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Caracolomobile: affect in computer systems

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Abstract

This essay presents and reflects upon the construction of a few experimental artworks, among them Caracolomobile, that looks for poetic, aesthetic and functional possibilities to bring computer systems to the sensitive universe of human emotions, feelings and expressions. Modern and Contemporary Art have explored such qualities in unfathomable ways and nowadays is turning towards computer systems and their co-related technologies. This universe characterizes and is the focus of these experimental artworks; artworks dealing with entwined subjective and objective qualities, weaving perceptions, sensations and concepts. One of them, Caracolomobile, features an art installation creating a set up for an artificial robot that recognizes humans’ affective states and answers them with movements and sounds. The robot was installed over an artificial mirror lake in an open indigo-blue space surrounded by mirrors. It perceives and discriminates human emotional states and expressions using an interface developed with a non-intrusive neural headset (The neural headset used was developed by Emotiv Systems: http://www.emotiv.com. Accessed 11 August 2011). This artwork raises questions and looks for answers inquiring about the preliminary steps for the creation of artefacts that would conduct one to poetically experiment with affect, emotion, sensations and feelings in computational systems. Other works in progress ask about the poetic possibilities of mixing computational autonomous processes and behavioural robotic procedures (Arkin 1998) to create artificial environments mixed with humans.

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Notes

  1. It is a pity that she is dead and can not acknowledge her own success.

  2. He used the expression technical images.

  3. See http://blog.slashboing.com/bk/ Accessed 14 November 2011.

  4. See http://amorphicrobotworks.org/works/index.htm Accessed 10 October 2011.

  5. See http://kenrinaldo.com/ Accessed 05 September 2011.

  6. See http://www.poeticasdigitais.net/ Accessed 14 November 2011.

  7. See http://www.sciarts.org.br/ Accessed 14 November 2011.

  8. See http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/moravec.html Accessed 08 November 2011.

  9. See http://www.cis.cornell.edu/lipson.html Accessed 01 October 2011.

  10. See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/cars-drive-themselves.html Accessed 01 November 2011 also http://norvig.com/bio.html Accessed 010 November 2011 and http://robots.stanford.edu/robots.html Accessed 20 February 2012.

  11. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/mid_/4495257.stm Accessed 14 November 2011.

  12. See http://www.is.sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp/index.en.html Accessed 20 February 2012.

  13. See http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/sociable/overview.html Accessed 14 November 2011 also http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/lol/1165/kismet/kismet.html Accessed 14 November 2011 and http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/kismet/kismet.html Accessed 14 November 2011.

  14. Symbiosis is a state found in Nature in which two or more organisms act in complementary ways to achieve survival.

  15. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKEfJRe4uys Accessed 08 November 2011.

  16. In 1992, I was invited by professor Thomas Banchoff, from Brown University, to visit his laboratory and had the opportunity to play during a whole afternoon with a parametric 6D surface. In 2003, I was invited to participate in a workshop aiming to look for new metaphors for nanosciences and nanotechnologies at Banff Centre, Canada. This event opened up for me new possibilities showing that I could establish a dialogue among the virtual and physical domains. In 2004, during a research trip to USA, I visited Picard´s laboratory at MIT and tried some devices developed there. After, I went to visit Ken Rinaldo at Ohio State University and Victoria Vesna at UCLA discussing related issues with them and their students. In 2007, invited by Frank Pietronigro, I went to Yuri´s Night, an event promoted by NASA Ames Research Centre in San Francisco. There I tried the NeuroSky neural headset that was in development. In 2011, I visited professor Hod Lipson´s laboratory at Cornell University where I had contact with the concept of replicative robots. In 1991, 2010 and 2011, I was invited by professor James Hahn, from the Computer Science Department at The George Washington University, to go there as visiting scholar artist. Therefore, for many years I have been fascinated by the possibilities opened up by computer-related researches and have looked for ways to use them in my work.

  17. Artwork commissioned by Itau Cultural Institute, Brazil, in 2004, for the art and technology biennial exhibition Art.ficial Emotion 2.0. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuSMf-QVwFo&context=C36b2865ADOEgsToPDskLNLJnDcO9Cg-XAHaVtuD4G Accessed 20 February 2012.

  18. Creating a kind of metaphorical CAVE (Computed Automated Virtual environment).

  19. See http://vimeo.com/15751832 Accessed 12 August 2011.

  20. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xme0zLlbCUY Accessed 12 August 2011.

  21. http://globalcode.com.br Accessed 11 August 2011.

  22. The robot has around 150 cm of diameter when opened.

  23. Due to the opposite forces that produce the movements, a set of resultant binary forces appeared in the middle of the structure making flexible movements much more difficult to achieve. During the robot´s construction an engineer specialized in robotics was consulted about the problem. The conclusion we arrived at the time was that the lightest the structure the better.

  24. In 1986, Cragy Reynolds programmed a behavioural computer model for simulations of coordinated motion of entities called boids that act in similar mode to animal flocks and schools behaviour. This algorithm allows the creation of sets of biologically inspired agents exhibiting a form of collective intelligence. These computer simulations and mathematical models emulates three simple steering behaviours describing how an individual boid manoeuvres based on the positions and velocities of its nearby flock mates and the position of obstacles in its way. I implemented it in Java (Java3D API) in a more complex way creating varied choreographies that result by the interplay of different behaviours with random actions. See: http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/ Accessed June 13th 2011 also http://harry.me/2011/02/17/neat-algorithms---flocking Accessed 13 June 2011.

  25. http://www.java.com/ Accessed 11 August 2011.

  26. http://processing.org Accessed 11 August 2011.

  27. http://arduino.cc/ Accessed 11 August 2011.

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Acknowledgments

Caracolomobile team: Conception and design: Tania Fraga (http://taniafraga.art.br/blog/). Headset programming (EmotivJ SDK): Pedro Garcia. Electronics and robotics: Daniel Villar. Musics and sounds: André Felipe Teperman. Craftsmanship: Hélio Vieira Melo. Documentation: Tania Fraga and Ricardo Botini. Voice: Andrea Fraga. Sponsoring: Itau Cultural Institute. Research grant: Sao Paulo Foundation for Research Support, FAPESP. Special thanks: School of Communication and Arts, University of Sao Paulo (ECA/USP), Physics Laboratory, Catholic University of Sao Paulo, Globalcode, TV Mackenzie, Emotiv Systems.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Mathematics and Art of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

    Tania Fraga

  2. R Dr Cesario Mota Jr, 454, s 1401, Sao Paulo, 01221-020, Brazil

    Tania Fraga

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  1. Tania Fraga
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Correspondence to Tania Fraga.

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This artwork was built with a grant from Itau Cultural Institute, Brazil, for the art and technology biennial exhibition Art.ficial Emotion 5, which happened from July 1 until September 05, 2010 with support from the School of Communication and Arts, University of Sao Paulo and the Sao Paulo Foundation for Research Support (FAPESP).

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Fraga, T. Caracolomobile: affect in computer systems. AI & Soc 28, 167–176 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-012-0392-4

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