Adam Nash

Recognition: combining human interaction and a digital performing agent

Virtual and augmented environments are often dependent on human intervention for change to occur. However there are times when it would be advantageous for appropriate human-like activity to still occur when there are no humans present. In this paper, we describe the installation art piece Recognition, which uses the movement of human participants to effect change, and the movement of a performing agent when there are no humans present. The agents Artificial Neural Network has learnt appropriate movements from a dancer and is able to generate suitable movement for the main avatar in the absence of human participants.

Child In The Wild

Child in the Wild is an interactive installation that enables human participants and a child robot to co create an immersive artwork through the use of the robots artificial neural networks to enable object and image recognition.

Affect, People, and Digital Social Networks

What constitutes an affect cycle in the medium of digital data, how it is enacted, and what are the consequences for individuals, for digital data, and for the society that comprises both individuals and digital data? Guided by contemporary theories of both affect and digital networks, this chapter traces cycles of affect through and between the overdetermined and underexamined sites constituted by digital networks. Examining interactions across social networks and other multiuser virtual environments, an attempt is made to identify who and what are participating in the capture and escape of affect, how this is facilitated, and what is changed during, and as a result of, these affective interactions. Combining a deep understanding of the technical workings of digital networks with a keen receptiveness to the affective potential of emotional and artistic agency in our digital world, this chapter situates human affective practice in the uneasy environment of algorithmic digital corporate networks.

Coupling Quantified Bodies

The main promise behind the idea of self-quantification is to transform our lives through the continuous collection of numerical evidence about the body and its activity. Although this process may help boost self-knowledge, everyday life also involves a complex network of relations with other bodies that exert a significant, sometimes determining, influence on our behaviour. To address this concern, we suggest that self-quantification data can be modulated as perturbations to other human and non-human bodies that, in turn, may directly affect the everyday practices of the self. By coupling quantified bodies, we transform existing practices by disrupting the elements that realise, perform and reproduce existing practices. In order to explore and further understand the affective potential of this idea, we designed a system that creates unfamiliar, digitally enabled couplings between two quantified bodies: a human and a plant. In particular, in this design experiment we modulate walking activity data into perturbations to a quantified plant. How does this coupling transform the way we look at self-quantification? Are we bringing forth a new space of responsibility and ethical concern? What if the plant dies because someone did not walk enough? In this article we discuss the implications of creating such a coupling keeping a critical distance to current forms of self-quantification, which are often focused on change through prescriptive solutions rather than through the fostering of self-determined growth. With this work we aim to expand the current understanding of the affective possibilities of self-quantification in the context of social change.

Game Asset Repetition

The frequent repetition of visual assets, such as the frequent appearance of a particular game object in a game world or the repetition of a characters animation cycle, often becomes apparent to players when they encounter such repetition within a short period of time. A certain amount of visual repetition has always been accepted by players, however as technology improves and game worlds tend towards more detail, the repetition of assets in games becomes more obvious. Particularly graphically advanced games require an increasing number of assets to hide the repetition and to create believable game worlds. This paper examines various levels of asset repetition in electronic games and addresses problems that can arise. The paper describes some contemporary approaches used by artists in the industry to hide repetition, and touches on current technologies that might be applied in game development to address this problem.