The Bush Soul (#3), 1999

"The Bush Soul (#3)" extends "The Bush Soul (#2)" by adding the element of time. Artificial life forage for food during the day, sleep at night, and engage in evening rituals. A "soul" is represented as a sphere of particles. As one explores and interacts with the environment, one's soul may inhabit the body of certain artificial life forms. A force-feedback joystick provides navigation and tactile sensations and serves as a connection between the physical body and virtual soul. Through the joystick one can feel the "energy" of the environment as vibrations emanating from different creatures and significant places in the virtual world. This work draws on the language of video games but presents an alternative artistic exploration of behavior and artificial life.

"The Bush Soul (#3)" is the second work to use the Emergence Engine, which was extended to support haptic feedback.

Related Links

• Eitan Mendelowitz. The Emergence Engine: A Behavior Based Agent Development Environment for Artists. in the Proceedings of the Twelfth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI), 2000. Winner of the Deployed Application Award. (PDF)
• The Emergence Project Web Site

Exhibition History

• Second Natures. New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles CA. (2006)
• ACM1: Beyond Cyberspace Exhibition.San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, CA. (2001)
• SHIFT-CTRL: Computers, Games and Art. Beall Center,University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA. (2000)
• Art Futura. Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Seville, Spain. (2000)
• Ground Zero-Future Art. The Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, CA. (2000)
• Electronic Rituals. Intermedia Arts Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota. (1999)
• Interactive Frictions. University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles. (1999)
• SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies. LA Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA. (1999)
• Life Science. Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria. (1999)