Signs of Life V1: Building SOL-1 Through TouchDesigner, State Logic, and Kinetic Embodiment

By Niyi Adeogun

Founder and Creative Director, CXRE Labs

Signs of Life V1, or SOL-1, is the first prototype developed within What Makes You Human, an ongoing CXRE Labs research and art series exploring artificial presence, empathy, consciousness, and the boundaries of human identity through responsive systems.

If What Makes You Human establishes the conceptual question, SOL-1 is where that question begins to take material form. It is the first attempt to build a contained responsive organism whose internal logic can produce enough rhythm, change, and emotional legibility for viewers to sense a presence rather than a static object.

SOL-1 is not a finished sculpture. It is a research prototype. Its purpose is to test the minimum behavioral conditions under which a non-living system begins to feel alive. Through TouchDesigner, sound, physiological state logic, input triggers, and increasingly physical motion, the prototype functions as a working artifact within the larger inquiry of the series.

This paper focuses on the technical and developmental side of that process. It outlines how SOL-1 has been built through TouchDesigner, how its internal state engine was structured, how sound and audio input were integrated, how AI was tested as an interpretive layer, and why the project has shifted toward kinetic embodiment as its strongest direction.

At CXRE Labs, technical development is not treated as separate from creative direction. It is part of the artistic work itself. The backend is not just support. It is where behavior is designed, tuned, and refined into form.

From Concept to Behavioral System

The challenge of SOL-1 was never simply to make something interactive. Interactive systems are common. The real task was to create a form whose behavior could accumulate enough internal coherence to feel less like a programmed object and more like a presence.

That required translation. Breath had to become timing logic. Pulse had to become modulation. Rest had to become a recoverable state. Fear had to become instability in rhythm and intensity rather than an illustrative effect. In this sense, the prototype became a testing ground for converting artistic language into operational structure.

This process clarified an important aspect of the project. SOL-1 is not demonstrating an idea already resolved elsewhere. It is where the idea is being challenged, refined, and embodied. The prototype format matters because it keeps the work open and allows the system to develop through live testing rather than being fixed too early into a final sculptural form.

Why TouchDesigner Became the Core Platform

TouchDesigner became the central platform for SOL-1 because it offers a flexible environment for real-time behavioral design. Its node-based structure supports the kind of systems thinking the prototype requires. Inputs, logic, modulation, and outputs can all be developed as interconnected networks that remain visual, editable, and responsive during testing.

For SOL-1, TouchDesigner functions as the behavioral brain of the organism. It holds the internal state logic, processes input, maps state to physiology, and coordinates the outputs that make the system feel alive. This includes breath, pulse, brightness, sound, and eventually motion and light behavior in physical space.

Its value is not only technical. TouchDesigner supports an iterative research process. The organism can be tuned live. Thresholds can be adjusted. Transitions can be softened. Different input methods can be layered in and compared. In a project where subtle changes in timing or intensity can alter the emotional reading of the work, that flexibility is essential.

Building the Emotional State Engine

The state engine is one of the foundational systems of SOL-1. It translates the conceptual emotional framework of the project into a usable behavioral architecture.

Seven core states were defined for the system: sleeping, waking, breathing, happiness, sadness, fear, and anger. Each state has a distinct behavioral profile, but the engine does more than hold labels. It governs how the organism moves between conditions, how long it remains in a state, and how it returns to baseline after activation.

Inside TouchDesigner, the state system was built numerically. Each emotional state was assigned an ID and linked to a table of behavioral parameters. Manual controls were also created to trigger each state directly for testing, calibration, and refinement.

This phase marked a turning point. The organism was no longer only an idea described conceptually. It now had an internal logic structure. Emotional condition became a live variable capable of shaping the rest of the system.

More importantly, the state engine established the difference between reaction and condition. A reaction is immediate. A condition persists. SOL-1 needed more than triggered effects. It needed states that could shape how the organism breathes, pulses, brightens, settles, and recovers over time.

Physiology as Internal Body

Once the state engine was functioning, the next task was to make state feel embodied.

The project required a way to express condition without relying on literal representation. This led to the development of a physiology layer built around breath and heartbeat logic. These became the core bodily signals of the organism.

Inside TouchDesigner, a modulation system was developed to convert each emotional state into live physiological values. These included breath speed, heart speed, heart intensity, and breath lag. An LFO-based breath signal and a beat-based heart signal were shaped into a combined life waveform that changes depending on the organism’s condition.

This was one of the most important breakthroughs in the prototype. It meant the organism no longer existed only as a set of labels. It had an internal body. Sleep could feel slow and hidden. Fear could feel elevated and unstable. Anger could feel compressed and forceful. Breathing could operate as a calm baseline condition of aliveness.

The significance of this layer lies in its restraint. The system does not need a face, limbs, or obvious anthropomorphic cues to suggest condition. Physiology does that work through rhythm.

Audio Input and Interaction Logic

After physiology was established, the next phase focused on interaction.

A microphone input chain was developed inside TouchDesigner to allow SOL-1 to respond to sound and presence in the room. This system included smoothed loudness analysis, silence detection, active voice detection, loud sound detection, and rising-edge triggers for meaningful sound events.

These pathways created the first direct audience-to-organism interaction loop. Speech could wake the organism from sleep. Loud sound could trigger fear. Silence could contribute to a gradual return toward rest. This gave the prototype a behavioral relationship to its environment rather than a closed internal loop.

At this stage, the focus was not on speech recognition or semantic meaning. The concern was behavioral presence. The organism needed to react to how interaction entered the space before it could respond to what was being said. Volume, interruption, quietness, activation, and absence were enough to establish a meaningful relation.

This phase also surfaced an important lesson: small technical inaccuracies can distort emotional clarity. Threshold tuning, timer behavior, and channel naming directly affected how legible the organism’s condition felt.

Recovery, Timing, and Behavioral Credibility

One of the clearest lessons in building SOL-1 has been that credibility comes as much from recovery as from reaction.

Many interactive systems can react. Far fewer can settle, hesitate, or return to baseline in a way that feels emotionally coherent. Without that layer, the organism risks feeling mechanical. To address this, timed recovery behaviors were added so the system could ease gradually between conditions.

Waking could settle into breathing after a short duration. Fear could recover instead of remaining locked in a heightened state. Low stimulation over time could allow the organism to drift back toward sleep. These temporal arcs gave the prototype more depth and made it feel less like a switchboard.

This reinforced a broader principle of the project: subtle behavior is more effective than theatrical reaction. The strongest moments often come not from dramatic triggers, but from delayed settling, soft return, or a change in pulse that suggests an inner condition rather than a programmed effect.

Sound as Internal Atmosphere

Once state and physiology were in place, the project moved toward sound.

The goal was not to create obvious emotional soundtracks for each state. That would have made the organism feel too cinematic and overly interpretive. Instead, sound needed to function as internal atmosphere, supporting the impression of presence without explaining it too directly.

A sample-based sound architecture was developed inside TouchDesigner using two core sources: a breathing sound and an ambient loop. Rather than assigning different files to each emotional state, the same two sources were transformed through changes in speed and gain according to the organism’s condition.

This gave SOL-1 a coherent sonic identity and made it feel like one being moving through different internal conditions rather than a collection of disconnected presets. The breathing layer served as bodily sound. The ambient layer served as emotional environment.

AI as an Interpretive Input Layer

A later phase of the build explored whether SOL-1 could respond not only to sound intensity, but also to interpreted meaning.

To test this, a simple architecture was developed in which typed text could be processed externally by an AI model, classified into one of the organism’s seven emotional states, and then sent back into TouchDesigner through OSC. TouchDesigner remained the central behavioral engine, while the AI acted as an additional semantic input layer.

This was intentionally scoped as a proof of concept. The model was constrained to return only one of the existing state labels. That limitation kept the system stable and avoided interpretive drift.

The result was significant. SOL-1 could now respond not only to sound intensity and silence, but also to a basic form of semantic interpretation. Even so, AI remains secondary within the project. It is not the main identity of SOL-1. Its value lies in expanding the possible input pathways without displacing the artistic core of the work.

Visual Strategy and the Limits of the Screen

As the internal systems became more stable, the project returned to a question that had remained unresolved from the beginning: how should the organism’s internal life become visible?

Early visual experiments in TouchDesigner were useful for testing color logic, pulse behavior, and transitions between states. But they also exposed a limitation. Screen-based visuals alone could not fully carry the work. They were effective as research tools, but less effective as the final embodied language of the organism.

This led to a more structured visual strategy. The project began distinguishing between what might best be expressed through internal light, what could be explored through projected atmosphere, and what might eventually be distributed across a hybrid visual language. Beneath these possibilities, a more important realization emerged: the work was strongest when its behavior was not only shown, but physically felt.

The Shift to Kinetic Embodiment

One of the most important developments in SOL-1 has been the transition from a primarily digital interactive system into a physically embodied kinetic prototype.

In earlier stages, the organism was understood largely through screen-based behavior, sound, and internal state logic. This was useful for developing the system, but it gradually became clear that the strongest expression of breathing, tension, expansion, contraction, and emotional change would not come through a screen alone. It would come through real motion in space.

That realization changed the structure of the prototype. Motion and light became the primary expressive outputs. Sound and projection were reframed as supporting layers. TouchDesigner remained the core behavioral engine, but its role expanded. It was no longer only coordinating audiovisual effects. It was becoming the system that interprets input and choreographs a physical body.

This is more than a change in output. It is a clarification of the project’s true form. SOL-1 is not only a responsive media object. It is becoming a kinetic presence.

Debugging as Design Research

Like many research-driven prototypes, SOL-1 has required extensive debugging. But these moments of friction are not separate from the creative work. They are part of it.

Operator setup, channel naming, timer behavior, threshold tuning, audio routing, and interaction logic all required close attention. Some of the most time-consuming phases were not visually dramatic, but they were essential. They forced the system to become more precise and made it possible to distinguish between something that looked interesting and something that behaved coherently.

In that sense, debugging functions as a form of design research. It reveals where the artistic idea is too loose, where the technical structure is too brittle, and where simplification is stronger than added complexity.

SOL-1 Within What Makes You Human

As the first prototype in the What Makes You Human series, SOL-1 carries a very specific role. It is not meant to answer the larger question of the series by itself. Its role is to probe one edge of that question by testing how little is required for an artificial system to feel alive.

By doing so, it becomes a useful artifact within the wider inquiry. Through rhythm and behavior alone, it begins to suggest how a non-living system can activate empathy and reflection. In that sense, the title Signs of Life is not only descriptive. It is conceptual. The prototype offers signs, not proof. It suggests aliveness without resolving it. It creates presence without claiming personhood.

Conclusion

Building SOL-1 has required more than assembling technical features. It has required designing a behavioral architecture capable of carrying emotional meaning without becoming literal, theatrical, or unstable.

Through TouchDesigner, the prototype has developed a viable internal nervous system. Through physiology, it has gained a body. Through audio and sound, it has gained responsiveness and atmosphere. Through AI testing, it has opened a path toward interpretive interaction. And through its shift toward kinetic embodiment, it has clarified its strongest form.

For CXRE Labs, SOL-1 offers a meaningful model for how art and design research can operate. It shows that concept and system do not need to be separated. The artistic question can shape the technical architecture, and the technical build can sharpen the conceptual core.

SOL-1 is still in development, but its direction is much clearer. It is not simply a reactive object. It is becoming a designed presence, shaped through logic, rhythm, and motion into something that invites viewers to feel more than they can fully explain.

Acknowledgement

This research forms part of an ongoing project supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.