Output details

The Biting Machine (2008-2012)

The submission is a performance, given on several occasions over five years, involving a performance robot called the Biting Machine. The prototype was constructed in 2008. A wheeled automaton fitted with pointy teeth, it triggered the development of a more complex and ambitious performance robot for a piece based on Joseph Beuys' performance with a wild coyote, I Like America and America Likes Me (René Block Gallery, New York, 1974). In a similar way to the coyote who symbolised instinct and the natural world, the robot ‘performs’ as a representative of machinic life and the techno-scientific realm.

The performance explores the emergent relationship between humans and intelligent machines at a time when the very nature of such constructs is being redefined by techno-scientific developments. This claim is developed in two documents: ‘Biting Machine: a Performance Art Experiment in Human-Machine Interaction’, a paper presented at the 19th International Symposium for the Electronic Arts (ISEA), Sydney, and ‘Coy-B: an Art Robot for Exploring the Ontology of Artificial Creatures’, an extended abstract poster presented at the Towards Autonomous Robotics System (TAROS) conference, Oxford (both 2013). The practice-based aspect of the project is the continuation of many years of research in the co-evolution of humans and machines through construction of robots for exhibitions and performances.

The early prototype was exhibited in several electronic art venues (list above). A test robotic platform was built in collaboration with programmer-artist Alex May from Quadratura Ltd. The TAROS extended abstract will be published in Springer's Notes on Artificial Intelligence in 2014, while the ISEA Sydney paper is due to appear in the online proceedings of the conference, also in 2014. The project is ongoing, and I have been invited to pitch it to the Robotics team at Lincoln University in November 2013, to explore the possibilities of collaboration.