Monthly Archive

So, is this relevant for me?

The cockroach controlled mobile robot created by Garnet Hertz. Above is his movie about the project, and below is one from Daily Planet.

While this project has resulted in what is strictly a cyborg development, I think that it is interesting that Hertz sees the cockroach as the archetypal posthuman, a more literal successor to humanity “than Fukuyama, Stock or Hayles envisions”. I think this is related to my obsession with the importance of other-than-human robots.

It is pleasing that putting the cockroach in the robot alters people’s reactions to the roach.  The cockroach becomes cool, rather than disgusting, although it still appears to be rather scary if it moves towards you!

Of course, I also like the way he is pleased to have “cornered the market” in “designing wearable technology or exoskeletons for cockroaches”. I also appreciate the idea that “after we’ve all killed each other in WWIII with biomimetic robots, the earth will be happily inhabited by cockroaches. These insects will need something to drive on all of the abandoned freeways.”

Given my interest in machines that look like machines, but still interact with humans, it should come as no surprise that I like the work of Bill Vorn. Of his current projects two are of particular relevance:

• Grace State Machines – a performance in which a human dances with a machine
• Protozoic Machine – a machine built to interact with people, but deliberately designed to look like a machine, and not like any living being

I’m sure that I’ll write more about these projects soon, and might be able to visit Bill Vorn towards the end of this year.

Back to the old (new-old it seems) theme, only this time I have to have a title image.

than when your blog theme suddenly disappears and you are pushed back to the default.

My customised Tarski theme just disappeared and was replaced with the default theme!  I swear, I didn’t do anything.  For the time being I have replaced it with the simplest theme from the other options.   Tarski is still there, but maybe a new version was uploaded or something.  Anyway, don’t have time to fiddle about with it now.

Very, very irritating!!

The Fish-Bird Project was an art-science collaboration that resulted in an installation exploring the possibilities of creating a dialogue between two robot wheelchairs and human visitors using movement and written text.

There is a lot of information about the project available from the above link. The particular ideas behind this project that interest me are:

• Trust
• Intimacy
• Non-anthropomorphic representation
• Not cute
• Movement implying being and being alive
• Movement as communication
• Movement and text creating the “sense of a person” (aided by the absence implied by the wheelchairs)
• Movement indicating awareness, mood, intention

This looks like a great example for my thesis (thanks, Chantal , and if I can make it to Sydney I should be able to make arrangements to meet Fish and Bird, although I don’t know if I’ll be able to interact with them in the way shown in the video on the website.

I need the book to tell me how to write my thesis… right now!

between posts.

That’s probably because my research has been having an identity crisis, and I have been trying to sort this out, while also completing curriculum development for next semester.

Curriculum development takes me forever. Maybe that’s just because I am a beginner at this teaching and learning stuff. Maybe that’s just because it’s hard, particularly if you are a reflective practitioner, which of course I must be because I’m a Teaching Intern .

Anyway, it’s back to research today, with an emphasis on making a workable plan for writing, rather than an outline that looks good until you start trying to do something with it. I have been advised to break what seem to be huge all-encompassing chapters into bite-size chunks. This should work for me better as a writer, but also work for my examiner as a reader. They should find my work easier to chew and maybe swallow, or possibly to spit out in disgust!

The other positive note is that the book I ordered a week and a bit ago should be making its way to Perth by now. This time it’s not just “another one about robots/emotions” to read for my research. It’s about how to write your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day (although the author admits this was a lie to get you to buy the book). Maybe I’m just clutching at straws, but it received good reviews on Amazon, and sounded like it might help with the depression of blank-page-itis.