Adaptive Evolutionary Robotics

Hod Lipson demonstrates a few of his little robots, which have the ability to learn, understand themselves and self-replicate. At the root of this uncanny demo is a deep inquiry into the nature of how humans and living beings learn and evolve, and how we might harness these processes to make things that learn and evolve. via the very interesting spatialrobots

Add comment April 11th, 2008 Interactive Architecture

Glow Positioning System - Ashok Sukumaran

A simple concept but i think quite engaging, “Glow Positioning System“, an installation by Ashok Sukumaran, installed in Bombay in 2005 enables the occupants of the central space of the site to use a hand-crank to “scroll” the surrounding architecture using light. “Lights patterns travel between buildings, across roads and onto trees and lamp posts, forming an image-scape that is starkly visible at night.”

See Film here

“It allows the physical length of the view to become a chronological one- to be viewed at a speed determined by the user. The ring responds to panoramic desire, the age-old search for an image to immerse our selves in. From Cycloramas to VR (via panoramic traditions in painting and photography), the “surround view ” is a familiar presence in both urban and cinematic manifestoes. Of course, here the city surrounds us already. We just connect some dots, and look again.”

Add comment April 10th, 2008 Interactive Architecture

Arthur Ganson

Arthur Ganson has been a great inspiration to me. His artistic and engineering skill is articulated with great humour and weightlessness. I just thought I’d put a few videos I found online up here but I recommend the DVD if you really want to see the detail in his work.

Self-described as a cross between a mechanical engineer and a choreographer, Arthur Ganson creates contraptions composed of a range of materials from delicate wire to welded steel and concrete. Most are viewer-activated or driven by electric motors. All are driven by a wry sense of humor or a probing philosophical concept.

“When making a sculpture,” Ganson says, “It’s always a challenge to say enough but not say too much, to coax with some kind of recognizable bait, then leave the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions and thereby find personal meaning.”

Moving objects are playfully linked by intention and subject in A Child and a Ball, which entails an active child mesmerized by a moving ball. In Machine with Wishbone, a real chicken wishbone pulls the very mechanism responsible for its movement. Another sculpture writes the word “Faster” as it is pushed. Other works explore the nature of oiled surfaces, object manipulation, slow explosions, and the organic implications of slow moving roller chain.

In a profile of Ganson in Smithsonian Magazine, David Sims described the sculptor’s work as “retrotechnology with a nineteenth-century quality…. No lasers, no subminiaturized computer wizardry. What you see is what you get,” and, Sims added, ‘People generally get what they see because there are so many different points of entry, an end result of the playful Ganson mind….Kids love Machine with Wishbone because it’s funny, odd, and ingenious. Many adults, on the other hand, see pathos and tragedy as the enslaved little bone drags the clanking contraption behind it. Rube Goldberg meets Jean-Paul Sartre.”

1 comment April 9th, 2008 Interactive Architecture

Swarming Structures

I have an ongoing interest in swarming structures that goes back to my Angels, Flying Reconfigurable Architecture work which I did at the Bartlett a couple of years ago. Going from concept to real truely swarming LTA vehicles is another story but these developments in mobile robotics are interesting glimpses at a possible world made up of ecologies of architectural fragments, whether at a nano or larger scale that. Above is a team of “swarm-bots” negotiating a terrain outside a laboratory in Brussels, Belgium.

Each Swarm-bot is 19 centimetres high, has a rotating turret, a claw-like gripper and moves using a combination of caterpillar tracks and wheels. Each also has a basic computer and is loaded with the same software.

The simple rules laid out in this software allow the robots to perform complex actions as a group. A swarm of ants uses a similar strategy to tackle difficult jobs like carrying a large object. See Film

A red color ring tells others, “Grab me;” blue means “stay away.” Scientists study ant colonies, bird flocks, mammal herds, and fish schools to understand the simple genius of such animal swarms.

Add comment April 8th, 2008 Interactive Architecture

Strategic Boredom - Molly Wright Steenson

Here’s a great lecture by Molly Wright Steenson on Strategic Bordom. There’s a write up here, by Regine on wmmna from a month ago and now there’s a full video of the lecture online - see below. Molly is currently completing a PhD in Architecture at the Princeton. She is also an interaction designer and design researcher with roots in web, mobile and service design. For more information check her blog out active social plastic here. Part of the talk looks at the important work explored by Gordon Pask in the 1950’s and 60’s on Boredom as a generator for interaction. As I have been doing all week, I will continue to shamelessly plug the current exhibition running in Vienna “Pask Present” exploring his influence in the arts and architecture.

1 comment March 29th, 2008 Interactive Architecture

Richard Roberts - Hearing A Reality

Exploded Axonometric of his most recent electro-acoustic system

Architect Richard Roberts electro-acoustic systems have been developed to explore the sonic properties of environments, and reveal the way in which sound and space co-habit one another. The system uses speakers and panels of resonating metal and gains its input and mode of operation through the cyclical feedback of sound waves from the environment in which it is placed. It is extremely reactive and capable of changing in real-time to anything that alters the acoustic properties of the environment that it exists within.

Richard using one of his electro-acoustic systems to explore the sonic properties of Fort Brockhurst, Portsmouth

Through this work Richard describes how he “discovered that sound is an effective method with which one can explore first and second order cybernetic principles, and that any observer is an integral and inescapable part of their own acoustic space.” Richard explorative works are refined through iterative processes involving prototypes, experimental models, digital animations and drawings. His work is currently being presented at the Pask Present exhibition being held in Vienna from 26th March to 4th April 2008.

Add comment March 25th, 2008 Interactive Architecture