Working title: Big Mammoth? (as pun on Boston Dynamics’ Big Dog)

Topic: Designing a concept car as a case-study to expand upon the line of thought emerging from the Machine Wilderness programme.

Outcome: a printed publication in the Handbook series by Verlag für Handbücher VfH

An in depth exploration of machine wilderness design strategies and issues. A thought experiment centered around the concept car phenomenon which is well established in the history of prototyping.

A car - like an organism - is an expression of its habitat. When making a visual survey of concept-car-art it is striking to see how often they show machines populating asphalt desert landscapes. Perhaps unwittingly these are statements about the relationship between cars and their environment. How we relate to landscapes is studied by ecologists, poets, artists, farmers, cooks, etc. This prototype therefore starts from a transdisciplinary approach, not in the context of a desert, but a biodiverse European landscape and within a longterm view of interacting populations surfing collectively on the geological and environmental currents that carry them.

As a starting point I propose looking at former mega-fauna of the European continent, whose ecological niches may be vacant. The Mammoth might be an interesting model-organism because of its carrying capacity and range.

Applying phenology to product design: from efficiency towards grace

• elephant phenology: 80km/day radius, 200kg/day foraging, elephant zoochory, breaking forest-cover, browsing, grazing
• complex life history? infant (growth) and mature (dispersal) states?
• wheels are history, legs are the future?
• cars need highways, elephants create savannah corridors: EU highway map becomes map of corridors?
• technozoochory? machine as carrier/dispersor of seeds

Extending communication / navigation from systems to organisms / landscapes: towards a rich spectrum of biological/environmental interactions

• elephant low frequency communication?
• interpretation of signalling by species in the landscape?
• ecologically and seasonally informed navigation using data from environmental data portals? (list) like Observado
• from smart tech, towards wise tech. (long term memory?)
• from quantitative navigation towards qualitative navigation? (from GPS to songlines)

Embedded energy cycles: towards local energy regimes

• elephant grazing: 200 kg/day plant matter, inefficiently digested; excrement is a nutrient source for others, seeds still intact..
• trophic interactions and ecological energetics (harvesting / feeding the landscape)
• artificial gut Bristol Robotics Lab

Embedded material cycles:

• local material sources
• material lifecycles
• epimechanic life?

Phenotype:

• 4 legged
• carrying capacity
• tusks
• trunk
• large stomach
• pressure elephant's foot on soil 27.000 Pa (human 23.000 Pa)