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ZOO is sooo Post-Zoo
Photo by Garnet Hertz.
If a cockroach could drive, where would it go? What would this site look like if crabs dictated the content? Are domesticated house crickets happier in the Matrix?
Opening today, InterAccess presents ZOO, an exhibition of three works by three artists exploring the relationship between nature and artificial life. The word ‘zoo’ invokes images of animals removed from their natural habitats, relocated to constructed environments, specifically cages, for the audience’s pleasure. For some, the relationship is exploitative, for others educational and entertaining. But InterAccess’s ZOO is nothing like a traditional zoo. If anything, it’s post-zoo.
The three works feature hermit crabs, house crickets, and a Madagascan hissing cockroach; all living removed from the world nature intended, all interacting with and manipulating modern technology.
“Digital Crustaceans v.0.3: Homesteading on the World Wide Web”, by Ingrid Bachmann, tracks the movements of captive hermit crabs on their own personal homepage. When the crabs move in real life their e-crab counterpart’s move online. “Holodeck for House Crickets”, by Amy Youngs, gives these domesticated insects a new home in a suspended artificial landscape where they interact with a hologram projection of pastoral woodlands and greenlands. The environment changes, advances even, as the crickets chirp. And finally, “Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot #3”, by Garnet Hertz, features a Madagascan hissing cockroach whose movements directly control the movement of a three-wheeled robot it’s ‘buckled’ into. Yup, it’s a big-ass bug with a tricked out ride.
So what do these pieces say about the current relationship between nature and artificial life? Is it really the creatures controlling the technology, or is it the other way around? The technology was designed by the artists specifically for the creatures to use and their actions directly affect the way the technology works – what direction the robot moves in, what the webpage looks like, how advanced the virtual landscape is. The debate moves into interesting territory though when considering that Madagascan hissing cockroaches have no brain, virtual reality is far beyond Crustacean capacity (and always will be), and crickets are, well, crickets.
What is clear is how the artists were affected and inspired by the creatures themselves. Cockroaches are highly admired by robotic engineers for their mobile capacity, which is often imitated by designers. “Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot #3” investigates how biological systems solve ‘common sense’ problems (like crossing a busy street) better than artificially intelligent systems. The robot has sensors that detect objects in close range, shining lights at the cockroach from the direction of the obstruction. The theory is that since cockroaches naturally avoid light, the cockroach ‘driving’ the robot will move away from the light, avoiding hitting the object in front of it.
Hermit crabs, as the only type of crab who doesn’t carry its home on its back, are actually born to appropriate space, finding a new home when they grow too large for the current one. This makes their interaction with the web, although clearly not understood by the crabs themselves, an extension of their natural instinct to survive.
And perhaps the nicest of them all, Youngs’ “Holodeck” allows the Acheta domesticus, the type of cricket used in this piece, to experience the only ‘natural’ environment it’ll ever know. The crickets are bred as food for reptiles and find nature too harsh to survive in.
ZOO runs from February 2nd to March 17th at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre (9 Ossington Avenue). Bachmann, Youngs, and Hertz will introduce and discuss their pieces tonight at 7:30pm. An opening reception will follow at 8:00pm. For more information check out www.interaccess.org.