Ken Rinaldo and Emotional Computing (#3)
By Roberta Alvarenga
Do I feel there is a danger to creating automatons that allow helpful prosocial manifestations? Certainly not. This is part of our symbiosis with our intelligent machines. A helper robot that vacuums our floors or carries us up stairs is a good thing. We must remember that the "just-in-time" economy of our global marketplace is the result of coordinated computers all over the world, which we cannot live without.
But we must simultaneously understand the ecological issues of machines, which can ceaselessly create other machines, so that machines can be eased into co evolutionary strategy to permit a coevolving technotope. One good example would be using materials, which are more biologically compatible and can degrade. Computers that degraded on the same time frame as Moore’s law would be one possibility. Recently we have discovered a way to make plastics conduct but in the process they also degrade more easily. This should be promoted and understood.
The job of future artists and designers is not going to create the new or faster machines but to understand instead how to create an ecology of machines that allows them to intertwine with the existing natural ecologies that already have existed for 3.8 billion years. I guess we can say these ecologies are time tested. I would like my artworks and artificial life artworks to engage these issues.
If you had the money, technology and resources, what would you like to create? and why?
Recently I have been excited by a number of ideas connecting in my brain. The first arises out of our unhealthy dependence on cars and the pollution they create converging with our overpopulation of the earth and our desire to live in suburbs to find ourselves in more "natural" environments.
The building and construction industry is a perfect example of an industry that is relying on old ways of building that we have brought forward for 100’s of years. The unnecessary dependence on wood for example can easily be replaced with concrete. I have been inventing and visualizing a device called the biobrick, which is an ecologically based module that allows us to build homes that are more sensitive to the natural flora and fauna that exists in different ecological zones. In essence, the biobrick would act as a kind of shelter and host, which would allow natural flora and fauna to exist in the skin of the brick. The biobrick would also allow the flora and fauna to access the waist streams from within the shelter/home.
In the process of doing research on these issues I discovered Ken Yeang’s book The Green Skyscraper and I began to create models of skyscrapers that would be energy efficient and allow us to leave more ecological systems, unfettered by human habitation. These skyscrapers would have passive solar capabilities and would be self-sufficient modules with wind turbines integrated into the structures.
It would be fantastic to set up an institute where artists, scientists and visionaries could come together and ask relevant questions about the direction of technology and what the implications of these technologies may have on the long-term health of our planet.
I am also excited by a new robotic art series of networked spiders that I have been creating and these new works will be part of my research into evolutionary robotics and machine intelligence.
What do you hope your work or the technology in ten years will allow you to achieve?
Have an artist created techno system that creates an actual symbiotic relationship between a biological creature and a machine, where the machines would intelligently understand the needs of that biological system and the biological system would also evolve to accept and need the technological system.
The Kiasma Museum in Helsinki, Finland commissioned your robotic sculpture installation, "Autopoiesis". Other than that, who else do you think would be interested in funding your work? and why?
Museums and festivals have shown tremendous interest in the work and I have been showing Autopoiesis around the world since it’s completion in 2000. Most recently, I completed a new work Augmented Fish Reality (2004) that allows Siamese Fighting Fish the ability to move their robotic vehicles anywhere in the room they like. This work was commissioned by Lille 2004 the cultural Capital of Europe for 2004 and was on display as part of a show curated by Richard Castelli called Robots.
Do you see your work taking on a functional role in society?
Art machines and installations are not functional in the traditional sense-of-the-word where they make a product , but art and research robots are a great place to explore, research and critique our current understanding of what intelligent machines can be.
I see the primary function of my work as a critique of current art practices and they are research, as well, into new interfaces and methodologies of manifesting artificial life programming and interspecies communications artworks.
They are also designed to create an aesthetic and physical experience where the viewer can ask questions about our relationship to natural and artificial life systems alike.
Roberta Alvarenga Is research scholar and author writing about the relationships between art, science and technology in Art and Technology at Catholic University of São Paulo — PUC. Brazil. www.robertaalvarenga.com
