robotic ecologies project
an upcoming publication and exhibition investigating the hybridization of intelligent autonomous agents (”mobile, agile, flexible and responsive systems”) with ecosystems and infrastructures situated at the edges of contemporary settlement patterns.
[shifting borders / virtual fences}
[interactive battlefields / phantom drones]
[dynamic bastions / seed banks, data vaults]
[predatory agricultures / harvestbots, energy nets]
[networked natures / dams, dykes, entropic resistance]
jason k. johnson - principal investigator
research support - the graham foundation, UMich TCAUP
dec 08 update - travel, research, documentation and interviews are currently underway
project synopsis: This is not just about machines that move. It is about groups of machines that can sense, plan and act with networked intelligence. We have named these new organizations “Robotic Ecologies”: promiscuous new environments brought forth by the rapid release of advanced computation into the physical realm. The ideas presented in this book are an attempt to understand, explore and interrogate these new technological (and some say living) territories. The work and essays were produced in collaboration with a small group of designers whose work engages robotics with varying degrees of complexity. The projects are as much about exposing the absurdities of our twenty-first century technological imperative as they are about celebrating their latent potential. We are clearly both terrified and thrilled by the rich and diverse territories emerging in the arts and sciences. The crossing of physical environments and robotics represents one of the most promising and perhaps exigent technological intersections in recent times. Robots are sensing, thinking and moving entities. They are different from most machines in that they are capable of intelligent behavior — the capacity to learn, adapt and act on their senses and intuitions. Groups of robots, or robotic ecologies, are unique in their capacity to work as an organized system: rather than merely acting on their individual desires, robotic ecologies can work collectively in swarms or packs. Without much fanfare, an extraordinary new phylum of intelligent machines is coming to life in laboratories, studios and machine shops across the planet. Designers are building and programming kinematic self-replicating machines, modular self-assembling robots, fields of sun-tracking robotic sunflowers, and the like. As Marshall McLuhan famously said, “First we build the tools, and then they build us.” The essays and projects presented in this book are about experimenting, exposing and exalting these new tools, processes and technologies. This project is about exploring what happens when endless arrays of intelligent machines come together to form and define the world around us.
