Avatars, Agency and Performance: The Fusion of Science and Technology within the Arts A doctoral thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The Marcs Institute, University of Western Sydney, Australia. Richard Andrew Salmon 2014 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Power House Museum, Ultimo, Sydney, Australia and all the staff there, who provided the space and support for most of the data in this research project to be collected in parallel with the exhibition of the Articulated Head. Thank you to all those at The Marcs Institute at the University of Western Sydney who supported the project, including the Articulated Head Engineering Team, Professor Chris Davis, Dr Damith Herath and Dr Christian Kroos. A special thank you to Zhengzhi Zhang and Dr Richard Liebbrandt for the programming of the Event Manager/Max interface and the Thought Clouds respectively. Thank you to Colin Schoknecht and Steven Fazio for their unwavering and timely technical support. Thank you to Professor Chris Davis for his strong supervisory support in the final stages of completion of this thesis. Thank you to Professor Michael Atherton for his sort lived but influential supervisory support and last but not least to Assoc. Prof Garth Paine and Stelarc, who have been the mainstay of support in the conception and completion of this work. Together, Stelarc, Assoc. Prof Garth Paine and myself formed the Articulated Head Performance Team. Statement of Authenticity The work presented in this thesis is to the best of my knowledge and belief, original other than where acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in full or part, for a higher degree at this or any other institution. Richard Andrew Salmon, June 15th, 2014 Table of Contents 1. Abstract. .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1 The Project ..................................................................................................................... 1 The purpose of this research ....................................................................................................... 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 2 Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 2 Methods ........................................................................................................................................ 2 Findings ......................................................................................................................................... 2 2. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 4 2.1 Stelarc’s background .................................................................................................. 5 2.1.1 From Talking Head to Thinking Heads: Aims & Objectives ........................................... 6 2.2 History ............................................................................................................................. 7 2.2.1 Mirrored development: the Prosthetic and Articulated Head ................................... 7 2.2.2 The Projected Evolutionary Development of the Head .............................................11 2.3 Stelarc’s work and the Articulated Head set within the context of other robotic/AI chatbot artworks. .......................................................................................... 11 2.4 General history of ideas in relation to Human Machine Interaction. .............. 13 2.4.1 Anthropomorphism ...........................................................................................................16 2.4.2 Perceptions of agency.....................................................................................................17 2.4.3 Human emotional response to virtual agents ..............................................................17 2.5 The Original Plan and how this investigation differs ............................................ 19 2.5.1 A limitation of this investigation ......................................................................................20 2.5.2 Projected incorporation of interactive scenarios ........................................................20 2.6 Technical Components of the Articulated Head ................................................ 21 2.7 Operational infrastructure, maintenance and control of the Articulated Head Systems (Overview) ............................................................................................... 24 2.8 Software component based architecture ............................................................ 25 2.8.1 The Thinking Head Attention Model and Behavioural System. .................................26 2.8.2 The Event Manager (Overview) .....................................................................................27 2.8.3 The EM/Max Interface ......................................................................................................28 2.9 Where and when has this investigation taken place? ....................................... 28 2.10 The Big Question. ...................................................................................................... 29 2.11 The Research Questions .......................................................................................... 29 2.12 This study’s contribution. ......................................................................................... 30 2.13 The Approach: Prioritisation of Human Experience. ......................................... 30 2.14 What follows? ............................................................................................................ 31 2.14.1 Defense of the Articulated Head’s performance .....................................................32 2.14.2 The Problem .....................................................................................................................32 3. Methodology and methods ......................................................................... 34 3.1 Grounded Theory ....................................................................................................... 34 3.1.1 Computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) ..........................38 3.1.1.1 Axial Coding ............................................................................................................................... 39 3.1.1.2 Frames analysis ........................................................................................................................... 39 3.2 Video Cued Recall .................................................................................................... 41 Reporting Experience ................................................................................................................ 41 3.2.1 Expanded discussion of applications of Video Cued Recall ....................................43 3.2.2 The best time to implement the interview ....................................................................45 3.3 Phenomenology ......................................................................................................... 46 3.4 A Comparative Analysis ........................................................................................... 51 Human ↔ human compared to human ↔ robot communication ...................................... 51 3.4.1 Communication Theory ...................................................................................................51 3.4.2 The Universal Law of Communication ...........................................................................52 3.4.3 A quick review: What was the Articulated Head again? ..........................................53 4. The Reduction ............................................................................................... 55 4.1 Scope of this Reduction ............................................................................................ 55 4.1.1 Consciousness ....................................................................................................................57 4.1.2 The senses ...........................................................................................................................58 4.1.3 A spiritual dimension .........................................................................................................58 4.1.4 Communication or information exchange, initiations and sense fields ..................58 4.1.5 The senses and range .......................................................................................................59 Imaginative variations ............................................................................................................... 60 Sight ............................................................................................................................................ 60 Hearing ....................................................................................................................................... 60 Smell ............................................................................................................................................ 60 Taste ...........................................................................................................................................