Output details

Alternate embodiment for a conversational agent

Performance art

‘Alternate Embodiments for a Conversational Agent’ uses the ‘Prosthetic Head’ to explore two research questions: what is the nature of alterative and additional embodiments? And what new vocabularies, technical and aesthetic, are created by alternate embodiments? Its central research object is to interrogate what generates aliveness in an embodied and artificial conversational agent. ‘The Prosthetic Head’ project is a 3D avatar head, somewhat resembling the artist that has real time lip-synching, speech synthesis and facial expressions. The head nods, tilts and turns as well as changing the direction of the gaze to contribute to the personality of the agent and the non-verbal cues it can provide. ‘The Prosthetic Head’ has four key elements –

a) ‘The Articulated Head’ (part of Thinking Head research project University of Sydney (2012-2012). The 6-degree of freedom robot arm and visual and acoustical feedback allowed for a robust and responsive agent.

b) ‘Floating Head’ (Collaboration with NXI Gestatio, UQAM, Montreal, 2011). An installation of an inflated and propeller driven flying robot embodied with the Prosthetic Head.

c) ‘Swarming Heads’ (In collaboration with the Robot Lab @ UWS-Installation (2012). The colliding robots detect and speak to each other.

d) ‘Prosthetic Head Sound Performance’ (Brunel University BEAM Festival 2010 and for RESCOM at the Powerhouse Museum Sydney 2011).

‘The Articulated Head’ was finalist in the 2010 Australian engineering excellence awards. It was exhibited for 2 years at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney with an estimated 108 million visitors.