Page 252 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

Chapter 29

PERCEPTIONS OF SELF IN ART AND
INTELLIGENT AGENTS

Nell Tenhaaf
Department of Visual Arts, York University, Toronto

Abstract The article discusses the term "embodiment" according to the different meanings
it has in contemporary cultural discourse on the one hand, and in Artificial In-
telligence or Artificial Life modeling on the other. The discussion serves as a
backdrop for analysis of an interactive artwork by Vancouver artist Liz Van der
Zaag, "Talk Nice", which behaves like an Intelligent Agent that interacts socially
with humans. "Talk Nice" has features corresponding to both conceptions of
embodiment, and it elicits further ideas about the significance of those notions
for definitions of selfhood.

"Embodiment" has come to mean different things in the realms of cultural
discourse about art objects on the one hand, and the development of com-
putational artifacts within Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Artificial Life (Alife)
research on the other. In the cultural domain, embodiment tends to refer to ei-
ther mending or transcending the Cartesian mind-body split that has dominated
Western thought since the Enlightenment. In Alife and AI however, it means
computationally building agents in such a way that they are responsive to their
environment, exhibit complex behaviours, and are autonomous to some degree.
For convenience I will here collectively refer to the production of these latter
artifacts as research on Intelligent Agents, or IA.
Given the dominance of sight in the history of art and its links with a deni-
gration of the body, embodiment in art and culture most often signifies a rein-
tegration into the aesthetic experience of senses other than the visual. These
artistically less familiar senses – for example touch or smell – have come to be
thought of as more body-based senses since they require somatic involvement
that extends beyond the "disembodied eye". Art objects can be made in such
a way as to generate embodiment by appealing to these senses, for example
Toronto artist Bill Burns’ everyday objects formed from chocolate, made in
the 1980s and many of them still extant if not any longer as odorous. Ottawa