Ian Cheng — BOB — Bag of Beliefs

2018

Artists: Ian Cheng · Year: 2018 · Medium: Live AI-agent simulation — artificial-life character with evolving beliefs, behaviors, and social relations over time · Substrate: Custom AI architecture developed with Cheng's technical team; continuous runtime; collector interactions shape BOB's personality over time · Place: New York, USA · Institution: Gladstone Gallery (exhibition venue); Serpentine Galleries Ian Cheng's BOB (Bag of Beliefs), first exhibited in 2018 after his Emissaries trilogy, is an AI-agent character that runs continuously and develops over time. BOB has beliefs (probabilistic representations of the world), desires (goals that shape behavior), and memories (what has happened to it) — and its personality evolves through interactions with collectors and with the environment. Cheng has described BOB as a "digital creature" — a fictional entity whose ongoing existence is the artwork. The piece extends Cheng's live-simulation methodology (covered in the Emissaries entry) into a character-centered framework. Where Emissaries stages ecological simulations, BOB is a single individual agent whose development viewers can observe across time. The character has been exhibited at Gladstone Gallery, Serpentine Galleries, and multiple international venues; each exhibition advances BOB's life-story further. BOB is interesting as a bridge between the live-simulation tradition (Cheng's Emissaries, Karl Sims's evolutionary work) and the NFT-era ownership model. In 2021, Cheng sold a BOB instance as an NFT that gave its owner the right to interact with BOB directly and to participate in shaping its development. This bundling of AI agent and NFT ownership anticipated much of the subsequent AI-character NFT work. Cheng continues BOB's ongoing life alongside his other projects. Lore Cheng developed BOB's underlying AI architecture with a small technical team over approximately two years before the 2018 first exhibition. The character's religious framing — Cheng has described BOB in quasi-theological terms — reflects his explicit engagement with devotional and liturgical frameworks for digital entities. BOB has aged over the years of its continuous existence; collectors' interactions with it have had lasting effects on its personality. Sources • Cheng, Ian — iancheng.com • Gladstone Gallery — BOB exhibition records • Serpentine Galleries — BOB documentation