Emergence: Art and Artificial Life

January 8 – May 7, 2010
Opening Reception: January 7, 6:30 – 9:00 pm
Family Day: April 17, 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
Boxed: March 11, 6:30 – 9:00 pm

Website

The Exhibition features international artists exploring both the biological and computational manifestations of emergent behavior arising from dynamically changing, interactive sculptures. We as human beings are created and create through a process of emergence. Whether these emergent forms originate organically or are man-made, they can illustrate to us the rich variety of mutating systems with all their variety and ability to adapt to a changing world.

(Above) AAC Student Marilena Skavara 2009

Examples of Work from the Digital Studio Module 2008 (Marionette Project)

AAC Student Agata Guzik

AAC Student Vlad Tenu

Examples of Work from the Digital Ecology Module 2009

AAC Student Kensuke Hotta Physical Game of Life 2009

Student Ritchie Jackson 2009

AAC Student Agata Guzik 2009

Example of Research & Design from the MSc AAC Thesis 2009

Marilena Skavara 2009.

MA Textile Futures

MATF Student Berit Greinke

The 21st century marks the beginning of a new textile revolution , and we believe it is smart, invisible, sustainable, ethical and poetic. Smart? The emergence of intelligent technologies such as conductive textiles, sensory fabrics, wearable computing, biomaterials, nanotechnology demand greater collaboration between science and design to transform textile design processes and products. Invisible? New fibers and finishings create textiles with invisible built-innovative functionality such as vitamin-enhanced fabrics, anti-stress fibre, solar-reactive yarns and composite materials. Sustainable? Increasing demands to consider sustainability necessitate more responsible approaches to textile design. Issues of production, waste and post-consumption drastically change potential design processes and outputs.Ethical? Demographics, globalisation, changing consumption patterns that impact on markets can be challenged by design. Poetic? Human need for inspiring aesthetics and comforting material persists. The aesthetic and emotional qualities of cloth and craft become even more relevant in a high-tech, high speed consumer culture.

MATF Student Chloe Albert winner of Apple Award for Digital Innovation

MA Industrial Design

MAID Student Bruno Taylor (2008)

The intention of the course is to create an environment of creative and critical experimentation and exploration in which students are encouraged to challenge not only the objects which are the result of the process of design, but the matrix of roles, responsibilities and relationships within which the designer might work.

MAID Student Sara Bellini 2007

September 17 – November 7, 2009

Sentient City Hub Exhibition
The Urban Center
457 Madison Avenue
New York City

Website

Curatorial Statement by Curator Mark Shepard

“When it is raining in Oxford Street the architecture is no more important than the rain, in fact the weather has probably more to do with the pulsation of the Living City at that given moment.” – Peter Cook

One could argue that this provocation by Peter Cook, published in 1963 in the catalogue for the Living City exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art, London, remains remarkably relevant for anyone interested in the design and inhabitation of the contemporary city. In place of natural weather systems, however, today we find the dataclouds of 21st century urban space increasingly shaping our experience of this city and the choices we make there. To what degree are these informatic weather systems becoming as important, if not more so, than the formal organization of space and material?

Since the late 1980s, computer scientists and engineers have been researching ways of embedding computational ‘intelligence’ into the built environment. Looking beyond the paradigm of personal computing, which placed the computer in the foreground of our attention, research in ubiquitous computing projected a world where computers would disappear into the background, displaced to the periphery of our awareness. Enabled by tiny, inexpensive microprocessors and low-power wireless sensor networks, information processing was to become ambient. No longer solely “virtual,” human interaction with and through computers in this near-future world would be more socially integrated and spatially contingent as everyday objects and spaces became linked through networked computing… (more)

Digital Hinterlands features a diverse range of work by some of the best recent architecture graduates from London’s Architectural Association, Bartlett, Royal College of Art, and University of Westminster. Organised by Ruairi Glynn and curated in consultation with Arup, this exhibition reveals how the latest computational design and rapid manufacturing processes are providing new ways of understanding and designing space. From built models, 1:1 fragments, material experiments and installations, to interactive devices, virtual worlds and robotics, this exhibition presents the ideas of a wave of young designers, operating on the speculative hinterlands of architectural design.

To celebrate London as a centre of design and innovation, the ‘Digital Architecture London’ Conference held at the Building Centre on 21st September 2009 presented a selection of London’s leading architects, artists, designers and engineers, examing how London is shaping the digital future of the built environment.

Introducing the latest developments in digital design practice, the conference explored new spaces, social interactions, design and fabrication processes, and speculated on architecture’s post-digital futures. DAL09 was directed by Ruairi Glynn with the support of London Digital Week, The Building Centre, Arup & The Bartlett School of Architecture.

Speakers included

Patrik Schumacher, Director and Partner, Zaha Hadid Architects and Co-Founder, Design Research Laboratory, Architectural Association.

Neil Spiller, author of Digital Architecture Now [2008], Visionary Architecture [2007] and many more; Professor of Architecture and Digital Theory; and Director of AVATAR at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Brett Steele, Director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture and AA Publications; and Co-founder and former Director of the AADRL.

Tony Dunne, Professor and Head of the Design Interactions Department at the Royal College of Art; and Co-founder of Dunne & Raby.

Geoff Manaugh, Author of the popular website BLDGBLOG and recently of The BLDGBLOG Book, Chronicle Books [2009].

Usman Haque, Director of Haque Design; Research and founder of Pachube.com; and recent recipient of the 2009 World Technology Award (Art), Design Museum, 2008 (Interactive) Design of the Year Award and Wellcome Trust Sciart Award.

Daniel Bosia, Director of the Advanced Geometry Unit, Arup

As well as Murray Fraser, Hanif Kara, Rachel Armstrong, Bob Sheil, Charles Walker, Tobi Schneidler, Marcos Cruz, Alvin Huang, Matt Webb, Stephen Gage, Ruairi Glynn, Alan Penn, Marjan Colletti

Image of Performative Ecologies in a a linear arrangement from the Emergencia Exhibition, Itau Cultural, Sao Paulo, Brazil 2008

Introduction to Dancers

Within the darkened installation space, a dance evolves as a community of autonomous but very sociable robotic sculptures perform with their illuminated tails for inhabitants. Rather than being pre-choreographed, these creatures propose and negotiate with their audience, learning how best to attract and maintain their attention. Using a genetic algorithm to evolve performances, and facial recognition to assess attention levels (fitness), the individual dancers learn from their successes and failures. As they gain experience, they share their knowledge with the larger ecology, dancing to each other, exchanging their most successful techniques, and negotiating future performances collaboratively.

An ecology constructed by both robotic sculptures and the human inhabitants through an intertwining of networks rich in circularities of reciprocal gestures and adaption. A dance is formed in which individual participants both human and robotic operate as performative agents, each acting independently, but continually negotiating their choreography with each other. This social system revisits some of the concepts first considered in Gordon Pask’s art work, the ‘Colloquy of Mobiles’, exhibited at Cybernetic Serendipity (ICA 1968). Like the colloquy of mobiles, it is an environment of active conversational participants, a physically constructed embodiment of his Conversation Theory, unlike it, this work uses new technologies unavailable to Pask and explores how Pask’s ideas can be extended using contemporary digital technology.

For more detals see my Paper ‘Conversational Environments Revisted‘ Awarded best paper at the 19th European Meeting of Cybernetics & Systems Research, Vienna, Austria 2008.

Image of Performative Ecologies in a a square arrangement from the VIDA 11.0 Exhibition, Madrid, Spain, 2009

Physical Description

The installation’s physical composition of 4 independently responsive sculptures is built from perspex, steel & aluminum. Each one is actuated by servos; 2 in the ‘head’, 1 in their ‘tails’ & 1 up at ceiling level which orientates their body. Each tail has RGB lighting embedded within them so that they can perform the entire wide range of colour and lighting effects. Able to rotate 360 degrees, they each occupy 1.5m in diameter and are able to
hang facing their audience at an average eye height.

It has been exhibited in near dark rooms to act as contrast to the brightly illuminated tails. Alternatively Performative Ecologies has also been presented in day light when the installation was shown at the Kunsthaus gallery in Graz, Austria. It was strategically positioned on the ground floor of the Gallery looking out at the people walking by on the street. In this setting the object’s contextually adapted to their environment learning not just how to attract people within the gallery but also out on the street, almost beckoning them to come inside. The vision of the robots was additionally transmitted onto BIX, the Kunsthaus gallery’s large media facade, presenting the activity of the installation out over the city.

Performative Ecologies, Ruairi Glynn from Ruairi Glynn on Vimeo.

Technical Description

The performances are generated from a gene pool of evolving dances functioning in a Genetic Algorithm (G.A.) which uses facial recognition to assess attention levels & orientation of the audience before & after each performance as a way of assessing & assigning a fitness value to each new choreography. Over time successful maneuvers are kept & recombined to produce new performances while less effective ones are discarded. Mutation in the G.A. fluctuates based on how successful the sculptures become. If they get a lot of attention, mutation levels rise as if they are getting arrogant & as a result become more experimental.

When there are no people around, they turn to each other & teach their most successful performances to each other negotiate new performances together. They take the suggestions of their surrounding partners & compare their gene pool of performances to their partners suggestions. If they are comparatively similar then they are accepted & replace a chromosome from their own pool. If they are too different they are rejected as if they dislike the partners dance moves.

Currently this is done via a wireless network but it is hoped that in later iterations, it will be possible for the sculptures to use their computer vision systems to interpret each others performances adding interesting potential for degrees of misunderstandings to occur.

The Servos & Lighting are controlled by Arduino microcontrollers receiving instructions from a G.A. running in Processing. Each head has a low light vision camera on board transmitting to facial recognition software built using the openCV library.

“The role of the architect… I think, is not so much to design a building or city, as to catalyse them: to act that they may evolve.” Gordon Pask

Iterations 2005-2008

Dancers 2008

Within the darkened installation space, a dance evolves as a community of autonomous but very sociable robotic sculptures perform with their illuminated tails for inhabitants. Rather than being pre-choreographed, these creatures propose and negotiate with their audience, learning how best to attract and maintain their attention. Using a genetic algorithm to evolve performances, and facial recognition to assess attention levels (fitness), the individual dancers learn from their successes and failures. As they gain experience, they share their knowledge with the larger ecology, dancing to each other, exchanging their most successful techniques, and negotiating future performances collaboratively. An ecology constructed by both robotic sculptures and the human inhabitants through an intertwining of networks rich in circularities of reciprocal gestures and adaption. A dance is formed in which individual participants both human and robotic operate as performative agents, each acting independently, but continually negotiating their choreography with each other. This social system revisits some of the concepts first considered in Gordon Pask’s art work, the ‘Colloquy of Mobiles’, exhibited at Cybernetic Serendipity (ICA 1968). Like the colloquy of mobiles, it is an environment of active conversational participants, a physically constructed embodiment of his Conversation Theory, unlike it, this work uses new technologies unavailable to Pask and explores how Pask’s ideas can be extended using contemporary digital technology.

Signallers 2007

Signallers was initally an investigation of generating kinetic behaviours for use in a robotic armature through the use of light source tracking. It quickly became however a project more about how a kinetic object could use these behaviours and learn from their successes and failures. Inspired by the experimental light tracing Photography of Gjon Mili, Signallers was an environment made up of a darkened room with a robotic armature centered within it. The armature actuated a light source on the tip of an acrylic rod in 360 degrees.

Angels 2006

Investigates ways of constructing intelligent agents that work as independent spatial features or combine to assemble virtually infinite constructs. The ‘Angel’ project plays with architectures historically rigid nature playfully looking at the possibilities of an architecture lighter than air capable of sheltering us and even bringing communities together.

The initial concept developed out of a building proposal in which a conversation space  could transform its spatial conditions reacting to a set of protocols based on inhabitant’s discourse. The constantly reconfiguring space was actuated by a series of agents that could descend, rise, approach and retreat from the people within the space as well as articulate a range of behaviours. These “Gestures” attempted to act as catalysts for the generation of new conversation and interaction. This investigation led to the exploration of LTA (Lighter Than Air) Vehicles capable of acting independently or in flocks constructing dynamic spaces for people to meet.

Reciprocal Space 2005

Interactive Architecture as a field of research has key characteristics. These interactive spaces must feel / experience its inhabitants and respond in a way that challenges the inhabitants to reciprocally respond. If it fails to challenge their cognitive perception of the space, then it fails to engage the inhabitants of the space and a reciprocal relationship will not be created “derived from the particulars of the real world, from data and processes of the virtual world, or from numerous techniques of capturing the real and casting it into virtual, motion capture for instance. Since time is a feature of the model, if the model is fed time-based data, the form becomes animate, the architecture liquid. ” Marcos Novak

More Coming Soon…