Visible Band creates artificially intelligent interactive art as data collection devices. By recording interaction data in the context of immersive human scale environments, we create art that operates autonomously and evolves as a function of its viewer participants. Interaction data also enables us to construct models of behavior for informing modifications to our work and inspiring future works. For these reasons, we refer to our installations as Input Situations. Each Input Situation is independently developed from canonical artistic impulses.
The first in a series of Input Situations, Hurricane Prospero is motivated by the prospect of creating a sensual appeal to the viewer using theatrical and illusionistic devices. Through Hurricane Prospero, we seek to impress and arouse an internal response. Our goal is made manifest in two ways. First, the viewer participant is surrounded by large Stonehenge-like pillars of projected displays that rise more than 8 feet from the ground. Second, the viewer participant uses a Nintendo WiiMote to exercise a high degree of control over a virtual entity.
As evidenced by the cave paintings of Lascaux, humans have long recreated their environments with art. Historians speculate that the Lascaux paintings were made to influence or control physical reality. Recent catastrophic destruction motivated us to control hurricanes. We adapted the storm from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Under Prospero's control, the tempest hurt no one. In our storm, Prospero is a randomly walking AI agent. Viewer participants control their own virtual entity for a period of twenty seconds before the computer takes control.The entity lives indefinitely in the storm while displaying the characteristics imparted from its creator. This is made possible by extending a recently published motion synthesis algorithm called Puppet Master. A swarm of viewer participant created entities eventually inhabit the hurricane living with Prospero as viewer participants continue to create.
