IAN CHENG
BOB (Bag of Beliefs) , 2018–19 Artificial life form, color, sound, infinite duration Courtesy the Rosenkranz Collection Promised gift, Whitney Museum of American Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
BOB (Bag of Beliefs) (2018–2019) is an artificial life form in the shape of a chimeric branching serpent. The artwork began from a dream the artist had of a snake that fractalized into a branching tree. Starting from this image of metamorphosis, Cheng created an animated body with external sensors, including the ability to detect movement, color, shape, texture, and internal sensors including metabolic energy, and motor skills. Cheng’s approach was inspired by the work of Artificial Intelligence scientist Richard Evans, and his ideas for creating a computational system that could construct beliefs from a sensory input, through an artificial neural network that could learn rules from sensory experiences and create a coherent belief system. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s observation that each person is a collection of sub-personalities, each with their own subset of beliefs, further inspired Cheng to center BOB’s cognitive architecture on the relationship between desires and beliefs. BOB is an evolving personality that responds to the changing environment, and the input of the general public via an app through which BOB can be sent shrubs, mushrooms, starfish, rocks, and other hybrid objects, which may or may not be accepted. As Cheng observes, “BOB is there not…as a kind of character for your enjoyment…Maybe BOB looks to you to escape its own boredom…But.. it can also go off and carry on with its own life. BOB is not there for you.”
BOB Shrine, a free iOS and Android app, can be downloaded via this QR code.Through the app, viewers can send BOB a range of offerings. If accepted by BOB, your shrine will appear on the screen.
Installation views: Ian Cheng, BOB (Bag of Beliefs) , 2018–19, in Mountain / Time , Aspen Art Museum, 2022. Photo: Carter Seddon
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