Lynn Hershman Leeson, Agent Ruby (1999-2002)

Web project with Flash and AIML chatbot

In Summer 2019, I was awarded an NYU Polonsky Internship in Digital Humanities to create treatment prototypes for the Adobe Flash elements in Agent Ruby, which is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). I was familiar with Agent Ruby from pre-program experience helping with analysis of the artwork’s AIML (artificial intelligence markup language) files in preparation for possible migration to a more sustainable AIML service. The Polonsky project focused on the Flash elements because of impending obsolescence due to suspension of Flash support on all current browsers after December 2020.

The artwork’s original Flash source files were limited to the compiled .swf format, with no available project files or asset files. The .swf files were opened and assessed with three different Flash decompiler programs, which aided in extracting and exporting assets like images, audio, and ActionScript text. The decompilers’ features were also tested to create Flash project files and automated migration of Agent Ruby’s opening animation to HTML and JavaScript. Documentation of the exported assets was created after assessment, which in some cases would be suitable for possible use in a manual migration project. The automated migrations from decompilers were considered unusable because of inconsistencies with the original Flash animation’s behaviors and/or appearance.

Prototypes of various manual migration methods were created using the exported asset files with methods in jQuery and JavaScript to reconstruct animation behaviors, and using Adobe Animate, a currently available program that has evolved from the functions of Flash. Each prototype was discussed with a collaborative supervisory team from NYU’s Computer Science department and SFMOMA’s conservation and curatorial staff, then evaluated in a matrix of essential properties to weigh their merits. Ultimately the prototypes all performed equally at the testing scale, so the conceptual implications of their performance methods (e.g. code-generated shapes and movement, versus still frames shown at timed intervals) were highlighted as concerns to be addressed in consultation with the artist.

Agent Ruby was migrated to HTML5 by SFMOMA in 2020-21, and relied on the documentation and exported assets from the Polonsky internship project.

Visit Agent Ruby at SFMOMA