Double Agent
As the name of the work implies, 'Double Agent' is concerned with agency and its mutliple origins and affects. The work explores the inter-agency between human and machine through the deployment of two software based agents - one employing physics engine based dynamics to flow with and respond to human interactors and another employing the same physics engine but responding to a software agent that has been developed employing machine learning techniques. A key interest in the work is how interactors haptically engage the agency of each software agent.
'Double Agent' is an interactive augmented environment, commissioned by the Museum of Discovery (MOD), Adelaide (premiered as part of the MOD.ify exhibition, May 10, 2018). People physically interact with two projected virtual 'agents' within a large-scale three-dimensional projection. The agents are composed from hundreds of small elements that are both drawn to and repelled by the movement of human bodies in the installation space, visualised as complex tensile and fluid structures. One agent (the lower) interacts directly with people in the installation space. The other agent (the higher) interacts with a simulated human which has learned how to dance. Employing many hours of dance data, acquired through the motion capture of dancer's improvising within Double Agent, the agent has, through the use of machine-learning algorithms (a Long Short-Term Memory Recurrent Neural Network), developed the ability to improvise its own dance movements, responding to the presence of viewers who co-habit the installation space.
Artist: Simon Biggs
Choreography: Articulate Animal - Sue Hawksley and Tammy Arjona
Machine-Learning: Samya Bagchi
Scientific Advisor: Professor Mark McDonnell
Installation video recording of Double Agent, Arizona State University, October 2019.
Video recording of performance in Double Agent installation, Museum of Discovery, Adelaide, July 2018.
Installation video recording of Double Agent, Museum of Discovery, Adelaide, May 2018.
Screen recording of machine learning version of Double Agent, March 2019.
CC 2018 Simon Biggs
Installation still from MOD, Adelaide, Australia, 2018.