FCJ-206 From Braitenberg’s Vehicles to Jansen’s Beach Animals: Towards an Ecological Approach to the Design of Non-Organic Intelligence

Maaike BleekerUtrecht University [Abstract] For more than twenty years now, Dutch artist and engineer Theo Jansen has been invested in the development of new, non-organic species that he refers to as Strandbeesten, which in English translates to “beach animals”. His beach animals are creatures constructed from plastic conduit normally used to house electric cables, ropes, plastic bottles and pieces of sailcloth. He describes them as ‘skeletons that are able to walk on the wind’. They are called ‘animals’, yet they are completely inorganic. They use the wind to propel themselves and require no other fuel or food. Over time, Jansen has managed to develop creatures that are increasingly capable of ‘surviving’ on their own. His ideal plan is to put the beach animals out in herds on the beaches and have them live their own ‘life’. [1] The intricate complexity and transparency of the beach animals, and the precision of…

more..

FCJ-205 Life and Labour of Rovers on Mars: Toward Post-Terrestrial Futures of Creative Robotics

Katarina DamjanovUniversity of Western Australia [Abstract] Curiosity rises early; it is bitterly cold on Mars at around 5am when NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) wakes up the rover with a different popular tune each day (from Hit the Road Jack and Walking on Sunshine to the Beastie Boys’ Intergalactic and the Star Wars theme), and delivers it a list of its daily tasks. Curiosity then sets out through the dust haze enfolding the rusty terrain scorched by solar winds and galactic cosmic rays on its busy schedule to explore the red planet. Rolling on its six wheels across the uneven floor of the Gale Crater, the 2.2 metre tall, 2.3 metre wide and 2.9 metre long rover searches for clues about Mars’ habitability. It uses instruments such as hazard avoidance cameras, an Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and a radiation detector to navigate its Martian environment, sense it, measure its various properties…

more..

FCJ-204 Degrees of Freedom

Elena Knox Waseda University. [Abstract] This paper critiques a choreographed performance of embodied agency by a ‘very humanlike’ (Ishiguro, 2006) gynoid robot. It draws on my experience at the Creative Robotics Lab, UNSW Australia, in 2013, with Actroid-F (or Geminoid-F), designed by ATR Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories [1], when I created six artworks making up Actroid Series I (2015). My analysis here proceeds from and through the part-programmed, part-puppeteered actions and vocalisations of Actroid-F in my six-minute video Radical Hospitality, in which the robotic gynoid actor performs compound negotiations of embodied authority, docility, and compliance. All six artworks in the series seek to induce moments of feminist hyper-awareness, or cognitive lysis (Randolph, 2001), that work against the normalisation of instilling gendered societal restrictions into humanoid robots via their embodiments and functionalities. I contend that the forthcoming devolution to ‘very humanlike’ androids of work in the domain of hospitality will draw upon,…

more..

Issue 28 : FCJ-203 Creative Robotics – Rethinking Human Machine Configurations

issue doi:10.15307/fcj.28 introduction doi:10.15307/fcj.28.203.2017 Introduction by Petra Gemeinboeck of the Creative Robotics Lab, National Institute for Experimental Arts, University of New South Wales. ‘I like your dress. You must be a fashionista.’ ‘Really? Thanks’, I reply, looking into the enormous, cartoony eyes of a child-sized robot with soft, explicitly feminine contours and a perky, human voice. This isn’t a subject of conversation I expected at a male-dominated robotics conference, and initiated by a robot of all things. ‘I also like your shoes’, the robot “girl” continues. ‘I can’t wear shoes because I don’t have feet.’ Pepper, as the robot is called, looks down, dramatically swinging both arms to point me to “her” lack of feet. Then, the robot girl gently tilts its head and starts talking about animals. I begin to wonder if it can actually understand any of my compliant replies and seek the attention of a nearby engineer,…

more..

Announcing FCJ28 : Creative Robotics – Rethinking Human Machine Configurations

We are happy to announce the publication of FCJ28: Creative Robotics — Rethinking Human Machine Configurations. This is our second issue for 2016. Computing the City, edited by Armin Beverungen, Florian Sprenger and Su Ballard, will follow later in 2017.

FCJ-198 New International Information Order (NIIO) Revisited: Global Algorithmic Governance and Neocolonialism

Danny ButtUniversity of Melbourne [Abstract] At the beginning of the 20th century, competing global telegraph networks struggled to monopolise the international circulation of information. Governments did not nationalise the cable industry (as they had telephony and the postal system) and even at the peak of “new imperialism” in 1910 only 20% of the world’s cable networks were state-owned (Winseck and Pike, 2009: 33). European governments instead used infrastructural subsidies to promote their telecommunication aims. Yet during this period of technological expansion and militarisation — perhaps relevant to our own — the nation state was far from hands off, as the market leading Marconi company discovered. Their resistance to wartime government control of their infrastructure led to the expropriation of their US assets. While the US Navy patriotically painted Marconi British puppets, Marconi’s bid for the troubled Reuters agency in England also failed due to political interference: the British Government secretly…

more..

Issue 27: Network War/Conflict

From representational to operational media in the war of perception The Australian Government has explicitly framed the treatment of asylum seekers arriving by sea to be a military operation. When he hadn’t yet been removed from power by members of his own party, Prime Minister Tony Abbott compared the operation to being on a war footing (ABC News, 2014a). The government minister responsible at the time, Scott Morrison, tragi-comically responded to questions from journalists by stating that he will not comment on “operational” and “on-water matters”. However, details of “operational matters” have been reported on in the Australian Navy’s internal publications (ABC News, 2014b) and Morrison seemed to enjoy making jokes about his immigration portfolio on the politico-lifestyle program Kitchen Cabinet. Kitchen Cabinet sees host Annabel Crabb interview politicians as they prepare a meal together. Rather than critical commentary provided by a journalistic interview, the goal of Kitchen Cabinet is…

more..

Announcing FCJ26: Entanglements – Activism and Technology

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new Special Issue FCJ26: Entanglements – Activism and Technology edited by Pip Shea, Tanya Notley and Jean Burgess with Fibreculture Journal Editor Su Ballard. There is an extraordinary amount of work here and i’d like to thank everyone involved. This is the largest issue in FCJ history and includes an additional section dedicated to reports from practitioners -‘on the ground’ Issue 26 features: FCJ-188 Disability’s Digital Frictions: Activism, Technology, and Politics Katie Ellis, Gerard Goggin and Mike Kent FCJ-189 Reimagining Work: Entanglements and Frictions around Future of Work Narratives Laura Forlano and Megan Halpern FCJ-190 Building a Better Twitter: A Study of the Twitter Alternatives GNU social, Quitter, rstat.us, and Twister Robert W. Gehl FCJ-191 Mirroring the Videos of Anonymous: Cloud Activism, Living Networks, and Political Mimesis Adam Fish FCJ-192 Sand in the Information Society Machine: How Digital Technologies Change and…

more..

FCJMESH-011 : ‘We don’t work with video, we work with People’: Reflections on Participatory Video Activism in Indonesia

M. Zamzam Fauzanafi Kampung Halaman doi: 10.15307/fcj.mesh.011.2015 In this article Indonesian visual anthropologist and co-founder of Kampung Halaman, Zamzam Fauzanafi, reflects on what he has learnt through almost a decade’s experience of using video technologies to support grassroots activism. He argues that while technologies will always change, what matters is a deep understanding of how they help or hinder your capacity to work with the people your work is meant to support. A different nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye—if only because an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man. (Walter Benjamin [1936], 1968: 236). In 1993 in Indonesia—long before I started to develop a participatory video program with the not-for-profit organisation Kampung Halaman—I learnt about Roem Topatimasang, who was using participatory tools for community empowerment in the small and remote Kei Islands, southeast of Moluccas. He supported the…

more..

FCJMESH-010 : Getting Open Development Right

Zara Rahman the engine room 10.15307/fcj.mesh.010.2015 
 In this article Zara Rahman, from the engine room, explores tensions between the activist motivations that are driving the use of technologies in Open Development and the rights and aspirations of vulnerable people and communities. She discusses how we might and why we must resist the push for new technologies to be adopted too quickly in pursuing an Open Development agenda.
 This article will look at a few issues around the Open Development movement, which is a relatively new agenda within the field of international development. Open Development is centred on the idea that ‘openness’—in different forms—can improve the international development sector. Generally, there are a few broad themes that come up in most definitions of what Open Development includes: • the availability and use of (open) data relating to development programs • participatory decision making and involvement from those affected by the…

more..