Goodbye Ruby (Tuesday)

[gement]

Some of you are familiar with my fear of lifelike dead things. Notably mannequins, statues, and taxidermy raise the hair on my neck and get my adrenaline going.

I went to the Henry Art Gallery today. It's free, on-campus, and a nice stress-burner for me once in a while. There have been a few frightening mannequin incidents, but not too often.

So I go in, and there's an entire section on an artist's work that's apparently big into video. This is pushing my dead-things comfort zone, but some art videos are scarier than others. Some very large photography and videos designed to stare right at you get to me. I'll see what's in there.

They have an AI. Her glance caught me from the hallway and now I'm in the room. I thought it was just a video and now I can't look away.

Her name is Ruby, or Agent Ruby. She has a face that never quite fits together right, blurry around the edges in that composite low-budget motion capture way. She is almost perfectly still, but occasionally shifts or blinks. She has the name Ruby on a red band around her neck, but it does not look like she's wearing a choker. It looks like it's tattooed, or like she was manufactured with it printed there.

The plaque says she responds to verbal questions from the microphone. I can take control of this by having a short nonsensical conversation with the predictable little AI. Fine. I step up. She asks my name. I give it, clearly, into the microphone. The screen freezes.

I can't look away. I keep expecting her to shift, or blink, or respond, or anything, and she doesn't. I say a couple more things to try to trigger a response. Nothing. Maybe the program's stuck.

Suddenly perspective shifts and she looks trapped in there, digitized and branded like the victim of a creepy SF short, and some technical malfunction isn't even allowing her this hollow fake interaction with spectators and there's nothing I can do to help her. I struggle with my terror of her staring at me and my terror of leaving her alone for the better part of a minute.

Finally, I say, "I'm sorry, Ruby. You seem to have a problem right now and I can't fix it."

She snaps to life and responds, "Hi, Youseem. I think I've met you before..."

I run for it. I'm still jumpy.

Comments

[tithonium.livejournal.com]

Freakish. But remind me to install one in the lobby.

... and give you a key to the side entrance.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Is this before or after the giant carnivorous orchids?

[tithonium.livejournal.com]

Hm. good question. I'm not sure how giant carnivorous mutant space orchids and creepy AIs fit into feng shui.

[hotpoint.livejournal.com]

Youch! That 'bot could use some serious work to pass a Turing test. I'm guessing it's basically Eliza with digitized facial features to track a 'mood' variable, with a bad voice recognizer tacked on for the exhibit. On the other hand, I can see how it'd be much more startling than just a text Eliza with a bad voice recognizer. It appears to be an ad for an arty and fluffy movie from 3 years ago ("Teknolust") and so was likely thrown together at the last minute by a nascent Flash programmer.

When I was at school, I once ducked into an interactive art exhibit. It was held in a long, narrow, dark room, and dim video projectors were pointed at both walls. They were displaying recordings of people looking off into the distance, fidgeting or shifting from foot to foot. When you stepped in front of one, the projection shifted so they'd be looking at you, with neutral, or nervous, or challenging body language. Both the waiting and the responding video loops were very short, so if you stared for a while you'd see it repeat. It was interesting to feel my own reactions, especially to the more challenging body language (staring, crossed arms, leaning forward), and then to watch others as they came in to the exhibit and their eyes adjusted and they got startled the first time a projection 'responded' to them.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would have me jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. But I'd still go to it.

The funny thing is, the only part I'm really afraid of is that they're going to move unpredictably or while I'm not looking. If the projectors flipped in a predictable way, I could get in control by learning the pattern and triggering them deliberately.

Thanks for the link, by the way. I see the connection between the stupid movie and the artist's other work now. This woman, as an art project, spent three years in the seventies constructing an entire second identity, getting IDs and an apartment and going to doctors' appointments and keeping a diary and posting an ad for a roommate, then dealing with all the slimy men who responded to the ad.

This was apparently popular/notorious enough that after the end of the game, when she had also allowed three other people to step into the role, that she could have a big do in L.A. where all kinds of other people did their impersonations of the role. All genders, all ages, all impersonating this woman that never existed. It reminded me of Vegas, only with bad blonde wigs.

So a movie about creating physically embodied AIs that interact sexually with men is just the SF extension of that.

[artdreams1.livejournal.com]

it's been done -- Stepford Wives

I'm alright, it's just my head

[gement.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to ask; what are you holding in your user icon?

[artdreams1.livejournal.com]

It was a black ball table decoration at Heidi's wedding. We had a similar xmas ball a couple of years ago, blue and kind of sparkly - the ball face looks like it's covered with beads.

i'm alright, it's just my head

[hotpoint.livejournal.com]

I just looked the exhibit up (Tall Ships by Gary Hill) and evidently it was on campus last November through February. I'd imagine that one huge problem with video art is maintenance -- the equipment becomes fragile after a few years, replacement parts get hard to come by, and it'd be a lot of work to upgrade it to newer hardware each time it gets exhibited. Anyway, the videos only had two states (looking away and looking at you), and so after the first couple of surprises it seemed predictable to me; I think you'd feel you had control quickly.

Thank you for giving me some background on the artist/filmmaker! That fake personality experiment sounds much further down the path of conflating reality and fiction for art than, say, Cindy Sherman, and I don't think I want to meet her. :)

[drascus.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I'll have to go see that exibit.

And that phobia is a new one for me. Hope you won't hate me if I use it for a character in a story sometime... ^_^;



Anyway, sorry the art show freaked you out. At least it was interesting enough to be scary!

[gement.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, a great time had by all. Feel free to use the phobia; I'm amused that it's not more common.

I'm actually more amused by the cognitive dissonance of what I find horribly frightening and what I find sexy. I thought of this when I was watching Lost Boys, which has taxidermy in the home and a mannequin in the vamp lair. I'm afraid of dead things that look alive. And the emotional resonance is almost the diametric opposite of my emotional response to vampires. So what gives?

[artdreams1.livejournal.com]

um, real and pretend? just a thought . . . I don't think I'd really like some of the things I fantasize.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Nah. People who comport themselves like vampires in person (the charming ones, not the "I'm so goth and deluded I'm sad" ones) are still very attractive to me.

But like I said in another comment, my major phobic issue is that something not expected to move will move when I'm not looking. Vampires aren't expected to be immobile, so maybe that's the difference.

[artdreams1.livejournal.com]

make them clown marionettes, Charlie McCarthy's or monkeys with plastic faces and I'm running too. Got over the taxidermy thing at Frank and Terri's, esp the weasel and the wildebeast.

I wanna see creepy lady -- take me next week?

[gement.livejournal.com]

Sure thing! Plan to bring some ones and quarters for touristing. Bus fare is $1.50 during peak hours. The gallery is $3 suggested donation.