Anna Carreras, Marta Verde and Mónica Rikić want to develop an artistic intervention or interactive device, mixing code, electronics, visuals and nature. In their own separate artistic practice they mainly work with randomness, complexity and robotics. They are planning on putting all their expertise together and have fun creating a new artistic collaboration from scratch on site.
Conceptually, their proposal seeks the nature of machines from speculative fiction. Through the prototyping of autonomous micro systems, they want to talk about the freedom of machines and the search for their own essence far from human projection, technological development and its obsession on imposing an artificial intelligence to it, understanding AI as the search of an improved human copy.
To search for this “Mechanical Nature”, they want to use their personal research on different non-human complex systems: how they are generated, organised, regulated, and hierarchised. Also, experiment with the different possibilities of the simple movements of the micro robots made by motors and other small electronic components, individually and as a group. They will try to create behaviour patterns for these self-sufficient mechanical organisms inspired by insects, plants, wind, clouds, water, any non-human data we can get inspired from, and let them flow. They also intend to use different materials found in nature to combine them with the small electronic components and microcontrollers and generate these ecosystems.
The process of creating them would be as follows:
– Selection and observation of a specific aspect of nature
– Experimentation of the patterns regarding the mechanical application of them
– Experimentation with natural materials in conjunction with technological ones
– Flow of matter and energy within the ecosystem: how some beings depend on each other within that world, how they relate and communicate with each other and with the environment.
The elements and materials they will use to create ecosystems will be: low voltage micro motors, small sensors and actuators (such as LEDs, mp3 players, photoresistors, electromagnets), organic materials (like woods, leaves, moss, stones, water – in different forms- , flowers, seeds).