Qiezli's internal architecture...

These charts provide an insight into the way Qiezli's alpha-version behavior was modeled in early 2011. Admittedly, Qiezli's current behaviour and interactions are relatively crude and explicitly reactive compared with more intelligent conversational agents. Qiezli is a personality-in-progress. Expect more charts and evolved functionality in the coming months...

Please see the Future Work for more details about Qiezli's gradual evolution towards abstract personification and alien-like intelligence...

PLEASE CLICK ON EACH CHART TO ENLARGE THE IMAGE...

This chart provides an overview of Qiezli's state-transitions from "daydreaming/solitary" to "presenting/social"



UPDATE: Qiezli's wandering animation is also known as "roaming"...

This detailed chart shows Qiezli's data allocation and retrieval scheme...




This chart shows Qiezli's actuators/sensors and how they relate to state-transitions....




This chart shows Qiezli's emotional comfort threshold....



Once Qiezli detects avatars/agents in its midst, four “emotional” conditions are considered during the social interaction process. Inspired by Laird’s State Operator and Result’s (SOAR) four types of impasse (“no-change, “tie”, “conflict”, “rejection”), and Anstey’s four emotional categories (“praise”, “encouragement”, “criticism”, “explanation”), Qiezli’s social conditions are: ambient, passive, conversational and hostile. If avatar(s)/agent(s) have left Qiezli’s gaze range for more than 1 minute, Qiezli will activate the random roaming animation as part of an ambient condition and depart at a slow velocity but will continue scanning for new avatars/agents while running its do-while daydreaming loop. The passive condition is publically expressed if the detected avatar(s)/agent(s) are still within Qiezli’s gaze range but have been idle for at least two minutes. After this period of lengthy idleness, Qiezli switches back to its solitary/daydreaming mode, re-activates the roaming animation, departs at a random velocity and delays any re-scanning for new avatars/agents for 5 minutes. The reason for the delay in scanning new avatars is because Qiezli has come to the conclusion that others are uninterested in its artistic presentation-performance so it quickly becomes “bored” and returns to its self-absorbed daydreaming state. The conversational condition is met if the detected avatar(s)/agent(s) are not idle but move around at a very low velocity and with little or no visceral interaction (collision) with the video-prim limbs. Under this condition, Qiezli will present video-prims with the color scheme that matches the current level of interaction/collision. For example, the more each prim is touched by an avatar/agent, the redder it will get. Unless, the other three conditions are met (ambient, passive, hostile), then Qiezli will engage in this presentation mode for a random duration of time. After which, it will re-activate its roaming animation and depart at a random velocity. If the agents/avatars cross this comfort threshold by making all of Qiezli’s 6 video-prim limbs completely red, Qiezli’s will perceive this behavior as a hostile condition and initiates a contingency plan. Under this condition, Qiezli immediately switches to its roaming animation while intentionally avoiding those “hostile” avatars using the llRequestAgentData_Name function and escapes at a much faster velocity than in the passive mode. Naturally, Qiezli also delays re-scanning new avatars/agents for at least 5 minutes.

Qiezli's visual appearance - Influences...

"The Thing Growing" (2000) by Josphine Anstey.



"The Thing Growing" by Josephine Anstey (2000).

Qiezli's visual design was subconsciously influenced by Josephine Anstey's interactive virtual character "The Thing" from "The Thing Growing" (2000).
It was only in 2011 where this visual influence was clearly remembered. As a result, correlations between Qiezli and "The Thing" became more explicit over time...
Unlike Anstey's Thing, however, Qiezli was not designed with any narrative or socially-dependent purpose other than to exist "for art's sake".

Resembling an embodied configuration of abstract modules, Qiezli’s visual design is intentionally non-anthropomorphic. Qiezli’s gender-neutral body is composed out of a variable array of floating illuminated video-textured 3D geometrically primitive shapes called prims. In other words, Qiezli constantly shifts its outward visual appearance. Qiezli’s core anthropomorphic avatar base form (as pre-determined by SL’s interface) is completely invisible. This invisible humanoid avatar acts as a placement axis for the manifestation(s) of varying video-prim objects that represent its limbs and face (including eyes). Similarly, Anstey’s “Thing” relies on geometrical limbs (pyramids) and other “body parts” that “could be substituted” (Anstey 2000). Qiezli’s modularity is emphasized more than Anstey’s agent because new body-parts “grow” from invisible stems in a generative manner. Qiezli’s perpetual limb-substitution activity becomes a key component of its perceived gestalt visual design. Therefore, users’ gestalt interpretations of Qiezli’s body schema helps sustain a “strong illusion of an autonomous being formed from a collection of primitive shapes” (Anstey 2000). As with Anstey’s agent, the illusion that Qiezli is a single entity “is not broken by parts of the body joining badly”. In order for such configurations to minimally engage anthropomorphic coherence, both Anstey’s “Thing” and Qiezli employ non-verbal dance-gestures to express a feigned emotional connection with the user(s).