# Chasing the Mist

Canonical URL: https://baoyangchen.com/works/chasing-the-mist/
Interactive page: https://baoyangchen.com/#work/chasing-the-mist
Year: 2020
Category: AI Agent-based Works
Medium: AI, Jetbot, projection, screen

## Proposition
Two mobile agents chase each other through a fog-of-war field while viewers alter the rules by placing obstacles.

## Description
Chasing the Mist stages pursuit as a small artificial ecosystem. Two AI-driven mobile agents move through a field of uncertainty, chasing, avoiding, and responding to obstruction.

The work draws from chase games in children and primates, where movement carries play, hierarchy, and interpretation. Here the chase becomes a machine behavior that viewers can watch and disturb.

An interactive station allows viewers to place virtual obstacles. A simple intervention changes the agents' relation, making rule-setting visible as part of the work.

## Viewer Entry
The viewer first watches movement: two agents circling, pursuing, and losing each other inside a fog-like space. Then the viewer can add an obstacle. The system responds, and the chase changes. Observation becomes rule intervention.

## Apparatus
The installation combines AI-driven mobile agents, projection, screen feedback, and an interactive station. The fog-of-war environment limits clarity, so pursuit is shaped by partial perception. Viewer-placed obstacles change the conditions of the chase, turning the audience into a temporary designer of the agents' world.

## Sections
### Pursuit
The two agents create a loop of chase and response. Their movement gives the system its rhythm and makes interaction readable as behavior.

### Fog-of-War
The environment refuses full clarity. Mist and partial visibility make navigation uncertain, keeping attention on how the agents perceive and react.

### Obstacles
The interactive station lets viewers place virtual obstacles. The gesture is small, but it changes the rules that organize pursuit.

### Creator and Creation
The work turns rule-setting into an ethical and imaginative act. Viewers shape the agents' world and then watch the consequences unfold.

## Images
1. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/chasing-the-mist/02-fbe1bb43-2020.AI-Jetbot-.JPG - Two AI-driven mobile agents move through a fog-of-war environment.
2. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/chasing-the-mist/03-11a94d7f-1.gif - The agents chase and respond to one another, turning movement into a visible rule system.
3. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/chasing-the-mist/04-836242cf-2.gif - Viewers can place virtual obstacles that change the conditions of pursuit.
4. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/chasing-the-mist/05-13f9e6b9-faceb1406a62408b8ccff00e06cdb8d.jpg - Projection, screen, mobile agents, and visitor input form a small artificial ecosystem.
5. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/chasing-the-mist/01-5bbc12c9-4.JPG

## Videos
1. https://player.vimeo.com/video/860825770?h=7e968049ff&badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479

## Source Pages
- https://baoyangchen.com/Chasing-in-the-Fog-of-War