In order to live at sea, we’re pioneering an entirely new form of marine architecture. Open_Sailing acts like a globally-conscious super-organism, a cluster of intelligent units that can react to their environment, change shape and reconfigure themselves. Open_Sailing is a project that is well underway. We are a constantly growing, international team of around 40 people designing and engineering a prototype under the mentoring of numerous experts. Where is the safest location on earth? How can we live at sea? How can we create a life saving floating self-righting architecture? How can we produce reliable renewable energy? What will we eat? What will the politico social organization be made of? How will we entertain ourselves? Continue reading

ARTS SANTA MONICA- Laboratori: Cultures of change. Social Atoms and Electronic Lives :: December 11 , 2009 - February 28, 2010 :: Opening and Lecture (Luc Steels. “Can robots create their own language?”): December 10, 8:00 pm :: Departament de Cultura i Mitjans de Comunicació- Generalitat de Catalunya, La Rambla, 7, 08002 Barcelona, Spain.

Cultures of change. Social Atoms and Electronic Lives examines the social and cultural dynamics from a highly multidisciplinary perspective, from the hand of the complexity sciences and digital technologies. Information and communication technologies have made possible to quantify and monitor, process and display aspects of our society and our culture unthinkable until recently. Continue reading

Brian Knep: Exempla :: until November 15, 2009 :: Koppelman Gallery, Tufts University, Medford, MA.

Brian Knep has created six related, interactive projections. In each work, hundreds of creatures are tasked with achieving a goal that proves futile yet revealing of complex social interactions. His work bridges art and science through his hypothetical microcosms of “emergent behavior” to create a kind of digital arena in which viewers activate a light source and their shadows play a decisive role in a philosophical game of illumination and illusion.

The pieces are more about futility than emergence. The works use child-like drawings to examine the illusions that drive us, in a humorous way. Continue reading

The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI by John Johnston, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008 — In The Allure of Machinic Life, John Johnston examines new forms of nascent life that emerge through technical interactions within human-constructed environments — “machinic life” — in the sciences of cybernetics, artificial life, and artificial intelligence. With the development of such research initiatives as the evolution of digital organisms, computer immune systems, artificial protocells, evolutionary robotics, and swarm systems, Johnston argues, machinic life has achieved a complexity and autonomy worthy of study in its own right. Drawing on the publications of scientists as well as a range of work in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory, but always with the primary focus on the “objects at hand” — the machines, programs, and processes that constitute machinic life — Johnston shows how they come about, how they operate, and how they are already changing. Continue reading

Audience — by Chris O’Shea (conceived by rAndom International) — is an installation consisting of around 64 head-size mirror objects. Each object moves its head in a particular way to give it different characteristics of human behaviour. Some chat amongst themselves, some shy away and others confidently move to grab your attention.

When members of the audience occupy the space, the mirrors inquisitively follow someone that they find interesting. Having chosen their subject, they all synchronise and turn their heads towards them. Suddenly that person can see their reflection in all of the mirrors. They will watch this person until they become disinterested, then either seek out another subject or return to their private chatter. The collective behaviour of the objects is beyond the control of the viewer, as it is left entirely to their discretion to let go of their subject. Continue reading

The Colloquy of Things — Philip Beesley, Marc Bohlen, Natalie Jeremijenko (Moderated by Omar Khan) :: December 11, 2008; 7:00 pm :: The Urban Center, 457 Madison Avenue, New York City.

This panel discussion will explore the growing agency of natural and artificial “things”, a theme being developed by the Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series. What are the social and technological challenges when “things” begin to be the producers and consumers of information? What are the opportunities and consequences of delegating greater responsibility and autonomy to technologies or natural ecologies? Continue reading

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GESPENST / WIDMO / SPECTRE self-replication of pathogen - new work by Robert B. Lisek of Fundamental Research Lab :: until November 12 :: GALERIA LETO, ul. Hoza 9c, 00-528 Warsaw.

The WIDMO /das GESPENST/ SPECTRE project, a result of research by the artist at the Molecular Biology Laboratory of Wroclaw University, explores the relationship between bio-molecular technology, code and issues arising from network technologies. With reference to the emerging practice of ‘biotech-art’, the artist aims to represent the self-replicating behavior of bacteria in order to draw out its wider bio-political significance in an imagined scenario of bioterrorism. Continue reading

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dorkbot-nyc - David Steinberg, Christina McPhee, and Sam Pluta :: September 3, 2008; 7:00 pm :: Location One, SoHo. The meeting is free and open to the public. Please bring snacks to share.

David Steinberg: mobile music machines - Lots of interesting musical software have been developed more or less recently for portable videogames consoles (Gameboy, PSP, etc.), PDAs or other similar platforms. I’ll present many of these applications (for Nintendo Gameboy, Palm OS, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, Gamepark consoles, etc.), explain what’s needed to use them, who created them, what are the advantages and disadvantages of developing musical software for each platform and of course show some examples of what can be done with these new instruments. Continue reading