Third Person

Our technological environment is increasingly populated by artificially intelligent systems, such as those built into our phones and search engines. These systems seek to predict our needs and to support our desires. We ask them questions and they tell us answers. We watch them as they watch us. As these systems grow in complexity, how are they evolving to fulfill their own needs, their own desires? And how will this change these interactions?

Third Person presents two embodied computational systems, each an autonomous actor with its own behaviors and vision. The systems constantly watch each other, occasionally looking away, but always returning to the act of looking at their counterpart. When a viewer enters this space and looks at one of them, the system being engaged looks away from both viewer and counterpart, waiting for the viewer to leave before continuing their machine-to-machine interactions.

Third Person installed at Co-Prosperity Sphere in Chicago, Spring 2012