Ken Rinaldo and Emotional Computing (#1)
By Roberta Alvarenga
In the past, concepts of artificial life robotics and notions of symbiosis between biological systems and technological systems have primarily been confined to the dialogues of research scientists. However, an exclusive dialogue of scientists has now become the object of the artistic practice and production of many international artists and this has opened exciting collaborations between artists and scientists, who engage the future of new forms of art.
In 2004, more than at any time in the recent past, we have seen artists’ studios evolving and changing into something more akin to scientific research laboratories. The American artist, theorist and author Ken Rinaldo (b.1958) is a prime example of this evolution and transformation in the arts. In visiting the Ohio State University Art and Technology program this last year as a visiting scholar, I had the opportunity to study robotics with Ken Rinaldo and view his working environment and studio practice.
Peering into his studio, scattered around the room one finds colorful electric cables of all sorts, microchips in all sizes and functions, electronic sensors, data books associated with the engineers shop, biology periodicals, batteries of all kinds and glass in shapes we would normally associate with a chemistry lab. In some of these glass containers are biological samples and in others, colorful Siamese fighting fish. While there are still signs of acrylic paint and paintbrushes under the desk, what dominates here are the three computers tethered to microcontrollers and a techno augmented artistic practice at it’s best.
Ken Rinaldo is known internationally for his large-scale robotic installations that explore the sometimes troubled relations between the organic and the inorganic. Ken Rinaldo is most interested in questioning and engaging what he calls, "the confluence and co-evolution between living and evolving technological material."
Working in the robotic and bio art field for over two decades, Rinaldo’s work proposes and questions ideas about the nature of life, man-machine symbiosis and communication between natural and/or artificial species. Ken Rinaldo is particularly interested in a form of art called transpecies communication, where communication is created between unique species (artificial or biological) and he has created some of the earliest works in this now emerging category of contemporary art and technology.
Among Rinaldo’s well-known works are the robotic sculptures Delicate Balance (1989) where a fish is allowed to drive a robotic car on a tight wire and Mediated Encounters, (1996) where two male Siamese Fighting Fish are given control of two robotic sculptures so they may visually interact across the gap of the glass bowls, which are hung from the robotic arms. This work allows normally aggressive Siamese-Fighting fish to move their robotic bowls while preventing them from fighting to the death, as they have been bred to do. In this work Rinaldo has imbued the robotic sensor system with a kind of techno fix for fish that have been bred to be more aggressive than they would normally be in the wild.
Rinaldo’s now well know robotic installation, Autopoiesis (2000), is one of the first examples of an artificial life-robotic art installation. In this installation, 15 robotic arms are able to evolve and adapt themselves in real time, to be most "fit" for the human environment, which changes throughout the installation. In this immersive and engaging environment, the robotic art effects the participant, who in turn effects the robots evolution and both are in involved in a "grand feedback loop of one sensing and responding to the other." What is unique about Rinaldo’s Autopoiesis is that the robots are built with Cabernet Sauvignon grape vines, which makes them marvelously soft, approachable, and lifelike. The Chicago critic Victor Casady has said in regards to Rinaldo’s installation Flickering Signifiers (1998) that "Rinaldo has the soul of an artist and the hands of an engineer."
In a recent interview which I conducted with Ken Rinaldo in his studio for the Brazilian magazine Tr�pico he pointed out the process and characteristics of his artistic production reflecting on his concerns, surrounding the art and science of "emotional computing".
Ken Rinaldo believes that contemporary research into the robotic art field must look to natural models that point to symbiosis between natural systems and technological systems and this negates the assumption of the predominance of the inorganic over the organic.
When did you begin working on robotic sculpture installations?
I began working with kinetic sculpture in 1984 and robotic installation in 1987 though I recall as a child rigging my bedroom into the haunted house for our friends. As a ten year old, I was able to view Jean Dupuy’s Heart Beats Dust at the Brooklyn Museum and this work influenced me greatly along with Alexander Calder’s mobiles. My early art works were metaphorical ruminations on the illusive nature of time. My move toward robotics began after a challenging critique where I realized that a passive viewer could be transformed into an active participant in discovering and revealing the ideas inherent in the artwork and this could add an emotional aspect to receiving the conceptual ideas, which may reside in the works.
What are the ideas behind your installations?
My works vary greatly based on the ideas explored. My primary interest is looking at ideas surrounding the cultural notion of a "living system" and thinking how these relate to a co-evolution of humans and their intelligent machines. Machines and the artificial sensors have become extended and mediated senses and this "seeing through the machine" has important implications for what and how we see. I think it also imposes a structural movement toward certain kinds of narratives and as tools influence any ideas, technologically mediated tools, also influence and help to structure the ideas that can arise out of engaging these materials.
What technologies do you choose to use in your artworks?
I use a number of technologies to reveal the ideas in the work. The work is about understanding the nature, the use and existence of technology in our lives and how these technologies have implications for who we are and how we interact with each other and the natural world around us. The work is also about critiquing the implications of the technologies as they insert themselves unfettered into our daily lives and at deeper levels of our sensorium. TV is one good example explored in my work Mediated Encounters (1998) in which I explore the addictive nature of television light in relation to our obsessive consumerist behavior.
I choose technology the way I would choose any material as a sculptor. All materials technological or biological have a language, which is created through our collective cultural associations to that material. The projected video narrative for example and our relation to this technology is profoundly different to an embodied physical aspect that is inherent in a robotic installation or activated environment. One is virtual and generally narrative and one is nonlinear and physical.
The biological material and technological material I choose to use in the works, like grapevines, branches, motors, microchips, programming, living plants and fish underline the subtext of much of much of my work, which is about finding a delicate rapprochement between natural and technological systems and I hope his asserts the notion of a possible and necessary co evolution.
What are some of your artistic and scientific influences?
My influences are vast and varied and come from written articulations about science, ecology, architecture, biology, contemporary art and theory. I have been influenced by the philosophy of science from the theorists Donna Harrraway who talks about the narratives of science and how they inform our notions of truth. I have also been inspired by the writer Rachel Carson in Silent Spring in which she was able to define the unexpected consequences to the use of DDT in damaging bird populations. I am also excited by just observing the communication of ants, birds the beauty and intertwined complexity of the natural world that surround us. This is my greatest inspiration.
I began my research by studying biology as a teen and as a college student I studied living systems theory with James Greer Miller, at the University of California Santa Barbara. This was an important influence for me as we were applying living systems models to analyze the health of organizations. To think of an organization, as a living system, was an epiphany. Later, when I began to study for my MFA in the Conceptual arts program at San Francisco State University, I was inspired by artists such as Marcel Duchamp who tells us that context is everything.
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