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238 Socially Intelligent Agentsrience of them ultimately diverges as much as the two notions of embodimentin them differ. Experiencing simulated self-recognition in an IA is likely to notreinforce the sense of self in the human interactor at all, but rather counter itand provoke a relinquishing of selfhood in parallel with the process of recognizingan artificial self. This is because the simulation itself, the technologicalconstruction of the IA, situates it within the "ethos" of technology that imposesa possibly dehumanizing but always rationally utilitarian value onto its artifacts[4, pp. 38,50]. Which is to say that ordinary people, more or less unwittingly,experience autonomous artifacts through a disposition of what they wish technologyto do for them. They unconsciously attribute to the artifact, as to alltechnological apparati, the power to satisfy their desires.An IA will thus have a radically different impact than traditional kinds of art,although it may come closer to paralleling more recent experimental art that pursuesre-embodiment by engaging senses other than the visual. Vancouver-basedartist Elizabeth Van der Zaag’s interactive work Talk Nice could be approachedand analyzed as the latter, since the viewer is required to sit in a chair and talkthrough a microphone to a video projection, which then responds to the input.One could argue that the viewer is more physically aware of their own presencein the work because of these features. But Talk Nice is more accuratelydescribed as an artwork that behaves like an IA. From an IA research pointof view, Van der Zaag’s speaking/listening system is itself an embodied agentthrough its ability to interact with humans, so as to calculate and then communicatean assessment of human performance. Once the viewer has crossed thethreshold of reluctance (in my case) to speak aloud to a virtual other in a publicspace, the contest for mastery of the situation – human or machine – begins.Talk Nice uses SAY (Speak and Yell) software, created by the artist herself,which detects loudness and the pitch at the end of a sentence in the participant’svoice. The chair and microphone for participant input are located about ten feetfrom a video projection that shows two young women seated at a table, plusa floating red ball and a blue bar to the right of this scenario that reflects thepitch change in the participant’s voice (Fig. 1), and a red line along the bottomthat shows the amplitude or loudness of the voice. Sitting in the chair turns onthe microphone, whereupon the girls remark that someone is there and promptthe participant to speak. Their first response, which launches the "coachingsessions," is that the loudness of your voice is okay or not right. But the changein pitch at the very last second of your sentence is what counts, and so thecoaching videos continue with help in learning how to speak with an "upism."The interaction is set up as a game: the Talk Nice flow chart (Fig. 2) tracks thepathways through learning and subsequent moves into the chat of the BubbleTea Room and the goal of going to the cool Party.