Dramatic Expression in Opera, and Its Implications for Conversational Agents

This article has discussed principles, techniques, and methods of dramatic portrayal in opera, and their application to the development of embodied conversational agents. Investigations such as this complement studies of natural human behavior, and offer insights as to how to make such behavior understandable and interesting when adapted for use by embodied conversational agents. However, one should use caution in applying such lessons. The unique characteristics of computer-based media are still being identified and explored. In any case, one must always be careful about applying principles blindly to any artistic form. Such principles are post-hoc analysis of the intuitive skill of great artists; this was as true in Aristotle's day as it is today. We should not let structural principles stand in the way of injecting creativity into the design of ECAs. Opera at its best possesses an element of magic that is difficult to describe, much less analytically reconstruct. We can only hope to achieve a similar result with conversational agents.