Currently I read an interested article about Blue Bloodshot Flowers, ‘The Jeremiah Project”, written by Susan Broadhurst (2004), which is a performance, basic on a love affair.
I am interested in how practitioners incorporate technology allowing both humans and objects to be located and tracked seamlessly and in real time. Particular, how does a performer, a avatar, Jeremiah, perform and communicate in the project.
My understanding of how Jeremiah works technically:
The basic way is that a camera sees things, and the computer generates different faces for Jeremiah, depending on what the camera sees. This is an example of simple 'if' logic.
If the camera sees moving objects, the computer gives Jeremiah a happy face
If the camera sees still objects, the computer gives Jeremiah an angry face.
This is the 'emotion engine', the computer programme that creates Jeremiah's visual changes. Note, these 'if' rules are decided by the director.
However, the computer also has some basic AI, artificial Intelligence, which means that the basic 'if' rules develop and change a little over time, and this change depends on what the computer 'experiences'. This is why the reactions of Jeremiah are sometimes random. It is because the computer is changing the basic rules that it was first given.
This is quite interesting, because it actually starts to break the Director's control of the performance. If there is no AI, then Jeremiah is controlled in the same way that the images that you choose for your productions are controlled - by the director. But, with the AI, Jeremiah begins to do things that the director has not controlled or planned. Admittedly, the director gives Jeremiah his original simple brain and reactions, but over time this changes in a way that the director cannot predict.
I think: 'Jeremiah is unique in that he embodies intelligence that is no way prescriptive. Therefore, the performance is a direct and real time interaction between performer, audience, and technology.' (The point is that Jeremiah begins to escape the first rules he is given)
'As well as questioning conventions of authorship, ownership, and intertexuality, the digital technology that created Jeremiah subverts assumptions of reproduction and representation because in every performance Jeremiah is original, just as an improvising artist is original. Jeremiah is literally reproduced again and not represented’.
In conclusion, Jeremiah is a visual 'facial' way to show emotion in a projection, with the emotion determined by real body physical movement. But, because of the AI of the computer, the emotion that Jeremiah shows is not always predictable and controlled by the director, which raises interesting questions and possibilities.
The project analyzes and explores the interface between physicality and AI technology in practices. The manifestation of this AI technology would take various forms which will be explored and investigated over time, demonstrating both visual and aural physical/virtual, also Susan Broadhurst talks about representing emotion on the screen, because the avatar, Jeremiah, shows emotion on its 'face'. (2004)
Here, the usage of digital body certainly a way of showing emotion that I have not considered in my research before. (It actually gives me a potential idea for my final performance in which I could return to my earlier interest in gestalt and colour theory and emotions.)
Referent
Susan Broadhurst 2004 (Winter), Vol. 48, No. 4 (T184), Pages 47-57
Posted Online 13 March 2006.
(doi:10.1162/1054204042442044)
© 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
