AI/VR: situated animation in the Library of Babel
Abstract:
If cinema represents the `most replete and consuming instance of an interface for dreaming’ [1], what more can we expect of virtual technologies and Artificial Intelligence, or indeed, of computation in general, to create animated works that surpass our longstanding, heterogeneous, heritage of time-based visual media? The promise of VR and AI is arguably that of an ontological and ethical shift, one that takes us closer to a posthuman animation.Through a practice-based research process the author reports on the ways in which a VR/AI work, `Return to the Library of Babel'[2], deploys procedural animation and emergent spaces, engendering a dynamic, animated realm, one of situated, emergent, subjects and objects, within what Sara Ahmed frames as a political economy of, and, one might add a logic, of `disorientation’ [3].
Date of Conference: 19-19 March 2018
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 27 December 2018
ISBN Information:
https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.ezproxy.falmouth.ac.uk/document/8587271
Key References
1. T. Zummer, “Projection and disembodiment: Genealogies of the Virtual” in Moving Image, MIT Press, pp. 22, 2001.
2. E. Dare, Return to the Library of Babel, VR software, 2017.
4. R. Scoble and S. Israel, The Fourth Transformation How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Change Everything, Patrick Brewster, 2017.
5. J. Dovey, S. Giddings, I. Grant, K. Kelly and M. Lister, New Media: a critical introduction, Routledge, pp. 107, 2003.
6. O. Grau, Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, MIT Press, pp. 4-5, 2003.
7. M. McLuhan, “From a 1960 report to the National Educational Broadcasters Association” in Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger by Philip Marchand, pp. 148, 1960.
8. J. L. Borges, “The Library of Babel” in Labyrinths selected stories and other writings, Penguin Books, 1964.
13. K. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Duke University Press, pp. 139, 2007.
14. K. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Duke University Press, pp. 35, 2007.
21. J. Dovey, S. Giddings, I. Grant, K. Kelly and M. Lister, New Media: a critical introduction, Routledge, pp. 23, 2003.
22. D. Haraway, “Situated Knowledges” in Simians Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, 1991.
(Background research)
Borges
Borges’ short story The Library of Babel [8]
The Garden of Forking Paths
The original Spanish title: “El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan”) is a 1941 short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It is the title story in the collection El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (1941), which was republished in its entirety in Ficciones (Fictions) in 1944. It was the first of Borges’s works to be translated into English by Anthony Boucher when it appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in August 1948.
The story’s theme has been said to foreshadow the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.[1][2] It may have been inspired by work of the philosopher and science fiction author Olaf Stapledon.[1]
Borges’s vision of “forking paths” has been cited as inspiration by numerous new media scholars, in particular within the field of hypertext fiction.[3][4][5] Other stories by Borges that express the idea of infinite texts include “The Library of Babel” and “The Book of Sand“.[3]
The book of sand
An unnamed narrator is visited by a tall Scots Bible-seller, who presents him with a very old cloth-bound book that he bought in India from an Untouchable. The book is emblazoned with the title “Holy Writ,” below which title is emblazoned “Bombay,”[1] but is said to be called “The Book of Sand”…”because neither the book nor the sand has any beginning or end.” Upon opening it, he is startled to discover that the book, which is written in an unknown language and occasionally punctuated by illustrations, is, in fact, infinite: as one turns the pages, more pages seem to grow out of the front and back covers. He trades a month of his pension and a prized “Wiclif Bible”[1] for the book and hides it on a bookshelf behind his copy of One Thousand and One Nights. Over the summer, the narrator obsesses over the book, poring over it, cataloging its illustrations and refusing to go outside for fear of its theft. In the end, realizing that the book is monstrous, he briefly considers burning it before fearing the possibility of the endless supply of smoke suffocating the world. Instead, he goes to the National Library where he once worked (like Borges) to leave the book among the basement bookshelves, reasoning that “the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest.”
An unnamed narrator is visited by a tall Scots Bible-seller, who presents him with a very old cloth-bound book that he bought in India from an Untouchable. The book is emblazoned with the title “Holy Writ,” below which title is emblazoned “Bombay,”[1] but is said to be called “The Book of Sand”…”because neither the book nor the sand has any beginning or end.” Upon opening it, he is startled to discover that the book, which is written in an unknown language and occasionally punctuated by illustrations, is, in fact, infinite: as one turns the pages, more pages seem to grow out of the front and back covers. He trades a month of his pension and a prized “Wiclif Bible”[1] for the book and hides it on a bookshelf behind his copy of One Thousand and One Nights. Over the summer, the narrator obsesses over the book, poring over it, cataloging its illustrations and refusing to go outside for fear of its theft. In the end, realizing that the book is monstrous, he briefly considers burning it before fearing the possibility of the endless supply of smoke suffocating the world. Instead, he goes to the National Library where he once worked (like Borges) to leave the book among the basement bookshelves, reasoning that “the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest.”
Hyper Text
(Currently collecting refs)
Additional EEEI References (All added to RefWorks)
General Video Game AI: A Multitrack Framework for Evaluating Agents, Games, and Content Generation Algorithms
Abstract:
General video game playing aims at designing an agent that is capable of playing multiple video games with no human intervention. In 2014, the General Video Game Artificial Intelligence (GVGAI) competition framework was created and released with the purpose of providing researchers a common open-source and easy-to-use platform for testing their artificial intelligence (AI) methods with potentially infinity of games created using the video game description language (VGDL). The framework has been expanded into several tracks during the last few years to meet the demands of different research directions. The agents are required either to play multiple unknown games with or without access to game simulations, or to design new game levels or rules. This survey paper presents the VGDL, the GVGAI framework, existing tracks, and reviews the wide use of GVGAI framework in research, education, and competitions five years after its birth. A future plan of framework improvements is also described.
Page(s): 195 – 214
ISSN Information:
IEEE Search
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games ( Volume: 7 , Issue: 4 , Dec. 2015 )
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games ( Volume: 7 , Issue: 4 , Dec. 2015 )
A Panorama of Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games
Abstract:
This paper attempts to give a high-level overview of the field of artificial and computational intelligence (AI/CI) in games, with particular reference to how the different core research areas within this field inform and interact with each other, both actually and potentially. We identify ten main research areas within this field: NPC behavior learning, search and planning, player modeling, games as AI benchmarks, procedural content generation, computational narrative, believable agents, AI-assisted game design, general game artificial intelligence and AI in commercial games. We view and analyze the areas from three key perspectives: 1) the dominant AI method(s) used under each area; 2) the relation of each area with respect to the end (human) user; and 3) the placement of each area within a human-computer (player-game) interaction perspective. In addition, for each of these areas we consider how it could inform or interact with each of the other areas; in those cases where we find that meaningful interaction either exists or is possible, we describe the character of that interaction and provide references to published studies, if any. We believe that this paper improves understanding of the current nature of the game AI/CI research field and the interdependences between its core areas by providing a unifying overview. We also believe that the discussion of potential interactions between research areas provides a pointer to many interesting future research projects and unexplored subfields.