Bottom lines? On art? Hmmm. I wonder what Picasso's Net After Tax Profit
Margin was?
$9000, the value of him signing his name on a napkin at an expensive
restaurant. :-)
Seriously, tho: read "bottom line" as meaning "summary of what we on
this list managed to say on the subject," and my comments make sense.
Here's an idea that interests me. What if there was a place where you
could be sitting, talking to a friend, and in wander two actors (or
automatic people, under computer control), who are acting out Hamlet? You
could pause and listen to a few lines, as you would pause and listen to a
few bars of whatever music is playing in the room.
This would be entertaining. It would also seem to be like a movie -
no audience interaction.
Or maybe a place where you must wear period costume, and speak
Elizabethan English in order to be accepted?
I guess you could write an Elizabethan English language parser, that
would insist on having sentences with certain words and phrase
constructions. What you suggest is an interesting technique for
enforcing atmosphere.
Maybe I'll design a Polonius to follow me around and say inane things, so
I can verbally toy with him, occasionally. :)
AI-wise, do you think he can respond sufficiently, so as to preserve
the illusion of interacting with somone capable of verbal repartee?
What techniques would you have to employ to successfully bring it off?
I know this skirts the boundary of technical constraint, but good AI is
very hard to implement and if there's a simpler way to bring it off I
think that would be preferrable.
Hmmm. Where do you plan on hanging out in Cyberspace, Brandon?
Do you mean within Hamlet? Or something else? In Hamlet, I think my
first stop would be the cemetary, then the local village, then a high
cliff above the coast as Hamlet arrives and departs. I would then try
to scale the castle from cliff-side, since going in the front door
would be too boring. I'd watch the final fight scene hanging from a
chandelier on the ceiling.
All pretty passive stuff, really. I'd probably watch it once all the
way through, then get some "what if..." ideas in my head, and go back
and muck things up a bit. Like, what if I switched swords on (damn, I
forget his name) the guy who wants to kill Hamlet, so that his sword
has no venom on it? Suddenly some people are left alive at the end
that wouldn't have been otherwise. Does this mean the narrative
continues into a new story?
Cheers,
Brandon