world is shrinking through communications, several different cultures may share the robot-demon imagery instead of having different monsters.
DEMON SEED asked the audience to experience this combined fear and fascination with robots. Its robots were simultaneously ominous and endearing. Each platform featured a particular culture with the robots moving in front of a gallery of repeated digitized images of spirit masks from the target culture. Each was dressed in materials from that culture. For example, an African robot was outfitted with a small woven hemp broom, fur, and colorful African cloth. The robots seemed like mechanized priests or shamans.
Stephen Wilson. Demon Seed (Interactive Robot
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