Technics & Touch: Body-Matter-Machine
11.12.2015 – 30.01.2016
Technics & Touch: Body-Matter-Machine brought together practitioners Charles Anderson and Jondi Keane to test the limits of human and robot proficiencies. Through a series of experimental scenarios, the project aimed to explore methods of producing feedback systems through perception and action cycles. Working alongside a robot, Anderson & Keane constructed a laboratory space for programmers, performers and the public to interact; to make and to discuss approaches to embodied, expanded and autonomous intelligent systems.
The exhibition consisted of two parallel events: a laboratory space in Project Room 1, where the artists were 'in-residence', producing drawings in conjunction with the robot; and a procedural drawing exhibition in Project Room 2, where the outcomes of this human/non-human team were exhibited alongside the work of practitioners who have been exploring rule-based drawing for some time.
Engaging humans and robots in friendly competition, this exhibition found ways to pose questions to one another and expose what both can do well and what both can do better. One might imagine that humans excel at process adjustment, such as variation of touch relative to action already in-process and variation to another agent or material qualities. One might imagine a robot to have better precision and consistency in terms of the execution of lines in 2D and 3D space and the accurate repetition of those lines.
The tasks set for this project revealed how the human/robot interface might be managed to expand the capabilities of both systems and propose new outcomes that humans or robots cannot accomplish on their own.
The artists worked with the robot in Project Room 1 every Tuesday and Thursday, 1 - 4pm for the duration of the exhibition.
Project Room 1
Practitioners/performers: Charles Anderson and Jondi Keane
Project Room 2
Works by Charles Anderson, Jane Burry, Kristof Crolla, Gwyllim Jahn, Jondi Keane, Casey Reas, Tim Schork, Roland Snooks
Curators: Charles Anderson, Fleur Watson, Kate Rhodes
Creative Production: Nella Themelios
Exhibition Technician: Erik North
Exhibition Assistants: Kate Riggs, Audrey Thomas-Hayes
Technical Assistants: Tim McLeod, Robert Jordan, Gavin Bell, Marcin Wojcik
Graphic Design: Sean Hogan, Trampoline
RMIT Architectural Robotics Lab Director: Roland Snooks
Programming and Development: Jules Rutten, Cam Newnham, Chris Ferris
Thank you:
Boom Studios
Professor Richard Blythe
RMIT School of Architecture & Design
RMIT Landscape Architecture Program
RMIT School Research Committee
