Author: Jeremy Owen Turner

Jeremy Owen Turner is currently a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University's School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) in Vancouver, Canada. Since 1996, Turner has developed an international portfolio as a performance artist, music composer, media-arts historian and art-critic within virtual worlds and video games. As Wirxli Flimflam, Turner co-founded the avatar performance art group, Second Front in 2006 and has also composed for the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse (2007-2008). Turner's academic history includes an MA about avatar-design in Second Life (2010) and an interdisciplinary BA that focused on both Art-History and Music Composition (1997). Turner's current PhD research speculates on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) discipline's relationship with aesthetics. This research explores developing visual and behavioral design heuristics for virtual agents (automated characters/NPCs) in virtual worlds and video games. These heuristics are derived from some key scholars in the field of Aesthetic Philosophy, including Immanuel Kant.