Secret Lives of Machines

The complexity of tasks and computations undertaken by machines has grown exponentially. In order to communicate these complexities to humans working with machines, these machines must be programmed to express themselves in forms that humans can understand, not merely with procedures and numbers, but with intentions, expressive gestures that communicate emotion, and interactions that form stories, all of which can be more intuitively grasped by humans. I explored machine gestures for communicating personality and narratives by building a 'shy' lamp that looks away when humans gaze closely, and follows human faces when they're far away. I followed by building a group of machines that all direct their gaze at the human unless she looks away, at which time they continue performing a skit. Artistic interventions with audiences shows playful interactions that depend on placement of the camera, showing a way of communicating machine personality using playful face-detection-based interactions.