During my dissertation I came across the work of Cynthia Brezeal, I was especially interested in ‘Kismet’
The most important aspect of Kismet is not the robot itself, it’s the way people act and react to it.
It’s fascinating to watch Kismet engage and use simple social cues, notice in this video that the robot ‘pays attention’ to the man tapping his watch to gain Kismets focus. This attention system also works the other way around, Kismet has a calling action in which it beckons the participant closer by titling it’s head back and making an inviting noise .
Most important of all however is the notion that Kismet has drives, that is to say that inbuilt into the robot is a system of needs and desires. It’s actions (from a human perspective) are driven by intention. Kismet ‘want’s’ social interaction. You can see above how the drives work during an interaction with a human. (click the image for the source paper )
The question I need to ask myself is how and what kind of cues should I use to engage an audience? how can I suspend a viewers disbelief and turn a viewer…into participant?
I began thinking about simple gestures and how I could incorporate movement as a symbolic gesture. I realised from ‘Kismet’ that the important aspect is how gestures are interpreted, not the complexity of the action itself.
It was then that I decided to start making short visual presentations of possible actions I could incorporate into my work.
Here’s a short animation I created using Adobe illustrator and Flash to demonstrate how I could use kinetic elements in the final work to create a sense of curiosity in the participant and encourage their own drive to want to take part in the scenario/narrative that I’m creating. And well…an added little blueprint motif for fun.
I had the idea that moving the microphone toward the viewer could create the first contact between system and participant, I also think that this may be a way to single out individuals and engender a more personal atmosphere in the scenario.
The Importance of Interaction 