Amsterdam, Artis, 20151102

(notes)

Machine Wilderness: new ecosystems where environment & technology co-exist, in which humans are less central

#machinewilderness / #machinewild

• ISEA 2012 (Andrea Polli) - Ron Horvath in the 1960 (cultural geographer) - wrote about machines in a negative way: machines are dumb, wilderness is a mess. this event - more positive approach

• design from an environment - machine not easy to distinguish from its environment, integrated

Augmented ecology augmented ecology.com @augmentedeco:
1. how to transform GPS tags on animals to make much richer meanings (Microsoft: Technology for nature - individuals and groups; facebook for herds, anchor point for drones - hybrid ecology)

• danger - cyberpoaching - panna-211 (panna tiger in a reserve in india), don’t share photos from safaris, poachers can track the animals
• gps tags → epizoic media (libraries of signatures)
• harvesting fields → harvesting data
• IOT → internet of organisms and ecosystems

2. Ecological Robotics

• Daan van Dijk Darpa 2013, COTSBot (management of invasive starfish), Robird (management - scares birds away from Schiphol), TumbleWeed bot (based on plant movement - drifts, blows through the desert and collects environmental data), SwarmFarming (using robots for agriculture)
• Biocarbon engineering 0 planting 1mil trees per year using robotic drones
• Rainforest connect - conservation using 2nd hand phones - they listen for the sound of chainsaws, and report - monitoring
• MyBionicBird
• Compostable Drones - how do we deal with lifespan of tech in landscapes

• AI: mind (thinking machines) + bodies (acting machines) + environment = behaviour

Designing

• starting from processes in the environment, beyond objects,
• starting from local habitats
• diverse knowledge systems

Designing towards cohabitation & intimacy

Prof at the UVA & Artis

“Natura Artis Magistra” (1838) - Nature is the teacher of art & science (Royal Zoological Society); → What does it mean for the future to connect art, science, nature…

• e.g. exhibition of microbes & micro-organisms
• Het Groote Museum first museum in NL (1852) - in the future, a museum, a workplace for the antropocene (started in 1600 - colonialism, 1900 - industrialisation…), for man and nature, platform for discussion & exchange; where do we stand as humans on the earth; galleries on nature, science and technology, biomimicry, the future (cyborgs, replacements of nature…); laboratory nature - nature managed by man (manipulating genetics, etc.)
• E. Wilson “the artificial new environment into which technology has catapulted humanity” - what does this mean? (e.g. natural disasters, infrastructure failures (New York blackout in the storm in 2012))
• wilderness = 1st nature, cultural landscape (agriculture) - 2nd nature, designed nature (gardens, urban environments) - 3rd nature
• Louis le Roy, Turn off nature / turn on nature (1973) - not dominating but co-operating with nature - still dualistic thinking - machine ↔ nature
• we need a new language to describe interactions between machines and environments
  • the etymology of the word machine = “device”, “instruments”, “apparatus”, “machine a habiter”…
  • “wilderness” = “community of life untrammeled by man where man himself is a visitor, not to remain” - this changes in the antropocene
• city as metabolism - a new relationship between town and landscape - hybrid landscapes - deserted industrial locations, landfill reclamation…
• avoid confusions with pre-modern and mechanistic views
• finding a way to talk about hybrids, co-operation between technology and nature - a common vitality in reclaiming aesthetics as a process and not an object in the tangle of tech and nature - including philosophy, ethics, morals - responsibility of human nature towards non human nature

Technological Disclosure of Landscapes

How technologies opened up our experience of landscapes?

• Nature is thought to be a healing experience, while cities and technologies are thought of as being alienating - inherited from the romantic era (??)
• “Nature and memory”. The term “landscape” is originally dutch - the landcape painters of the Golden Age; usually without any technology (even thought the Dutch landcape was riddled with technology), “Nature as sublime” (19th ct.), “Technology is alienating” - loss of nature (Heidegger, etc.), 21st ct - the dualism begins to change - technology can re-connect humans to nature

• 19th ct - transport technology (train, etc.) - a revolution of how we experienced landscapes;
  • “railway spine” - cultural pathology resulting from incorporation of technology - health claims related to train journeys; problem for insurance companies - learning to cope with the phenomenon of speed and technology which hasn’t been integrated into daily life; 19th ct - hysteria, 20th ct. alien abductions, multiple personality disorders - symptoms are real, causes uncertain
  • fairground attraction - simulation of a train/boat experience, fair ground as exercise ground, immersive simulation, to learn to cope with the experience of speed - landscapes moving - things nearby flash by fast, further away things move slower - you have to change the way you perceive things around you - people are unsettled
  • Victor Hugo - description of his train journeys “flowers are no longer flowers but colourful streaks…”
  • Futurists - depicting speed and velocity, buildings start to dance, people flashing by, 'streaks - signs of speed'
• 20ct - car, monument to a car race - it alienated people from the central, static perspective, not so much from landscape
  • Ballard - attempting to change perspective and coin new imaginaries for speed - we needed to re-normalise our senses - images and sounds help us cope with the new experiences…
  • pop-art - streaks in comics - speeding cars
  • zootrope - suggesting movement, children’s toys, artistic expression, scientific simulation of birds in flight (Max Ernst) - disclosing the world by means of technology changes our perception and sensory experience
  • Muybridge - horses galloping - are they ever free from the ground (yes)
  • Stereoscope - photograph with two different focus points - the world available in stereo - photographers began experimenting with focal points (depth, 'enhanced stereos' - issue with veracity); Bishop - if God wanted us to see this depth, he would have given us eyes further apart…; Scientific photo of the moon - very difficult (distance, etc.), but there is a wobble in the moon (the photos were taken 3 weeks apart) - “a step out of and beyond nature” - but it disclosed the possibility to view the moon much more intimately - a mediated view of nature, with a more intimate and immersive knowledge - a breakthrough in the view of technology
• Tintin - “destination Moon” - actual rockets and clothing inspired by Herge’ comic; project Tintin insterstellar nanosat mission to alpha centauri - Alan Bean (astronaut) - “the only artist who has been to the moon”, painting with moon-dust
• Andrea Polli (tracking data of hurricane Bob → “Atmospheric Weatherworks” acoustic artwork to understand nature on its own terms, complex rhythms and melodies of nature on human scale) & Gavin Starks (translated data from telescope images into sounds - soothing synth sounds - a deception; but the image itself is mediated already (radiowaves translated into image)) discussion at DEAF 2004 - we are always embedded in cultural and historical incorporations of technology - nature is always a mediated event
• Husserl “an experience of nature is always artificial” - documentaries - mediated, staged, interpreted events
• Esther Polak - GPS traces through the city “Amsterdam Real Time” (2002) - the mediated event - sky-drawing, “Milk”, fishing boats - different stories emerge than when we look at photographs - new positioning of artists in the field, just breaking ground
• 3D projections in cinemas, art galleries - contemporary fairgrounds to exercise new perceptions

Creating Technology for nature conservation, in game reserves and agricultural mapping, Dutch UAS

• primarily drones
• motivation:
  • rhino poaching, the anti-poaching drones need to be cheap and simple for the rangers to use
  • game counting (compulsory)
  • elevation/photographic maps and 3D models
• where to:
  • object detection/recognition - reduces time needed to go through the images, towards 100% accuracy
  • AI counting tool - automatic reporting of current states and changes over time
  • expand to other sensors (multispectral/thermal) for precision agriculture and crop monitoring
  • Earth Observation Platform - gathering analysing and visualisation of data - for any environment
• “surveillance company for nature” - military algorithms not open sourced

Relationships between technology and food forestry

Reading technology or reading nature?

• Food forest - farming like the forest - perennial plants, complete diet farmed all year around, systems approach - design science from a holistic perspective; robotics can help with monitoring of feedback loops
  • more biodiversity, more biomass, more yield, more lushness
  • low maintenance system
  • Layers of the forest (overstory, understory, shrubs, herbs, ground-cover, root, climber
  • biodiversity - including plants, animals, insects, microbes… - in an equilibrium; if not - more work!
  • healthy soil (springiness of forest soil)
• Too often we design agricultural spaces in order to adapt to machinery we use
• Yeoman’s Keyline Scale of permanence (change effort - energy / relative permanence - time)
• Food forests exist more in tropical/subtropical gardens
• How do you design a food forest for a city scape? In recreation areas, plants that aren’t commercially viable, that are difficult to harvest industrially
• Voedselbos Makeblijde

Tech requirements:

• touch earth lightly
• broaden our senses, be aware it shapes the way we behave
• help ppl reconnect to nature
• be amazed with and learn about the environment, give it meaning
• not a substitution, it’s always more layered - to design more complex agricultures

at Wageningen University

Landscape Machines

• Deep Longing to own a piece of land
• Urban agriculture is not going to solve the food problem, but it points to a DIY approach - hands, heart & head, food (consumption), playfulness, fantasy (arcadia)
• Relationship between food and landscape
• Olmsted, Frederick Law - landscape architecture (19th ct), Ian McHarg (1970s) - “Design with nature” (1967) (water ecological system of great complexity & ritual)
• dutch way of making land - engineers, farmers, politicians, NOT landscape architects

Landscape Machines

• complex systems including the landscape and technology - yes we intervene, but the ecosystem responds to it with more vividness
• post doomsday landscapes
• “Venice in the desert”, icebergs cooling cities…
• “beautiful landscapes, small scale, green (garden) / “sublime landscapes” grand, red, giant, phatasmagoric… (landscape)
• technology in a landscape - should be sublime - regeneration, over-access of power - energetic vision of landscapes (usually without human beings…)
• (“any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature” schroeder)
• fluctuating results, hidden technology, embodied experience - with “Fremdkörper” in the centre (the ecological body has to work harder to process) - in a constant dynamic environment - continuous adaptation
• flexible/responsive morphology - designers introduce fremdkörper, the ecosystem responds - is this co-evolution or manipulation?
• Karim van Wonderen + Sophia Molpheta “De Zeeuwse Tong Project” - “ont-poldering” - nature + agriculture - “saline landscapes”, transition between sea and the land, more biodiversity + more fish yield

Reified Nature / Natured Technology

in projects like & Miserable Machines, Voyager 140 AU (2013) - metabolic algorithm in interaction with the environment; PSX consultancy 2014, sex toys for plants; Skotopoiesis (2015) confronting the vegetal otherness - how we comprehend the environment, biosemiosis; Naval Gazing

Naval Gazing (is navel gazing)

• test facility seaweed centre on Tessel
• nutrients from the Rhine can sustain substantial primary production in the north sea - could it be converted in seaweed biomass? - growing brown seaweed in the winter - it can clean up the ocean, useful in cosmetics… in springtime other organisms would take over… a theory at this point
• how to make a sea garden? a system where humans and nature co-exist
• BUT: it isn’t easy to cultivate seaweed in the north sea… - the north sea is a very hostile environment…
• Rachel Carson “The sea around us” (1951) - cybernetics and ecosystems - interconnectedness of things
• Harvesting the sea - started in the romantic period
• Knowing more about strange environments - also allows to exploit it better (for entertainment, extraction…)
• Inspirations: Strandbeest (Theo Janssens) and others
• Habiton - Man-made future habitat moved by the wind - it tumbles through the ocean and collects organisms/biomass, eventually it sinks to the bottom; human made object appropriated by nature

Miserable Machines

• Differences between technology and living organisms -
• “Soot-o-mat” Mussel muscle - ultimate sacrifice of living tissue for the production of 'excess' - soot-o-mat
• Hybridity is a slippery slope - sometimes things should be respected for what they are rather than being forced to 'hybridise'

Attention, movement of water and air in and around the body

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Evolving robotic ecosystems - nature inspired robotics/computer science (evolution as inspiration - influences language)

Takeaway messages

1. Artificial evolution is real, not an emulation of a 'real' evolution, just another form (Darwin evolution, Watson & Crick DNA, Turning & Von Neumann - creating evolution (computers) - programmers set the rules)

• link between evolution (biology) & problem solving (engineering): individuals (in a biological framework), natural selection (choosing fitness), reproduction (digital sex)
• evolutionary algorithm (evaluation-selection-variation loop)
• it can solve hard problems, cope with changes and deliver original solutions
• Macroscopic view (after Dennett): if you have variation, heredity and selection you must get evolution. Variation - push towards novelty, selection - push towards quality

Historical context

• (19-20 ct) Wetware (biosphere, we can observe what has happened in the past and present, in vivo)
• (20-21 ct) Software (evolutionary computing, a generative concept, in silico)
• (21ct) Hardware (evolution of things, in materio)

2. Robots can be evolved

• not all humanoid, not all mechatronics (soft robotics)
• evolution can create intelligence → artificial evolution can create artificial intelligence
• intelligence and embodiment: environment + body + mind → behaviour (AI in 20ct. narrow view of only the mind - chess, in now body + mind (and hopefully also environment) - football
• Genotypes (variation - mutation & crossover) & phenotypes (selection) - can be done in robotics too
• behaviour can evolve in robot populations - we know how to evolve software brains, how to evolve physical bodies → modules/cells or 3d printer (artificial womb)
  • ethical dimension - this can get out of hand… (e.g. radiation hazard, biohazard → robohazard?) - do we need a “kill switch”; we probably don’t want distributed birthing robots, but a centralised birth clinic, with strict control…
• challenge: simulations don’t scale up very well
• Cambridge: mother robot that produces 'a child' consisting of active and passive parts, that can move on its own
• application: breeding farm for service robots or pets, entertainment (robotic parcs…); robot colonies for terraforming or ultra deep mining
• science: “cyclotron for evolution”, understanding life, evolution of body & brain, robosphere

Hybrid forms: JAP, PNBM, SM: wet & dry machines

• interspecimen communication
• environmental robotics
• workshop on symbiotic systems, using Amstelpark as a medium, exploring the needs and opportunities of biorobotic systems (abiotic systems - solar, temp, wind, water + biotic systems (plants, animals, bacteria); creating systems to enter a dialogue with the environment - integrated interdependent systems
• energy systems

Forest bathing - digital technologies for the enhancement of sensory experience

• understanding human spatial intelligence; mapping how native american indians relate to the landscape - our technological system tends to be too flat; flow, relationships, in-between spaces
• embodied research - what would an embodied education look like, making use of ubiquitous computing related to landscape?
• extending the bodies with digital technologies; how can they help us improve our senses?
• understanding processes in the semiosphere
• exploration in Amstelpark + University of Urbino - birdsong (sonotopes) connected to scents of landscapes + how do smells and sounds interact
• plants smell different when transplanted from their natural environment to a cultivated environment (e.g. a park) - exploring non human languages in the semiosphere (workshop in the spring)

Discussion lead by Theun Karelse

• experimentation in landscapes: how do you connect to it, how do we explore it
• make an experiment starting from that landscape to create a robotic entity
• borrowed scenery: asian gardening technique - including the landscape that isn’t a part of the garden
• first experiment in a small village in cornwall connected to five different landscapes - the landscapes change quite quickly (industrial, forest, coast)
• how can you connect mind+body+environment - how would the robotic species develop in different environments
• the goal is to have an exercise in designing environmental robots with the objective to understand how technology can be more subtle towards our landscapes - creativity?
• borrowed landscape - also an english invention - landscape outside separated by a fence, so the wild animals cannot enter; a robotic creature - should do something else respond to a range of different environments
• how do the machines/robots perceive/experience the different landscapes?
• begin with observing and mapping (on cards) - what you see (treetops, soil, sky…), actions (migrating, decomposing…), textures (crunchy, sticky, slimy, fluffy)
• how does the robot live in this system, how does it interact and die?
• beyond functionality and utilitarianism; starting point: it has no purpose; the systems exist for their own purpose → to exist for some time, it’s a stakeholder in the environment, so it wants the environment to keep existing.
• defined capabilities - the cards could be a way to explore capabilities of the hypothetic machines; SICS experiment in expression of emotion through facial recognition with masks on people’s faces to understand what the computer might see; try to have the participants explore the environment with limitations and capabilities of hypothetic machines
• how could the humans explore the environment the way a limited machine/robot might do it? e.g. immersion, distractions, bodily/sensory constraints - even before the robot exists, you try to experience what it might be like for that being to exist
• What would the creatures respond to their habitat? What would they feed on? Where would they exist (in the earth, in the sky…)
• Beyond mimicry of existing biological movement - different set of responses (heat, humidity…) - what kind of patterns would the robots make?
• What vulnerabilities could they have? Can robots be suicidal? Can you have survival without purpose? What is survival from the POV of the robot - self-preservation, learning from the environment, dissolution into the environment? Is there reproduction?
• The experiment should include the robot AND the habitat - and how they might change through their interactions?
• How does the robot learn (procedures)? (design question) How can you make a system which is autonomous for as long as possible?
• Longer timeframes (Gerrit van Bakel - machines that slowly walk in the landscape), something happens once in 20 years, or so fast/ so slowly that it isn’t humanly perceptible. making links to things that technologies aren’t usually designed to do
• The imaginary dimension - people will make stories about it, at which point can you say whether it works or not?
• How will the robot have/experience a sense of agency and meaning?
• Machines that are sensitive and sensible
• How are the humans involved, if at all? How do the robots affect or interact with them?
• Define what you mean by co-habitation, participation, interaction…
• Can the robot help to overcome deficiencies in the landscape? How does it contribute to the landscape?
• How to avoid negative effects? Watch out not to introduce an invasive species which puts too much strain into the habitat?
• It must be pinpointed and defined what the goal is. The question is to rephrase the role of robotics as part of a much larger discussion of the role of humans and technologies in the landscape. Very important to make this clear before starting to work.
• You could make machines that can sense one thing and do one thing, then experiment.
• You might have a community of small robots that behave like one organism, instead of one big one; the simpler the robot individuals, the easier it might be to adapt to the environment
• How can the robots become a part of a larger living landscape? A whole range of processes happen - cultural, cultivated, wild, industrial, rural, tidal, cyclical… but everything is also always a part of a larger whole
• How do you treat the whole landscape as a robotic entity?
• Do you want to intervene in the entropy that is a part of that landscape or do you want to intervene and change it?
• What kinds of questions do we ask in the design process of an artificial organism that would co-exist in a landscape… a design science that starts from something that is as complex and changing as an ecological habitat? What is that process like? What the robot actually ends up doing is secondary
• connecting with other intelligencies in the landscape; collect information from plants, animals, pollution, air… (analogy of 'smart cities' that collect information from humans); how might plants and animals react to pollution, for example?
• the landscape might need technology so that humans might be more aware; to find out what has been hidden from our view (long timeframes, different layers and rhythms)
• look at ritual behaviour across different species
• how distinct do you want the robots to be from the environment? what do you want to find out from the environment? how will you introduce it into the environment?
• robots to redevelop landscapes after disasters? terraforming
• it isn’t so obvious to understand what is missing from our landscapes (e.g. missing elephants in EU forests; indigenous farming in America - to Europeans it looked like wilderness)
• First: find out how you as a person connect with a landscape; feeling the sweat and pain of the landscape (observe, then interact)