RADIO TELEVISION Hong Kong's latest employee is making waves. It might surprise passers-by with cheeky asides like 'didn't you get enough sleep last night?' - but there's no getting your own back. Enter its office, a multimedia laboratory, and its unique capabilities are manifest. It can recognise voices and re-configure the lab's computers and furniture to individual specifications at a command. SIGNAL, short for Selective Instant Generated Notions Artificial Laboratory, is a cybercharacter projected on to the walls and nearby corridor of RTHK's new Medialab - the world's first artificially intelligent, voice-activated media laboratory. SIGNAL, personified by its voice-synchronised projected orb, is the soul, as its creator puts it, behind a $1.5-million venture that represents the melding of cybertechnology and architecture, known as 'cybertecture'. The Hong Kong Government and RTHK believe they have developed artificially intelligent architecture which is like computers taking orders from a captain on the bridge of a spaceship, or Arthur C Clarke's and Stanley Kubrick's HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. 'Cybertecture is a design philosophy that marries information technology and architecture in a revolutionary symbiosis - one that is functional, practical and empowering,' says the project's architect, James Law, who claims to have coined the term, 'cybertecture'. At Medialab's entrance, which was officially opened by Chief Secretary for Administration Donald Tsang Yam-kuen on August 8, Law logs on to a touchscreen, at which point sliding doors automatically open to reveal a hi-tech ambience of black light and smoked glass walls and floor. He proceeds to sit down in the crescent-shaped, purple sofa. 'Excuse me SIGNAL,' Law says, and as soon as he speaks a microphone in the ceiling rotates towards the direction of his voice. 'Hello, please choose a command,' says SIGNAL, its orb projecting on to a screen and wall. 'Close curtain,' says Law. 'Is this command correct?' asks SIGNAL. 'Yes, correct.' 'Yes, understood,' and the curtain begins to enclose a section of the 400- square foot room, where seconds later, a concealed conference table will rise from the floor. SIGNAL's voice is a slightly synthesised version of Law's, which lends the scene a certain surrealism, as if Dr Frankenstein had donated part of his own body to his creation. Medialab, a project spearheaded by Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW), contains the latest audio-visual, digital-editing and Internet technology. Apart from being a showcase in which to hold conferences and impress guests, it serves as a training ground where employees can prepare for RTHK's move to hi-tech offices in Tseung Kwan O, slated for 2006, says Eric Ng Ka-lim, the head of technological development and training. SIGNAL understands more than 30 commands, from dimming lights to shifting cubicles via chain-driven cogs and ceiling tracks. It can also talk unprompted, detecting human presence in the hallway or lab via infrared devices, and, with a built-in calendar, can either remind you it's time to go home at 6pm, or sing a Christmas carol on December 25. Law calls them 'randomly generated personality traits'. 'As a piece of cybertecture, Medialab is a revolutionary way of tackling issues of flexible space and man-machine interface,' Law says. 'It is the first project in the world that has system integration of speech, acoustic, lighting and mechanical systems in one space, coherently operating under one artificial intelligence [AI].' Futurists may argue that SIGNAL doesn't truly exhibit AI, which is the capacity of a computer to perform tasks associated with the higher intellectual processes of humans, such as the ability to reason or learn from experience. Law agrees SIGNAL doesn't constitute actual AI, but he points out the software, created by local company Cybernation, does have learning features. SIGNAL learns a user's voice and its nuances over time, gaining greater accuracy of command recognition. It is also being updated to memorise users' personal details, nicknames and function preferences. On subsequent visits, SIGNAL will greet users by name, and advise them on the use of any technology in the room by cross-referencing to their preferences. SIGNAL also has a much wider performance potential, says Law. It could be linked to outside locations so that, for example, users could ask it to turn on the rice cooker at home when they're running late. SIGNAL's limits or potential notwithstanding, its wider implication is that it fundamentally questions how we use our limited resources of time and space. Space has been stereotyped, Law says, and he asks, why can't a home be an office, or a working space a living space? Also, intelligent machines, like automated amahs, may soon manage our homes, offices, schools and hospitals. 'The fact that the management of space can be a man-machine relationship is one which allows for the control of a building to be as intuitively mechanised as a person giving instructions to a butler,' says Law. Soon, the refrigerator might call up to inform you that it's out of milk. The Hong Kong-born Law has been involved with perhaps the world's most progressive example of residential cybertecture to date. He was recruited by a multimillionaire and technophile in Copenhagen, who contracted specialists around the world to build the home of tomorrow. The 12,000-sq ft, open-plan loft is a blank slate of living space devoid of specific designation - other than the bathrooms, which have glass that becomes transparent or translucent at the flick of a switch. Rather than rooms being defined by decor and amenities, the user decides how to occupy a given space at any time by activating either a conveyor belt or pneumatic tube to deliver objects of desire, be it a reading book or painting kit, from a central archive room. Hard and soft walls are retractable. Desire privacy in the dining room? Mechanised rollers unfurl from the ceiling. Want to crank up the music? Bring on the sound-proof partition. Occupants wear a kind of lapel pin that carries all their personal data and is automatically read by a computer. Return from work and the home knows what kind of music to play, and at what level you want the lights dimmed. This is courtesy of a wireless technology called Bluetooth that allows for two-way communication between computerised devices, and is already being used by Microsoft boss Bill Gates in his Seattle home. Such a home serves as a social experiment: as creatures of habit, how have we dictated architecture and to what degree will cybertecture dictate our habits as it forces us to reassess our lives? '[The Copenhagen owner] is crazy enough to put his family through an experiment,' says Law. It could certainly make for one hell of a shooting location for MTV's Real World. The Copenhagen project pushes the envelope and Medialab is deliberately space-age, but this is not the point of cybertecture, says Law. It is not about creating radical outward appearances or ramming technology down our throats, but simply making life more efficient and comfortable by using technology as a natural extension of our needs and desires. The Copenhagen loft is only one of 22 ongoing projects around the world. Law is involved in one with the United Nations, but confidentiality agreements prevent him from discussing it. He's accrued an impressive CV but has yet to turn 31. He was still in his 20s when he was made chief designer of Dickson Poon's $60-million Cyber Mall, which was completed last year. Law, who knew he wanted to be an architect at seven and was working for one at 13, lives much like his work: hi-tech and free of social confines. The technocrat is woken each morning by computer alarms that light up seven screens - three PCs, two laptops and two televisions - with the day's e-mail, CNBC, his favourite newspaper and ongoing projects. He spends two-thirds of his time travelling and works where and when he's inspired - or deadline dictates; the concept of weekdays or weekends doesn't apply. Law graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College in London, studying under Peter Cook, who helped come up with bubble city designs. He has worked for 'probably Japan's most famous female architect' and futurist, Itsuko Hasegawa. But he doesn't quite equate himself to being a bricks-and-clicks Clarke. 'I'm a futurist but not a visionary in the pure sense, someone who just postulates about the future. For me it's about building something or making ideas real. Dreams are possible, but one must dream properly. You can't get too far ahead of the curve.' He adds: 'My objective is to make a real thing. I turn down lots of projects that are too far out. I look at every project as a chance to build upon the one before it and tell clients that I won't repeat what I've already done.' Just as social commentators worry that technology leads to greater disparity between the wealthy and poor, the PC-haves and have-nots, it's easy to think cybertecture will only occupy the realm of the rich. But Law envisages its ultimate application in institutions such as hospitals and schools, and would like to focus on the emerging infrastructure of China. Law is also an architect of cyberspace: about half of his ongoing projects exist only in the virtual world and his conceptual dreams are many. Law says: 'In 100 years when we live on Mars and we want to know what's happening on Earth, we click it on - oh my God, I'm starting to sound like Arthur C Clarke.' Clarke presented the classic sci-fi doomsday scenario in which AI tries to conquer man. Likewise, maybe Law knows something the rest of us don't. As a safety precaution, the automation of Medialab's conference table was removed from SIGNAL's control. What, lest an employee accidentally spill their coffee and incur SIGNAL's wrath? 'We didn't want anybody to get hurt,' Law says. kennethhowe@scmp.com