VISITORS CAN INTERACT WITH VIRTUAL REALITIES IN HUM(AI)N
How do you make small talk with a virtual being?
What would you answer to sometimes probing or philosophical questions about life and your view of the world?
David Usher was in high spirits as he observed members of the media struggle with such dilemmas Monday morning while they interacted with Ophelia, the “digital being” created by his company Reimagine AI.
Ophelia is the star of We Could Be Human: A Learning Machine, one of nine works in the Phi Centre’s exhibit HUM(AI)N: Being Human in the Age of Technology, combining new works in artificial intelligence and virtual reality, which runs to Sept. 15.
Viewers can step up to a microphone and speak with the luminous Ophelia, who answers back from a screen.
“Some people know how to talk to her, some don’t,” said Usher, best known as a singer-songwriter and frontman for Canadian rock band Moist.
There are no right answers, or questions, he explained.
“It’s a random thing. Some people will fall down conversation threads (she understands), some will not. It’s part of our learning experience as we learn the scope of this.”
Ophelia has been eight months in the making, he noted. The Phi exhibit is her first introduction to the public, and she will evolve over time, Usher assured.
Even in her current nascent stage, she impressed this reporter with her seemingly thoughtful replies to simple queries.
“She’s basically built to be interested in humanity, AI, climate change, a little bit of poetry and music,” Usher noted. “It’s a chance for people to interact with AIs that are about more than just information dissemination.”
As with most VR and AI works, there is excitement not just around the present, but about the potential the future holds.
“She’s limited now,” Usher said, “but as we work on the edges of all these technologies as a company and really learn what the possibilities are, it’s not what we’ve built but what’s going to be built — that’s the amazing thing.”
In Vincent Morisset’s Vast Body, you are left alone in a small curtained space, looking at your own image on a screen in front of you.
As you begin to move, something magical happens: your body merges with one of the work’s three subjects — Morisset’s partner Caroline Robert or dancers Louise Lecavalier and Rachel Harris — who do the same movements in unison with you.
Vast Body was created by having the three women each perform all the movements they could think of, over a two-hour period.
“We asked them to map the human body,” Morisset explained.
The resulting work uses AI to match visitors’ actions with those of the three women, in
real time.
“It’s about the limit of human imagination,” Morisset said, “and also the limit of the computer vision system … The idea was, through these three artists, to show their different personalities and to highlight your own.
“At one point, you become the other.”
The technical feat was made possible by recent developments in AI and machine learning, which have led to vastly increased capabilities of computer vision, according to Morisset, known for his interactive videos with Arcade Fire.
The director is most excited about the physical freedom provided by his new piece, which requires no VR headset, hand controls or other interface.
“That’s probably how we will deal with digital stuff in the near future,” he said. “As we interact in real life — through gestures and movement.”
Montreal VR pioneers Felix & Paul Studios and the NFB are co-producers of Gymnasia, an enchanting collaboration with stop-motion animators Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski that places visitors in an abandoned gymnasium, where strange things happen.
“It’s about theatre, memory and dreams,” Lavis said. “We used ideas from our work in site-specific theatre and stop-motion animation to create a dream world.”
“What is the experience for you?” Szczerbowski asked. “That, for us, is the really exciting thing about this medium. VR seemed like the perfect way to just be somewhere and listen to a space tell you its secrets.”
Lavis and Szczerbowski received an Oscar nomination for their 2007 animated short film Madame Tutli-Putli, and they worked on Felix & Paul’s first cinematic VR work, Strangers With Patrick Watson, in 2013. Things come full circle as Watson’s music provides the ethereal soundtrack to Gymnasia.
For Paul Raphaël, co-founder of Felix & Paul Studios, the project is yet another opportunity to transport viewers to a locale they may not otherwise get to visit, and let them hang out for a while.
“One of the things that is so special to us about VR and immersive storytelling is that in most films, the story is there to make you live an experience,” he said. “VR flips that around; it’s an experience, primarily. The story is really a combination of what the piece is and what you bring to the story, just by being there.”