Half Cheetah

‘Half Cheetah’ by James Bloom (2025) begins with a Reinforcement Learning AI agent learning to inhabit and move a quadruped body in a 3D simulation. The performance optimisation process takes several days and includes millions of steps, as the model progresses from incapability to competence. These behaviours are then transferred onto 3D scans of real people, which are ‘re-skinned’ with metal, stone and other materials. Following this, a second AI agent analyses the behavioural performance and re-orders movement according to abstract aesthetic goals. This results in the breakdown of performance – instead a disjointed and sometimes impossible sequence of body motion appears. The real-time dynamic artworks can run in perpetuity.

The technical process by which a Reinforcement Learning agent learns to use a body is analogous in some ways to our own physical development. The agent is given a body – in virtual space – and its goal is to learn how to move efficiently and effectively from scratch. By transferring these AI virtual quadruped behaviours onto 3D scans of real people’s bodies, the parallels and differences in performance maximisation between human and software bodies are made visible simultaneously.

By applying a second AI model to reorganise motion towards abstract aesthetic goals, any linear progression of performance is broken down. In its place a problematic flow of body behaviours is played out, sometimes competent, sometimes not. The artworks present a live deconstruction – and abstraction – of progression, development and ability.

For more information on the artist: https://jamesbloom.net/