Tableau Machine: A Creative Alien Presence

Creative Intelligent Systems

Volume

Papers from the 2008 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

We present the design of Tableau Machine (TM), an AI-based, interactive, visual art generator for shared living spaces. TM is an instance of what we call "alien presence": an ambient, non-human, embodied, intelligent agent. From overhead video in key public spaces, TM interprets its environment, including its human audience, and expresses its interpretation by displaying a sequence of abstract images of its own design. This paper is a case study in the design of an art generator with deep and long-term connections to its physical and social environment.