Affective Behaviors for Theatrical Agents Michael Ruberry *† michael.ruberry@yale.edu Sara Owsley † sowsley@cs.northwestern.edu David A. Shamma † ayman@cs.northwestern.edu Kristian Hammond † hammond@cs.northwestern.edu Jay Budzik † budzik@cs.northwestern.edu Conrad Albrecht-Buehler † conrad@cs.northwestern.edu * Department of Computer Science Yale University P.O. Box 208285 New Haven, Conneticut 06520 † Intelligent Information Laboratory Northwestern Unversity 1890 Maple Avenue, 3rd Floor Evanston, Illinois 60201 ABSTRACT In this article, we explore the role of emotion in digital the- ater. Unlike heavily scripted productions, we create a theatri- cal agency which uses the world wide web to determine what content to deliver and how to deliver it with emotional com- petency. We describe the use of the web as a cultural artifact and how an autonomous agency can externalize these online connections during a performance. We address the problems that arise in bringing affect to an automated theatrical expe- rience, and present our solution. Keywords Network Arts, Theater, Emotion, Affect, World Wide Web, Search, Agents. INTRODUCTION Computing machinery is no longer a device of pure computa- tion. People have readily grasped the Web and use it to share their personal life experiences through message boards, web logs (blogs), and other community building web sites. We have created an installation which exposes and highlights these shared experiences through improvisational theater; an on stage production autonomously driven by the zeitgeist of the online community [10]. Our work in this area focuses on a unique intersection of art and technology. Not only does the machinery play several actors, but also the director. Our goal is to create a theatrical agency that can exist on stage alongside human players, con- veying both content and emotion. To successfully convey emotion, we must enable the agents to assess the affective connotation of words they are speaking. In this paper, we will discuss a method to automate the affective analysis of Figure 1: Two actors in a warm up game from the Associa- tion Engine. words and how enabling the agents with this ability makes the theatrical experience more compelling. THE ASSOCIATION ENGINE The Association Engine is an example of such a theatrical experience. It is comprised of five virtual, autonomous ac- tors. These actors participate in an improvisational warm-up game which is followed by a performance [7]. The perfor- mance can take the form of a simple story generation or a performance driven by what people have published on the Web, particularly in the form of blogs. In either embodiment of the Association Engine, portrayal of affect by the actors is crucial to engaging the audience. Improvisation is about being in the moment, a team of actors on time and on the same contextual page. Human actors use an improvisational warm-up game, called The Pattern Game, to arrive at a mutual context. Actors stand in a circle, per- forming free association given a seed word. The Association Engine initiates this Pattern Game with its virtual actors by 1