# Do Androids Dream of Electric Cows?

Canonical URL: https://baoyangchen.com/works/electric-cows/
Interactive page: https://baoyangchen.com/#work/electric-cows
Year: 2017
Category: xR Works
Medium: Virtual reality, custom tempered glass, projections

## Proposition
An adaptive lure promises open space while the body meets glass.

## Description
Do Androids Dream of Electric Cows? places a fully occlusive VR world inside a transparent glass maze. The headset offers horizon, distance, and pursuit. The room answers with hard surfaces.

An adaptive lure agent guides the visitor through the virtual field by staging opportunity rather than issuing command. It invites, redirects, and holds desire just out of reach. The body follows.

Spectators stand outside the maze and see what the wearer cannot: the glass, the floor signals, the rail pulses, the collision before it arrives. Guidance becomes private and public at once.

## Viewer Entry
A participant enters the maze, puts on the headset, and sees openness. The body moves toward what appears available, then meets a transparent limit. Around the maze, spectators read the glass, LED floor, pane projections, and rail signals. They may understand the system from outside, but the lure is felt from within.

## Apparatus
The installation couples a rigid glass grid with an adaptive reinforcement-learning lure agent. The headset shows an open virtual world and lure figures. The glass maze fixes physical constraint. LED floor imagery, pane projections, and overhead rail signals externalize parts of the policy for spectators. Collisions create visible ripples and social moments, turning algorithmic persuasion into bodily and public experience.

## Sections
### Open Horizon, Glass Limit
The headset gives the visitor a world that seems traversable. The glass maze keeps constraint visible to everyone except the immersed body at the moment of movement.

### Lure Agent
The lure does not command. It stages opportunity. Its slow glides, pauses, gestures, and peripheral invitations shape where the viewer wants to go.

### Public Signals
The floor, pane projections, and rail show fragments of policy state to bystanders. These signals make the system legible, but not fully knowable.

### Collision as Event
Impact is not treated as punishment. In the paper, collisions often become shared comic beats, binding the wearer and spectators inside the same scene.

### Legibility Paradox
Spectators may feel they understand the system from outside. Once inside the headset, that confidence changes. The work keeps the difference between seeing and being guided.

## Images
1. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/21-8054a50e-BCHEN_06.jpg - A transparent glass grid holds the physical limits of the VR environment in public view.
2. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/05-98d30194-BCHEN_01.jpg - The participant sees an open virtual field while the body moves inside fixed glass boundaries.
3. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/02-87243067-ecow_vr_1.jpg - The LED floor reflects the virtual world and translates collision into visible ripples.
4. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/03-fcb6b0fb-ecow_vr_2.jpg - Projections and overhead rail signals make parts of the lure policy readable to spectators.
5. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/04-becc2b98-ecow_vr_3.jpg
6. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/06-2d964d2b-ecow_vr_wh_2.JPG - The lure agent stages opportunity inside the headset, guiding movement through invitation rather than command.
7. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/01-318d1954-frontpage.jpg
8. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/07-c3f78b80-ecow_vr_wh_1.JPG
9. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/08-728427a7-ecow_vr_wh_5.JPG
10. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/09-9d3188a9-ecow_vr_wh_6.JPG
11. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/10-a530db06-VR_001.JPG
12. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/11-8a94bdee-VR_002.JPG
13. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/12-3c732448-VR_004.JPG
14. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/13-de80072d-VR_006.JPG
15. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/14-e542e752-VR_009.JPG
16. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/15-7a30f064-VR_011.JPG
17. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/16-92080815-VR_012.JPG
18. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/17-405635cb-BCHEN_02.jpg
19. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/18-f9719dcb-BCHEN_03.jpg
20. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/19-b706b1bc-BCHEN_04.jpg
21. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/20-570ae460-BCHEN_05.jpg
22. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/22-1e1939c2-BCHEN_07.jpg
23. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/23-ecc252b3-BCHEN_08.jpg
24. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/24-4178397c-BCHEN_09.jpg
25. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/25-47b6e2b6-ecow_k11_1.JPG
26. https://baoyangchen.com/original-site-media/electric-cows/26-f67ed626-ecow_k11_2.JPG

## Videos
1. https://player.vimeo.com/video/1122075759?h=cdf795f931&badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479

## Source Pages
- https://baoyangchen.com/Do-Android-Dream-of-Electric-Cows
- https://baoyangchen.com/ECows-Images