Know more about the works and artists featured in the video:
Usman Haque, Evolving Sonic Environments.
Marie-Hélène Tramus, La Funambule Virtuelle, with Michel Bret.
Cybernetics’ artworks
Learn more about Life Writer by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau.
MetaCampo
by SCIArts (Brazil, 2010)
Information about wind direction, captured by a wind sensor attached to the outside of the Itaú Cultural building, is sent to a computer which, in turn, controls a fan that blows on an artificial plantation – a plane formed by flexible shafts similar to a wheat field, present within the exhibition space.
An interdisciplinary team that develops its works based on the intersection between art, science and technology, SCIArts has a fixed core of members, who realize works with invited technicians, scientists, theoreticians and artists. Currently its members are Bruno Bastos, Fernando Fogliano, Iran Bento de Godói, Julia Blumenschein, Luiz Galhardo, Milton Sogabe, Renato Hildebrand and Rosangella Leote.
Ballet Digitallique
by Lali Krotoszynski (Brazil, 2010)
In this installation, the silhouette of the spectators is captured by a camera, transformed, and projected onto a wall. The shadow moves through virtual space according to physical and visual information decoded by a computer program, which activates parameters derived from the Laban System of human movement analysis.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology
Lali Krotoszynski has worked as a performer and choreographer since 1981. She develops her work individually and in collaboration with visual artists, photographers, musicians, video artists, choreographers and dancers. Currently her research involves the search for narratives emerging in digital interfaces.
Caracolomobile [Snailmobile]
by Tania Fraga (Brazil, 2010)
An artificial organism, resembling a snail, is able to recognize different emotional human states, responding to them in an expressive way through sounds and movements. This work is inspired in affective computation, a field of research focused on the “psychic” interaction between humans and artificial systems.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Tania Fraga is an artist and architect. A doctor in communication and semiotics from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC/SP), she is currently a doctoral candidate at USP. She served as a professor with the Arts Institute of the Universidade de Brasília (UnB), where she works as an associate researcher. She has worked with interactive computational art since 1987, using virtual-reality technologies.
Prosthetic Head
by Stelarc (Australia, 2003)
A large-scale projection of the artist’s head converses, in English, with the public. The software that controls the dialog is based on the A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) mechanism, a famous conversing robot also known as Alicebot, or simply Alice. This work aims to demonstrate that, with the advent of new technologies, the difference between humans and machines is no longer a problem of identity, but of interface.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Stelarc is an artist interested in the evolutionary architecture of the body and in possible ways of redesigning the human, enhanced by implants and exoskeletons. Head of the Department of Performance Art at Brunel University, England, he is an invited senior researcher at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.
Hysterical Machines
by Bill Vorn (Canada, 2006)
Five arthropod robots make organic but twitchy movements: an unexpected behavior, since it is realized by machines which, supposedly, should be merely functional. This work aims to evoke the spectator’s empathy for the robotic entities, which in fact are more than a handful of metallic structures.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Bill Vorn has been dedicated to robotic art since 1992. A professor at Concordia University, Canada, where he teaches electronic art, he is in charge of the research laboratory for robotic art creation (Alab) at Hexagram Institute, also in Canada.
Sparkles of intelligence and an outline of emotion
by Luiza Fagá and Thiago Rosenberg
Edmond Couchot, a professor emeritus at the University of Paris 8, gave the opening talk at the Emoção Art.ficial 3.0 Symposium held on July 19th. “An artist, a scientist, a theorist, a professor, Couchot is all this,” defined André Vallias, moderator of the meeting. “He is the incarnation of a Renaissance man in the 21st century.”
Emotion and intelligence
One of the points highlighted by Couchot was the importance of simulating human emotions in machines. It sounds paradoxical, since emotions, considered as irrational traits in human beings, might seem unimportant to science. But, Couchot presented two arguments that justify the validity of research in this area.
The first has a scientific base. According to him, studies have evidence of a strong connection between intelligence and emotion. Therefore, simulating emotions would be necessary to develop artificial intelligence. “The question is not if machines can have emotions or not,” he said. “The question is if they can be intelligent without emotion.” Despite that, Couchot remembered that the ability to recognize and simulate emotions does not mean that machines can feel or experience them. Artificial emotion does not give them superior intelligence, that is, consciousness of consciousness.
The second reason presented by Couchot is practical. The simulation of emotions would facilitate the communication between man and machine. On the one hand, upon being able to recognize users emotions, the computer would be able to adapt and optimize its performance, changing behavior upon noticing the dissatisfaction of the user or repeating actions which pleased him.
On the other hand, the ability to simulate such emotions would result in considering machines fellow creatures, facilitating the man/machine dialogue. “The autonomy of behavior and the simulation of emotions manifested by virtual artifacts provokes a strong feeling of empathy in the “interactor,” stated Couchot.
Art and authorship
Cybernetic art, however, often times tries to disturb this communication, making the presence of the author evident. In this case, the professor gave as an example, the work Portraits, by Joseph Nechvatal, in which the portrait of the observer suffers constant changes.
But, the notion of authorship is alto relative in this artistic production, since the spectator, in addition to interacting with the works helps to create them. Hence, there is a change in the status of the artist, who doesn’t want his work to be totally finished, of the spectator, who becomes a co-author, and of the work itself, which has a certain degree of autonomy, now. A process that is seen by Couchot with satisfaction, but, which is also pointed out as one of the reasons for the reluctance in recognizing artistic value in these works and the consequent difficulty in entering the market.
The creator and the creature
During the lecture, Couchot stated that “technology would be a means for man to be set free from his internal processes,” just like in the past when tools such as the hammer, for example, enabled hands to be set free. “But, can all internal processes become external?” He asked.
As this exteriorization process takes place, the machine looks more like us. On this, Couchot said that man, often times, takes on the role of the “jealous god” because he doesn’t want to grant freedom to his own creation and pointed out a contradiction in doing so: the objective of these works is to give machines human traits, and one of our main traits is autonomy.
The professor said we shouldn’t fear being surpassed by our creatures. According to him, intelligence doesn’t exist in itself, only as manifestation or by means of a support. Therefore, it would be impossible to reproduce human intelligence in inanimate objects. For now, machines only have a “sparkle of intelligence and an outline of emotion.” Furthermore, if man seeks to perfectly reproduce another human being, there are, and always have been, more practical ways of doing so.
Meet La Plume et le Pissenlit, a work by Edmond Couchot in which virtual dandelions are moved by the public.
Canções Submersas
by Vivian Caccuri (Brazil, 2008)
This installation sets up an interference of four carp – who live in a climate-controlled pool – with the public’s MP3 music. The movement of the animals’ swimming is recognized by a special software. According to how the fish move about and in relation to each other, the system modifies the music tracks in real time. This creates a “fluid cacophony” in the artwork’s environment, allowing for a “collective hearing” of the private sounds. A Rumos Itaú Cultural Cybernetic Art award-winning artwork in 2007.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Vivian Caccuri is an artist and researcher in the field of electronic art. She is the content coordinator and technical consultant for the Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica [International Festival of Electronic Language – File]. Her work explores the relation between sound, physical objects and information systems in electronic installations, audio performances and interactive devices.
Software Mirrors
by Daniel Rozin (2001)
Three triptych-shaped works which use cameras connected to computers and recondition the images captured of the public.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Daniel Rozin
An American artist and educator. He is a professor of the department of arts of the New York University and chair of Smoothware.