This proposed artwork focuses on the translation of weeds as a cultural
concept into robotic action code. Artist-defined algorithms, executed by a two-armed
robot, merge culture and technology into tangible outcomes: a series of
micro-gardens that can activate narratives, metaphors and materializations for 21st
century relationships between nature and technology.
Description
The Algorithmic Gardener: Tales of Future Natures and Code endeavors to
create new metaphors for emerging relationships between nature and technology. Our
proposed artwork brings together three main components: weeds with their
metaphorical intensity and as targets for extermination, soybean plants as a crop
rich with agricultural associations and scientific enhancements, but little
metaphorical power, and technology in the form of a Taurus humanoid robot. McMullen_Winkler
imagine an installation with a minimum of three small-scale experimental gardens: at
least one already weeded and growing to a stage of maturation; another in the
process of being weeded; and one with plants in an early stage of emergence waiting
to be tended. Cumulative video documentation will indicate to viewers what has come
before and allow them to anticipate what will come next. Live video will reveal the
machinic perspective of the robot, alongside a display of the code running in real
time making visible the logic by which the robot acts.
Each garden will represent the visible translation of a cultural concept, that
of weeds and by extension cultivated plants, into algorithms - human defined computer
code that determines the actions of the robot. McMullen_Winkler are very interested in the
possible divergent outcomes of the weeding process - including what might be construed
as mistakes and failures - as speculative acts.
McMullen_Winkler have worked on a prototype of this installation with the
support of Dr. Juan Wachs (School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University) and
Arjun Narang (graduate student in Purdue's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering)
and a Purdue College of Liberal Arts Transdisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Research Grant.
The Algorithmic Gardener (in progress)
McMullen_Winkler