This is the first blog entry for the Real Game of Life Project. Follow our team of talented creatives as we attempt to create digital lifeforms…
Week 1 Evan gave a lecture in cellular automata (via a long wiki page on http://wiki.openlabworkshops.org), generative art, “biological” creatures rendered in digital-mechanical form, and went over the original proposal for the project. Then, we introduced ourselves to each other and had a getting-to-know-you session which eventually ended in a small session at the local pub, the Cat and Mutton at the top of Broadway Market. Before that, we expressed our preferences for the 4 “teams” we’d vow loyalty towards over the course of these 8 weeks – an “embedded systems” team responsible for microcrontrollers and hardware, including sensors; a “design” team responsible for overall design including sketches, user scenarios, storyboards, etc.; a “materials” team composed of hands-on artists with practical experience responsible for the actual physical building of the devices, and choosing the materials to build it out of; and a “web” team to take charge of communication with the greater world outside the project team, including coordinating Twitter, the project blog, and .
Week 2 we got down to discussions, via our brand-new forum at http://forums.openlabworkshops.org. After a brief re-introduction of the project concept, that of “digital husbandry” and cellular automata writ large in a physical installation using smart cultures that communicate, love, live, and potentially die, we started working out the details of what we’d do over the next 7 weeks.
The original plan was to divide up into 3 teams – design, embedded systems (lets call it “hardware” for now) and materials, then have each brainstorm independently, bringing everything together at the end in a mass discussion form different points of view. What made more sense, as we looked at people’s strengths and expertise, was to divide up into 2 teams that could tackle the problem from two different (and possibly opposing) perspectives – a “conceptual design” team working on a high conceptual level, working out issues of artistic intention, human interaction, as well as the conceptual relationship between the different parts; on the other “side” sits a more practical-minded hardware-focused team responsible for looking at the problem of communication, interaction, and ecosystems from the view of what is possible with sensors, microcontrollers, and related techniques.
As the facilitator / project manager, I flitted between both groups to get them started and keep discussions on track. Both teams, start out sprouting a dense forest of ideas and concepts and discussion from our original conceptual seed.
The design team looked carefully at the relationship between the creatures and humans, and between the creatures and their environment. To sum up from their notes, they first started out simply with “robots that talk to each other” and looking at the interaction between them: feeding, sleeping, procreating, being lonely, loving each other, even boredom. Without care, they die; left to themselves, they cooperate with one another; overstimulated, they grow apathetic and, bored, even to the point of dying. This follows closely the basic concept of Conway’s simple cellular automata, his “Game of Life.”
A theme arose about anthropology vs. husbandry – watching these creatures and trying to figure them out from a distance without disturbing them, versus taking a hands-on, directly intentional approach to guiding their evolution. Captivity versus “The Wild.” Nature versus Nurture. Ecology or Evolution. Here is where the discussion entered moral territory, where we could explore our ideas on which one was, for lack of a better term, “better” in our minds, and whether or not that was a fair, or even defensible, point of view. Is it a questions of “purity” and “contamination?”
“Please don’t feed the machine” writes Elvia in her notes.
“Robots should communicate with one another foremost and then how the audience interacts with them can be considered the emergent behaviour of the system” writes Gustavo.
Either way, the “cellular” machines could have their own behaviour when people were not around, as well as their own language for communicating with one another. Soon the creatures would organize themselves into neighborhoods of those nearby, following the age-old urban pattern.
There was some discussion as to whether this light-and-sound-based language would be understandable to humans at all. Either way, the creature would use Twitter and possibly other Internet mediums to broadcast out thoughts and desires whenever they felt necessary. “Language as virus” – our language or interaction can spread amongst them, and they can contaminate us right back.
The hardware team started on similar conceptual territory, of course wanting to tackle the main issues first, but I gently prodded them towards more of a hardware-design focus as the discussion wound on. We looked at what sensors were available (and affordable) and what experience we’d had between the group of us with using them.
We came up with a laundry list of techniques and hardware, some of which would make interesting experiments:
Wireless
Photocells
RFID
Infrared
Twitter
Color sensors
Part of a system
Compass
Tilt switch
Solar powered water pumps
Temp sensors
Capacitive sensors
Microwave motion detector – how much movement
Sound impact sensor – clap patterns
vibrating motors for when held
Tricolor LEDs
What’s more, we expanded on the idea of simple single creatures to look at “tribes” and mother/child relationships:
Motherships and babies? Reproduction? Could “babies” be sensors? Would “mothers” protect them?
Are there tribes that emit different sounds, different colors?
Many questions that will need some discussion/resolution at the next session.
Some tasks for next week:
- Nominate forum moderators
- Customize forum
- Choose WordPress template, install, customize
