Aliens
This project was a commissioned work for the Science Museum London and part of a travelling exhibition “The Science of Aliens”.
Sensitive Surface
at art+com we conceived two sensitive surfaces on which two alien worlds were dynamically generated. the visitor could observe the interplay of alien creatures in an alien environment.
The Process
Generative Narration
It has been some time since we have finished the Alien Project. Just recently we, that is Jussi, Patrick and I, submitted the project to a competition for Art+Com. We wrote this text focussing on generative narration, a term that is definitely inspired by Will Wright s rants about generative content.
introduction
Two large scale multi-user media installations depicting alien planets were developed as a part of an exhibition investigating the science of the alien; what is life, and what kinds of forms of life we could imagine existing out in the universe. The installations ran simulations of ecosystems of species from scientist imagined planets, through which the visitors could learn about the universals of life.
context
A group of scientists had envisioned two alien planets with complex ecosystems based on the understanding of life on our planet. Our challenge was to create interactive museum installations narrating these planets to the visitors. In order to encourage exploration and collective learning we developed two large scale multi user installations where the planets’ ecosystems were represented through real time life simulation. The visitors could then observe and interact with the creatures in the simulations in order to learn about the imagined lives on the planets.
generative narration
In a constant flux of people, linear narrative is difficult in a museum context, as there can be no clear beginning and end to the interaction. Instead, we chose to create generative narrative, where procedural modules describing behaviours and relations of the artificial creatures unfold the events on the planet. The visitors could arrive at the installation at any time and begin to observe and understand the laws and dynamics of the world and its creatures. This understanding could be then deepened by closer examination of the creatures through the touch sensitive surface providing access to their characteristics and detailed information. The predators, their hunting tactics, the pray and their hideouts begin to emerge from the interactions taking place on the planet. Due to the physical form of the installations the parallel interactions of several visitors encourage exchanging of the understanding of the planets between themselves further escalating the constructivist, learning by doing experience.
visuals
Our take on the visual design of the worlds was to blend abstract and figurative representations.
On the one hand the aim was to leave enough room for the imagination, on the other hand we needed a frame of reference created by the figurative representation. The anticipation of the creatures possible behaviour through its appearance created a context in which it is easier to tell a story.
The world view is overlaid with an information layer in which internal or otherwise invisible processes of the creatures are visualised. This was used to make the relations and causality for certain behaviors more understable. If for example the field of view of a predator crosses the prey, one can anticipate that the predator will soon become aware of the prey and may charge.
Anticipation was a technique we deliberately used throughout the installation to create emotional connections to the protagonists in the worlds. “Will the mudpod manage to escape?”
artificial intelligence
agent-based-modelling
We based the application on the idea of ‘agent based modelling’. All creatures are able to perceive the world according to their senses and decide how to react to it. Thus the worlds become truly generative, as new combination of participants create new ‘local’ behavior, patterns and structures.
goal-driven behavior
Because generativity is strongly connected to autonomously acting characters, we implemented the creatures decision making processes as a goal-driven behavior. Each creature has species specific sensory perception. According to internal and external stimuli the creatures define goals on different levels of abstraction. If for example a ‘stalker’ has located prey, it will define the goal ‘eat prey’. Since this goal is still very abstract it will be broken down into three subgoals: first signal the other ‘stalkers’ that prey has been spotted, second start hunting the prey and third share prey with others. After defining these goals it tries to execute them one after the other, while each sub-goal can be broken down into even more sub-goals. For example ‘hunting prey’ is a rapid variation of goals like ‘follow prey’, ‘avoid tree’ and ‘avoid other stalkers’. This way ‘atomic’ behaviors can be assambled to very complex behaviors. Many micro stories are told this way, some of them being emergent in nature.
adaptive behaviors
In order to implement the scientists’ envisioned ecosystems we utilised similar stategies in our simulation. To create an equilibrium between predators and prey we used adaptive parameters, that defined the speed, the velocity, the scope among others of each species. These essentially evolutionary methods were used by the scientists for example to define the appearence of the creatures.
conclusion
Our challenge with this project was to explore the potential of generative narrative, where we chose to tightly align the means of narration to the content itself. Talking about the universals of life with artificial life simulation. The simulation as narrative provided simultaneous micro and macro level perspectives on the dynamics on the planets, where the visitors could engage in examining the details of an individual creature to observing the bigger picture of the dynamics of the whole ecosystem.
Official Art+Com Documentation
please also visit the offical Art+Com documentation.
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