RtS: The Beall Center for Art and Technology

[Ghoulish Delight]

Rank the Swank - Museums and Sights


Overall Swank Rank

The Beall Center for Art and Technology
Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UCI
Irvine, CA
February 4, 2006
http://beallcenter.uci.edu/


The Lowdown
A unique installation that uses technology and game theory to explore the intricacies of human ego.

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The Gig
5 'til 12" Knifeandfork

The Scene
I caught a brief review of this in a free "what to do in OC" publication and thought we'd check it out.

Here's the setup. "Knifeandfork" is an art exhibition that was supposed to be at the gallery you're attending, however in a tragic turn of events, one of the co-creators died the night of the premier party. Instead, you will hear versions of the events of that evening from 4 of the people in attendance (oddly, the deceased himself being one of those 4). There are 4 video stations with headphone where you sit and listen to each person recount their evening.

Here's the fascinating bit. What you hear will be different every time. Each witness has a huge list of pre-programmed bits of dialog. When you enter the exhibit, you're given an RFID card that you carry with you to each station. Each person's "truth" will not only vary based on their own guilt, but also based on what you've already heard from other witnesses.

Algorithms based on game theory (the study of how people will alter their behavior to gain competetive advantage) are used to determine exactly what you hear. So, if you go to the dead guy's girlfriend who paints a not-so-flattering picture of her late lover, but then hear said corpse say good things about her...by the time you get back around to her again, she'll have softened up on him because she spots an advantage.

It really was pretty interesting, and the shifts in the witnesses' attitudes was noticeable. I wished, though, that it was a bit more involved. Among other things, you of course only get to hear how your story is told, so it's hard to know just how different the experience is between viewers (which is the main thrust of the niftiness). Also, while you are left a little confused trying to sort out the inconsitencies from the first 2 witnesses you hear, by the 3rd and 4th, you've got all the information you need to sort out what exactly happened. Going back and listening to them again only serves to demonstrate the adaptive dialog programming, it doesn't further the storyline. It would have been nice if there really was a mystery to solve.