robot zoo
Our Creative AI in the Robot Zoo room at the University of Southampton Hands-on Humanities Day, Saturday 20th November 2021. AI and robots are set to play an increasingly important role in our everyday lives. Will they be human-like in appearance or intelligence, or quite different from us – more like toys, pets, and other […] more…
Surviving the Singularity
Please go here: http://www.microethology.net/robot-zoo/ more…
chatbots in the gallery
Earlier this year we ran a Web Science Institute-funded pilot project called ‘Chatbots in the Gallery.’ The project team, Dr Sarah Hayden, Samantha Schäfer, Lesia Tkacz and myself explored the use of conversational agents or chatbot applications in an art gallery setting. Building on the SIAH-funded ‘Towards a Creative AI Lab’ project (Sam, Lesia and myself), […] more…
ethology of AI
What are the implications of taking the animality of AI and A-Life entities as real and not metaphorical or symbolic? This question in turn demands ontological questions of the synthetic animal itself: what kinds of speciation gives rise to it, what habitats and what kinds of behaviour shape its existence, and how might the status […] more…
not not animals
Does it make any sense to consider virtual animals as animal in any serious way? Both the naturalistically-rendered wolves of Legend of Zelda: the breath of the wild and the chatty anthropomorphised citizens of the Animal Crossing games are inorganic abstractions, assemblages of animated drawings, behavioural algorithms and audio clips. Their material substrates – digital/electronic […] more…
game | death | worlds
I compiled this sometime in the mid-2000s, as a curated list for Furtherfield. Riffing on gameworlds and lifeworlds, it resonates nicely with my current writing, but with a morbid twist… a study of the materiality and imaginary of artificial life in which most of the links and projects, and hence their animate entities, are now […] more…
one or several artificial wolves
Link encounters a group of animals on a green, grassy hillside, beautifully animated in the rich landscape. Large birds, and a wild boar, promise meat if successfully hunted. As the player-avatar approaches, carefully, to within range of his bow and arrow he spots a wolf tracking a wide A* path through the immediate environment. Proximity […] more…
Animal Crossing and utopia in a time of crisis
Note: the conversation that triggered this short piece has contributed to an article by Samuel Horti in the New Statesman. The release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons on March 20th 2020 has proved a remarkable moment of serendipity for both Nintendo and old fans and new players of the Animal Crossing games. Characterised by […] more…
AI and the future of play
Placeholder for a position statement on my current research and teaching on the genealogy and emergent dimensions of artificial intelligence in play and technoculture. more…
AI and games
Workshop with level 3 Games Design & Art students, October 2019 references: Giddings, Seth 2014 ‘Soft worlds and AI’ (extract from chapter 3 of) Gameworlds: virtual media and children’s everyday play. New York: Bloomsbury. http://www.microethology.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Soft-Worlds-and-AI.pdf Giddings, Seth 2007 ‘Playing with nonhumans: videogames as technocultural form’, in Suzanne de Castell & Jen Jenson (eds) Worlds in […] more…
toying with the singularity
My chapter on the design of playful AI and robotics – and the relationships between the material, the technical and the imaginary – is in The Internet of Toys: practices, affordances and the political economy of children’s smart play, edited by Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway (Palgrave 2019). Titled ‘Toying with the singularity: AI, automata and […] more…
AI & the achievement of animals
A stork and a wild pig in Breath of the Wild are distinct species only in a decorative sense, as mise-en-scene of the open dynamic world. As prey however they are simply the same: moving targets and soon-to-be raw meat. At first glance, a horse in Breath of the Wild is defined primarily by its vehicular potential. it is […] more…
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