Cyborg Portrait Apprentice Prototype (Fall '09)

"If cyborgs dream, what do they dream of? What would cyborg art look like? Natural processes, embodiment, and cultural identity, only in an abstract matrix of fragmented images, a fusion of all digitized patterns, a fluid world of evolving information; shot through digital cameras, processed through digital filters, projected and printed by mechanical devices, and re-digitized infinitely until the vision achieves fractal complexity; the cyborg definition of beauty." ...Topher

Short Description of Thesis Project:

The Cyborg Portrait Apprentice project will be an installation in the form of a portrait booth that combines and simulates traditional elements of painting, sculpture, and photography portraiture using digital processes. The cyborg concept will be applied in the project as a symbiotic relationship between the human artist and computer, so that the computer is treated as the artist apprentice, and given the facility to creatively affect the process and resulting artwork. The booth will be entered by a sitter or subject, and the portrait will be done using 3D software, which has the ability to incorporate photography, and simulate both painterly and sculptural qualities in an animated environment. Portraiture techniques will be deconstructed to create a hybrid digital process that creates a bridge between traditional and digital media. The traditional cyborg concept will be expanded to incorporate extending human consciousness into the digital realm by blurring the line between the human and computer as artist.

Two General Project Goals:

• Establish continuity between traditional art practices (such as painting, sculpture, and photography), and contemporary digital media practices (such as interactivity, physical computing, and coding), to create a hybrid process that produces a variety of physical works that stand on their own as artworks.

• Using the cyborg or posthuman concept as a metaphor in art to express postmodern self-identity, and to comment on contemporary cultural trends that may indicate broader evolutionary processes towards cyborg consciousness.

Flow Chart of Project Scope:

Specific Project Goals:

• The human is given the role of Lead Artist, who sets the dominant aesthetic for the work, while the computer is given the role of Apprentice, and is expected to not only follow the requirements of the lead, but improvise to modify the process to add creative content to the final portrait. This hierarchical role will be explored and played with, such as remotely offering final approval of the portrait to the Lead Artist, but which can be enacted in varying degrees of involvement that is unknown to the subject. Just like in a human-based apprentice studio, you never know if the Lead Artist actually worked on, or even signed, the final artwork.

• Treating the computer as an entity with the freedom to make choices that creates unpredictable outcomes, like a combination of Ruben’s apprentice, Craig’s Uber Marionette, and Foust’s Mephistopheles; to explore the concept of the cyborg beyond the physical body, and into the realm of the mind and memetics. This is designed to move away from the idea of the computer as a predictable tool with the “demo-or-die” mentality common in today’s consumer market, and towards the idea of the computer as an evolution of human organic processes, and capable of artistic license. 

• Playfully incorporating metaphor, ritual, and animism in the installation, so that the portrait subject is engaged, and encourages the subject to allow the computer to assume the role of the artist. How much interaction and input the subject should be allowed beyond the traditional input of just offering their image to the artist, and possibly choosing a background, will be explored.  

• Establishing a consistent postmodern abstract aesthetic in the portrait process that incorporates a cyborg view of the human subject, digitally simulating organic processes and embodiment. Making digital media that strives to incorporate organic codes and patterns.

• Encouraging and exploring mistakes in data gathering to simulate organic perception that leads to mutations in communication as a path to creativity. This could be done by setting up sensors in the booth that gather voice or image information from the subject that is incomplete or garbled, and thus will have to be guessed at by the computer, and results in a translated view of the subject.

Project Timeline:

Thesis Narrative:

This installation will be constructed as a private space with some similarities to a photography portrait booth. The subject will enter one module in the booth to sit for an abstract portrait that combines aspects of traditional and new Medias. Another module in the booth contains the computer, cameras, and monitor. While a third module will represent a pho-development room that projects the rendered portrait on a tank of moving water, and then will re-capture the image. Upon entering the main module, motion sensors will detect a new portrait subject, and then the computer will ask the subject to sit down in a pressure sensitive seat. Since I don't want to the computer to evoke gender, I plan on using text scrolling across an LCD display to have the computer communicate to the subject as if chatting while rendering their portrait.

Upon sitting, several cameras will take the subjects photo from multiple angles. The photos will be taken without flashes, and the subject will be immediately engaged with the computer so they don't know when their pictures were even taken. The captured images will be composited and processed through filters to form a single complex fractal image pattern, and then mapped onto a 3D shape in Autodesk Maya software. I may use audio and sensor data to incorporate gender in the portrait through simple 3D shapes.

The subject’s image will be abstracted and combined with organic materials like wood or metal, using deliberate and random digital processes to simulate improvisation or artistic license within an established aesthetic. I want the aesthetic to be an abstract fusion of organic source elements and patterns and digital processes and code that contains information from the subject in a fractal manner.

The subject’s responses and sensor data will drive some of the digital processes in combination with mistakes in translating the data resulting in variations. This human data can be in the form movement and speech recognition data to drive text generation, animation, and 3D shapes. The processed text may be used as part of an abstract 3D embodiment, possibly forming textual limbs that are animated. I actually prefer if the voice recognition software garbles the translation to form some mutated words.

The digital choices made by the computer will have complexity built into the system to simulate improvisation, so that simple binary choices will extrapolate into more complex fractal results. The human artist, as lead designer, sets the aesthetic rules for the portrait, provides artistic content through pre-processed modular design elements, and writes the code that enables the computer to collaborate as an apprentice. I like the idea of programming mistakes into the algorithm to encourage unpredictable behavior or “moods”. I may even extend this to experiment with programs that only work some of the time, based on how the computer “feels” at a particular moment.

The digital portrait process will be based on a variety of flexible design rules in Autodesk Maya using Python or C++ programming. The sensor data will be input to Maya using a serial connection to the Arduino board. As contrast to the digital processes, the portrait aesthetic will be infused with natural elements like water, earth and fire, and very low-tech human cultural elements such as classical sculpture and artifacts. This underscores the cyborg view of the human subject, and shows what the cyborg lacks. To further this aesthetic, the final portrait will be projected into a shallow pool of water in the pho-development chamber, and re-captured with video and photography. This chamber will be viewable to those outside the chamber, but not to the sitter until they are done, just like in a traditional portrait setting.

When the portrait is close to finished, the lead artist will be remotely contacted by the apprentice computer, and will be asked for final approval of three still images from the animation. If available, the artist will choose a final portrait to present to the subject, or if not available, the choice will be made by the apprentice using daily online “mood” indicators from the artist. Either way, the final signature of the artist will be placed on the portrait, and it will be presented to the subject for comment on screen. By performing a comment they receive a free 5x7 print of the portrait to take with them. Their comment, the print, and the animation will all be stored and catalogued on the computer as "Portrait # …", and uploaded to the Internet gallery site. The goal is that by responding to the portrait, and by receiving a copy, the work may have more meaning for the subject. This in turn may make them identify a little more with their cyborg representation. 

Some issues with this project to research and resolve are the level of interaction from the subject, the aesthetic representation of the subject, how to encourage subject engagement with the computer as a digital representation of the human artist, and how to facilitate the technical processes in the hardare and software.

Prototype Images: