Monday, May 4, 2009
Kacie Kinzer's Tweenbots
Artist Statement (nicked from Kacie's terrific site)
"In New York, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.
Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.
Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.
The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, "You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”
The Tweenbot’s unexpected presence in the city created an unfolding narrative that spoke not simply to the vastness of city space and to the journey of a human-assisted robot, but also to the power of a simple technological object to create a complex network powered by human intelligence and asynchronous interactions. But of more interest to me was the fact that this ad-hoc crowdsourcing was driven primarily by human empathy for an anthropomorphized object. The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people's willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone. As each encounter with a helpful pedestrian takes the robot one step closer to attaining its destination, the significance of our random discoveries and individual actions accumulates into a story about a vast space made small by an even smaller robot."
Stolen by J from the Wooster Collective http://woostercollective.com/
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Thursday, November 6, 2008
New Beginnings
I feel hopeful.
As I listened to President-Elect Obama give his victory speech and Senator McCain give his amazingly gracious concession speech I was overcome with feelings of optimism and pride. I am proud because more citizens voted in this election than in any in the past 44 years. I am proud because we elected a black man to be President. I am proud because Senator McCain, despite the political divide, chose to lead his constituency (at least that night) to unity as Americans and to pride in our newly elected President. I am proud because President-Elect Obama publicly recognized his defeated opponent as a commited servant of these United States who has made sacrifices we should all pray we never have to make.
And I feel optimistic. I can't say why. I just know deep down that things are going to get better. And I feel like I want to be a part of it. I want to help.
Monday, November 3, 2008
So My Mind Is Made Up!
So I was having a really hard time making up my mind who to vote for but now John McCain has made it up for me. And how did he manage this feat? By choosing the one person less qualified than our current president to be his running mate. I like McCain and I like Obama. Generally speaking I think either man would make a fine president. But the thought of Sarah Palin being one heartbeat (or heart-attack) away from the presidency is just more than I can stomach. So I'll be voting for Barack Obama tomorrow.
I'm not going to lie to you: I voted for W. in 2000. And the really embarassing part? I did it because he seemed like he would be more fun to hang out with than that uber-bore Al Gore. I was young and naive but back then I felt like what this country really needed was some good old-fashioned Joe-Six-Pack common sense. I was wrong. What we needed then and now was someone who could make measured, calculated decisions based on available data; someone who wasn't too blinded by ideology to see the facts as they were/are. Obama can do that, McCain can do that, but Palin strikes me as someone who would make most decisions based on her ideology and gut instinct. Just like W.
Now Palin isn't running for President, McCain is. But McCain is an old man and there is a chance that he could die in office. If there were a way to guarantee that he would survive his term(s) in office my decision would be a lot harder. But given that nothing in this world is certain but death, the decision becomes depressingly simple. I'm voting for Obama.
