[spectre] VIDA, Art and Aritificial Life Award Winners

[Daniel Canogar]

VIDA, ART AND ARTIFICIAL LIFE AWARD WINNERS

VIDA 10.0 AWARDS

The hybrid forms of the artistic proposals submitted to VIDA and the
transformation of the discipline of A-Life itself have prompted the jury
to consider new issues, such as the rising importance of simulation in
both social life (for example, in the concept of virtual personality) and
organic life (evident in the concept of "neo-organisms"). These phenomena
are increasingly present and have therfore received special attention in
our current approach to art and artificial life.

The jury for the Vida 10.0 competition in Madrid, Daniel Canogar (Spain),
Monica Bello (Spain), José-Carlos Mariátegui (Peru/UK), Simon Penny (USA)
and Nell Tenhaaf (Canadá), reviewed 165  submissions received from 35
countries. The Telefonica Foundation in Spain will give out the following
awards:

FIRST PRIZE (€10,000)
etoy.CORPORATION
MISSION ETERNITY SARCOPHAGUS
Switzerland, 2006-07

Etoy.corporation launched the Mission Eternity Project in 2005,
foregrounding on the one hand respect for the human longing to survive in
some way after death, and on the other a sense of irony about dated sci-fi
fantasies we contrive to satisfy that desire. The Sarcophagus is one
materialization of this project. It is a mobile sepulchre that holds and
displays portraits of those who wish to have their informational remains
cross over into a digital afterlife. The size of a standard cargo
container that can travel to any location in the world, the Sarcophagus
has an immersive LED screen covering its walls, ceiling and floor. There,
interactive digital portraits can be summoned via mobile phone or web
browser from virtual capsules that are stored in the shared memory of
thousands of networked electronic devices of Mission Eternity Angels
(people who contribute a small part of their personal storage capacity to
the mission, currently 765 of them; to date, 2 volunteers have been
accepted for encapsulation). The data spectres that populate this tenuous
memorial space are composed of details of lives lived, in visual, audio
and text fragments. But when they are summoned in lo-res pixellated form
in the Sarcophagus, they resemble one merged personality. The massing of
details that we find in archives and records that keep the dead with us
has a similar compositing effect, yet the Sarcophagus is also very unlike
those. It gives us access to a novel social world generated among
networked computer users who have a common goal of keeping something
alive, which can invoke intense feelings such as care and wonder.


SECOND PRIZE (€7,000)
Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, Australia
NoArk
Australia, 2007

Catts and Zurr, the artists of the Tissue Culture and Art Project, call
the biomass that grows in NoArk's bioreactor a semi-living or sub-life
neo-organism. Because of its origin in tissue samples of various kinds,
their “chimerical blob” still participates in the vast domain of living
things. But it is orphaned, bereft of parentage or kinship, abandoned by
the Linnaean classification system that depends on organismic coherence.
Yet NoArk’s sub-life is incorporated into a novel dynamic system that
becomes its living context: the social body that receives and responds to
it. NoArk consists of a transparent vessel reminiscent of an eighteenth
century curiosity cabinet, which houses both the bioreactor and a
collection of dead and preserved animal specimens. These components rotate
together on a turntable and relentlessly expose viewers to the ineffable
quality of living cells, whose properties are so imminent to us yet so
elusive. The cell is the basic self-organizing unit of life. Cultured in a
medium, abstracted from life as we know it, it is transformed into a
synthetic embodiment of life processes and their artificial replication.
This technique of abstraction is familiar enough in the science lab –
biochemist Stuart Kauffman called it “second life” long before the virtual
world of the internet took up the name – but it is radically new as public
display in the cultural domain. The semi-living thing we see in NoArk is
afflicted by an excess of freedom to cross boundaries between definitions
and taxonomies, just like the limitless tagging and cross-referencing that
characterizes digital information. As long as the semi-living is on life
support, its bio-information persists through time and space, and poses
the startling question of how such information can be deployed in “first
life.”


THIRD PRIZE (€3,000)
Leandro M. Nuñez
Propagations
Argentina, 2007

In Propagaciones, Leandro Nuñez has physically instantiated one of the
archetypes of Artificial Life, the cellular automaton, originated by John
Conway in 1970. Now usually referred to as the Game of Life or Conways
Life, it was itself motivated by John von Neumann’s notion of self
reproducing machines. Conways original realisation was physical, sheets of
paper on the floor, only later was the CA instantiated in software. Nuñez’
machine installation brings Life back into the real world of dirt and
vibrations and inconsistencies, the very unpredictables so difficult to
simulate in-silico. Nuñez’ work belongs to a long but minor tradition in
the arts, that of the machine-sculptor, epitomized by such disparates as
Duchamp, Takis, Tinguely and Ihnatowicz. What unites this group is a
desire to connect with fundamental electrophysical realities, and to work
artisanally and manually, taking basic mechanical, electro-mechanical and
electronic components as a palette, in the production of eloquent
artefacts which embody such ideas in a materially sensible, performative
mode. Works such as Propagations do not so much depict as enact the
behaviours they refer to. Propagaciones is also significant in that it
contains no digital technology, reminding us that digital micro
electronics is not the sole and privileged location of automated
computation.


HONORARY  MENTIONS

David Rokeby
Cloud
Canada, 2007

Cloud appears at first to be much more complicated in construction and
behaviour than it actually is. This ruse is highly effective, because the
experience of complexity endures even when one has understood that the
work functions through repetitive motion. Cloud is suspended from the
ceiling in a very large space (the Great Hall of the Ontario Science
Centre in Toronto, Canada, who commissioned the work), so it is always
seen from below. Consequently, the vertical components of the work extend
into the space, towards the eye of the viewer, and the overall effect is
one of filling a large volume while at the same time leaving it open,
penetrable. The sculptural components of Cloud are one hundred 13-foot
long acrylic shafts that each hold six sets of thin acrylic planes, half
transparent and half pale blue-grey. The movement programmed into this
array of elements is a simultaneous rotation of all of the shafts,
slightly out of phase but synchronizing at specified intervals. The
constant movement of the elements, plus the consistency of colour and
texture, contribute to an intense expectation of emergent patterns. And
pattern does appear – a ripple of light, a solid block of colour – but
only for an instant and only directly in front of one’s line of sight,
while along its edges a movement that can be perceived as either a
disruption or a new consolidation begins to take shape.

Julius Popp
bit-flow
Germany, 2006-07

The austere, biomedical look of bit.flow presents an enigmatic, even
hermetic spectacle for the uninformed audience. This is not unsurprising
given that the work instantiates a deep ontological inquiry into the
nature of self-knowledge, among machines and, by extension, among people.
It is, we might say, the exercise of philosophy in the performative mode.
Bit.flow seeds its physical form, a random tangle of flexible tubes, with
a random binary pattern of coloured (red) and transparent fluid. This
pattern manifests as a constantly changing complex three-dimensional
pattern as alternating bands of red and transparent fluid pass around the
loops of the tangled hose. Thus the most simple, temporal on/off rhythm,
plus an undisciplined physical presence, generates complex pattern
richness. This material “body” has no sensor feedback, no sensorial
self-awareness. It watches, contemplates, itself via a video camera. By
analysis of this image flow, bit.flow seeks to understand, and replicate,
its own pattern. In this process, bit.flow implements fundamental
assumptions of machine vision and “traditional” artificial intelligence,
while asking questions deeply pertinent to artificial life. bit.flow is a
very Cartesian machine which says “Cogito, ergo, sum”.

Jed Berk
ALAVs 2.0
U.S.A., 2006

Jed Berks’ Autonomous Light Air Vehicles combine many of the themes of
artificial life and multi-agent robotics research in an accessible and
elegant public presentation. These include capable powered navigation and
obstacle avoidance, organized multi-agent behaviour (such as flocking),
discernable (quasi) intelligent individual behaviour, and interaction with
other (quasi) intelligent agents, i.e., people. Connecting these agendas
with more contemporary interest in mobile and locative technologies, Berk
has implemented human-ALAV communication via mobile phone technology. The
rigors of such a project must not be elided. While robots in research-lab
contexts often exhibit remarkable capabilities, they are just as often
delicate, unreliable and require the constant attention of one or several
highly trained staff. A project like ALAVs must exhibit its qualities in
the general public, must inform and entertain, and at the same time be
robust and resilient to the unpredictabilities of unusual architectures
and architectural materials, weather, children and crowds (and sometimes,
animals) - influences which are almost always filtered out in the
controlled environment of the lab. The ALAVs achieve all this, while
remaining lighter than air, an achievement in itself given the weight of
batteries and other components. The ALAVs are beguilingly delicate
translucent agents which drift and float in a most un-robotic way.


London Fieldworks
Hibernator: Prince of Petrified Forest, 2007
Great Britain, 2007

Artists Jo Joelson and Bruce Gilchrist have created an installation that
extends throughout the gallery space and offers a wide variety of
information that challenges the spectator to take an unusual intellectual
journey. Based on their interest in suspended animation, the collective
proposes a surrealistic piece that subverts one of the major icons of the
20th century: Walt Disney. In the gallery, the public encounters an
animatronic figure that is the protagonist of a series of animated films
recorded during the exhibition. This robot has the physical features of
Disney's head, and a conglomerate body of two of his favourite creations:
Bambi and Thumper. The films, shot with blue-screen technology, show the
fanciful Disney robot resurrected in a world of cartoons, a knowing wink
to the reputed conservation of Disney’s head with cryogenic technology.
The character is in a distorted and grotesque paradise, where he has to
face the darkest side of his being, that which he hid from the world while
he cultivated his insatiable hunger for worldwide-fame and endless
self-promotion. This project interprets the myths created by mass culture
and the scientific promises of a technological society. These are examined
in the gallery space by a precise manipulation of all the elements, using
an open creation process that results in a striking narrative. The result
is a highly versatile mise en scene, accompanied by a 30-minute film that
includes pantagruelian elements of the modern day.

Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand
Camera Lucida: Sonochemical Observatory, 2007
USA, Belarus, 2007

Camera Lucida investigates and allows the visualisation of an almost
unknown and unexplored marginal natural phenomena called
"sonoluminiscence". Sonoluminescence consists of the emission of short
discharges of light conditioned by the explosion of bubbles in a liquid
excited by sound. In the installation/observatory, the activity focuses on
a translucent glass ball that contains gas and recreates the process,
which can only be seen in complete darkness. The immersive and perceptual
space created by the artists brings to the light hidden and somewhat
esoteric natural phenomena, making it real and tangible for us to study.
This project evokes territories to be explored in the kingdom of the
invisible, and questions the stale flatness of the material in favour of
what is ephemeral and volatile.

Kelly Dobson
Omo
United States, 2007

Omo is an artifact that shares empathic relationships with humans. Rather
than using the hackneyed paradigm of a mechanical invasion of the body,
the piece suggests an organic allegory that enables new subconscious
feelings to emerge. In that sense, Omo might also be seen as a friend or a
companion. The creature expands and contracts, either matching the users’
breathing, or helping the user to adjust to its mechanical respiration.
The physical sensing generates prosthetic emotions; for example, placing
Omo on your stomach and feeling its gentle contractions is remeniscent of
the intimate sensations triggered by feeling the turgid belly of a
pregnant women. Omo is one of several informed artifacts drawing from the
emerging discipline of Machine Therapy that combines art, design,
psychodynamics, and engineering. This field makes visible complex dynamics
that may occur between humans and machines. Machine Therapy tweaks
technological artifacts in order to awaken human’s sensitive side, forging
their role as relaxing and stimulating companions. As humans are
increasingly in contact with technological artifacts, works such as Omo
highlight unexpected human emotions, helping us develop more profound,
complex and expressive interrelationships with machines.

Chris Sugrue
Delicate Boundaries
U.S.A., 2007

Delicate Boundaries explores the fragile and sometimes unperceivable
juncture between real and physical space. This work is an interactive
installation that uses the body as an extension of the digital ecosystem
inhabited by a crowd of digital bugs. When a presence is detected, the
creatures move from the screen onto the human body via an over-head
projector. Delicate Boundaries generates an animated illusion and a
virtual intimacy by transfering the bugs’ virtual behaviour onto the real
bodily space. The interface senses the contours of the human body,
invading it in life-like manners, and giving the illusion of a viral-like
infection of  the organism. There is a seamless transition between the
real and the virtual, an effect that leads to learning and appreciation,
turning the behaviour of artificial entities into ritualistic visions.

INCENTIVES FOR IBERO-AMERICAN PRODUCTION


The second category of the competition, Incentives for Ibero-American
Production, helps finance art projects exploring Artificial Life (and
related disciplines) that still have not been produced. Applicants must be
from South America, Spain or Portugal. This year’s recipients are:


Alex Posada and Alejo Duque
Greenbots
Spain
(€10,000)

Greenbots will be comprised of a series of small robots created with
simple electronics, using sensors, communication systems (radio, infrared,
RFID, GPS) and solar panels that can absorb in daylight the energy
required to power their night-time prowling. These organisms, whose shapes
will vary (mechanical butterflies, balls, etc.), will be located at
strategic points and react to the environment, gathering data, changing
shape, generating light and sound effects, evolving, reprogramming
themselves or other nearby greenbots, and transmitting all this
information to an online database. This information is a creative and
innovative way of representing the levels of environmental pollution we
are continuously subjected to. Pollution will also affect the Greenbots
physically, modifying them internally without them realising. The
Greenbots are an allusion to the new technological ecosystem we have
created and to the damaged natural ecosystem we live in.

Francisco Lopez
Sonic Alter Ego
Spain
(€7,500)

The scope of sound creation traditionally covers two large conceptual
categories: tools (instruments, software, sound materials, methods) and
sound pieces (composed, improvised, random, etc.). Sonic Alter Ego is a
system-concept between the said categories or, more specifically, a
virtual creative entity that includes both. It will produce original,
variable sound creations as a result of the interaction between the
author's criteria and the sofware’s working architecture. The fundamental
concept of Sonic Alter Ego is not the development of a software tool for a
potential user, but rather the transfer of crucial aspects of Francisco
López’s creative spirit to a virtual machine. Using evolutionary
computation techniques, the system will gradually learn the artist's
creative criteria, such as the selection of sound material, editing
choices, compositional decisions, etc. This virtual alter ego will reveal
hidden or unconscious aspects of the author's own creative spirit.

Hamilton Mestizo Reyes, Luis Enrique Martínez, Sofía Cordero, Marcela
Ayala, Patricia Muethe and Jonatan Gómez
Electricium Vitum
Colombia
(€2,500)

This project by Hamilton Mestizo (et al) seeks to apply contemporary
biotech research to the question of artificial life in a way that has
relevance to the traditions of robotics, to the emerging fields of
bio-art, and to environmental and ecological issues, as well as to the
history of cybernetics and cybernetically inspired biology. Electricium
Vitum applies the research of Logan, et al into biological sources of
electrical power - bio-batteries - to the construction of a cyborgian
life-form, by using the power from the battery (driven by human waste
decomposed by E.coli) to drive a microcontroller which monitors its
environment (via sensors) in a homeostatic or autopoietic way. This is an
important intervention in robotics because, while processing has become
relatively easy, electromechanical movement is manageable and sensing is
at least tractable in most cases, the question of power remains unsolved,
and is hidden under the table in most (autonomous) robotics projects - you
charge the batteries at the wall socket. That the generation of its own
power is fundamental to Electricium Vitum is, therefore, a rather profound
intervention in robotics and artificial life.

It is also profound in that its power is derived from the repugnant, the
less than worthless, that matter which, in most cases, is removed, with
attendant energy consumption. This aspect of the work makes it a
provocative intervention into environmental issues. Electricium Vitum also
intervenes in the realm of bio-art. Bio art practices to date have focused
largely on specialised technical practices, such as tissue culture, DNA
manipulation and synthesis of hybrid cells - all practices made viable for
the artist by the boom in genomics and biotech and the attendant
availability of mass-produced lab appliances. In this, bio-art follows
large scale patterns not unlike the early years of computer art.
Electricium Vitum therefore stakes out a new territory on the margins of
bio-art and robotics.