Tableau Machine: A Creative Alien Presence

We present the design of Tableau Machine (TM), an AIbased, interactive, visual art generator for shared living spaces. TM is an instance of what we call “alien presence”: an ambient, non-human, embodied, intelligent agent. From overhead video in key public spaces, TM interprets its environment, including its human audience, and expresses its interpretation by displaying a sequence of abstract images of its own design. This paper is a case study in the design of an art generator with deep and long-term connections to its physical and social environment.