Envisioning possibilities for computer art, architecture and design

Tania Fraga

“…well me and the people here at the studio think of ourselves as designers. We're not artists. My work comes from a background in art. I realized that I wasn't interested in viewers, I was interested in users and participants, so it made sense that my work had to move to design or architecture. Though it took a long time for me to see this.” Vito Acconci

The essay reflects on the role of interactive computer art in looking for new metaphors to disclose potential functionalities for human-computer interaction, where computers are sometimes entrusted with boring tasks, or where ways are sought by which to render them more akin to intelligent beings, or where, in other instances, more symbiotic forms of interaction are sought, which may allow the emergence of the best in both natural and artificial systems. In addition, the potential for the development of new morphological possibilities in the production of contemporary industrial goods production allows the development of semiotic artifacts designed and produced with computer assistance. The framework chosen is based on a parallel study relating modern serial production of things and the creation of commodities using design, simulation and production processes intermediated by computer technology at all their levels, seeking products capable of understanding at least some of our emotions, responding to them in flexible modes, showing us how we could teach them to become reliable and not intrusive, as computers are nowadays.

Introduction
Computational research using interactive computer graphics, artificial intelligence, genetic algorithms, artificial neural networks and any other computer-related knowledge allowed the invention and creation of circumstances that make use of the knowledge of natural processes so as to improve artificial ones. These processes explore the notion of emergence and of agency in order to research cooperation and compromise in complex computer systems,¹ developing a theoretical framework that assumes that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.² In this context, for example, an interconnected artificial net of neurons may self-configure in ways similar to the ways of natural neurons, allowing the appearance of new modes for learning and acquiring knowledge. The neural nets, as these artificial computer processes are called, memorize information, creating chains of interrelated connections between the memorized data. Factors such as these have added to the development of interactive interfaces permitting the establishment of friendlier relations between humans and computers. Responsive interfaces are being researched, as we seek better modes to achieve enhanced symbiosis that will allow the integration of artificial and natural organisms. Contemporary artworks have been a driving force for this development.

The introduction of artificial intelligence, and of interactivity, into the artistic processes of creation has allowed the emergence of a distinctive phenomenon: the possibility of working with affection and emotion in such interactions.³ Maybe the terms “emotion” or “affectivity” are not satisfactory to designate characteristics that simulate affective interactions between humans and artificial organisms. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that we are witnessing the emergence of a new type of cognition: the cognition of artificial organisms in symbiosis with human beings.

Artificial organisms—which have either sensors or neural nets in order to trigger actuators or smart materials that allow them to express affective behaviors—may acquire rudimentary affective qualities based on those of living beings. The artists´ relation with the creative and productive processes that allow the creation of artworks using this kind of technology have changed dramatically during the last decade. Such artworks depend on a set of factors and it is possible to see the connection between them and the processes that are also redefining the industrial process of production.

The design of responsive artificial organisms based on computer technology—characterized by software, computers, microchips, computer languages and control systems—allows artists, designers and architects to conceive complex products—and it requires interdisciplinary teams. Interchange, cooperation and collaboration between researchers and producers has become  essential procedure for innovative companies. In Brazil many universities are setting up structures that enable small innovative business to emerge and developing research within their academic environment.

Since the development of informational aesthetics by Max Bense and Abraham Moles, artists are exploring computers as semiotic machines. In Brazil, the artistic theoretical environment was for many years under the influence of the Czechoslovakian-Brazilian philosopher Villém Flusser. “Flusser lived 31 years in Brazil and was, possibly, the main intellectual mentor of many generations of Brazilian artists who have chosen to work with this technological challenge. Even after his return to Europe, and until his demise in Prague in 1991, Flusser continued to attend to the Brazilian intellectual sphere, Brazil being a country where he left not only two sons but also a large circle of disciples”.⁴ This situation has given incentive to many artists to explore computational languages and to understand the innards of computer systems.⁵ Beginning in the 1970´s, mainly with the exploration of the combinatorial potential of computer technology, Brazilian artists are today developing more complex artworks.

Priscila Arantes and this author have stated that “to think aesthetics in the contemporary world is to conceive it in relation to complex methodologies inside complex systems where processes are developed through interactive arts. In this context what matters is not the data, but the field where relations and connections between data, devices and participants take place, establishing a technological environment that works as an intricate organism.”

Inquiring about the desirable developments of our present technologies in relation to industrial production, and considering the intrinsic semiotic nature of technological commodities, it is possible to delineate four different levels⁷ to examine possible profiles for future development. On the first level there are the modes of production; on the second, the manners of goods storage and preservation; on the third, the methods of their diffusion and transmission; and, finally, on the forth level, the approaches developed for their reception.

The framework chosen for this essay concerns the productive regimes of meta-objects created with the aid of computational devices, an area that has been defined as physical computing.⁸ These regimes will be considered in relation with the four levels described above.

Concerning modes of production, it is possible to notice that the serial production of goods has been integrated with the production intermediated by computers, by means of the making of molds and prototypes through design computer-intermediated process. It is possible to say computers are transitional instruments for the whole of the manufacturing processes. In many highly automated industries these processes already take place after the simulation of the objects’ 3D shape with different materials. This is followed by tests to study, in virtual objects, the tensions the physical objects will be subjected to in the material world. Producing physical models directly from 3D CAD models, through increasingly automatic processes called rapid prototyping, allows those who design the objects in 3D to identify possible significant changes in the product development cycle, to customize it. There are diverse areas in which rapid prototyping is used, such as engine-part mold masters, architectural scale models, and medical and orthodontic implants, among others. “The adoption rate of rapid prototyping among engineers and designers follows closely that of 3D CAD use, although rapid prototyping is at a much earlier stage of popularity and time in the market”.⁹

Extrapolating this panorama, once the virtual objects are already available it is possible to think of them as meta-objects that could be manipulated for the creation of custom personalized objects. Editing of 3D data may be quick and it is easy to change the measured 3D data in real time on any preview screen. This allows for sequential framing, measurement and alignment of the data. It is possible to envision a system based on processes for the design of meta-objects with layers establishing sets of characteristics and behaviors that can be parameterized. The interrelationship between layers will demand the development of modular relationship among them in such way that all elements and steps of the process will be interconnected, responding to one another in such a way that any change in a piece affects the whole object. The meta-objects can be conceived from a group perspective. For example, a building, if built to react affectively to their users, could have responsive movable parts able to acknowledge, react, answer and to express themselves. This building would be the result of the assemblage of serial with computational processes, and would work in symbiosis with its users.

On the second level, (the goods storage and preservation manners level), what is needed for preservation and storage is the technological set up of an environment that allows the software to communicate and to run. On this level the important feature for artists, designers and architects is the information related to topologies, behaviors and the characteristics of the meta-objects. The topology of a meta-object allows for the storage of a set of relations that may assume diverse geometries and behaviors. The set of characteristics that defines a specific object—such as materials, textures, color, among others—and the procedures for its manufacture can be chosen from data banks previously defined for that family of objects.

The hypothesis described above places us artists, architects and designers in a position to conceive meta-objects, which may become families of objects that can be personalized to attend the desires of the final users or buyers. In order to imagine what such meta-objects will be like, one can think of them as scripts creating topologies that can be transformed in each final object. The genetic potential of such scripts as meta-object generators allows us to inquire how genetic algorithms and neural networks could have a much more incisive role in such production processes.

On the third level, the level related to the means of diffusion and transmission, a personalized production will demand radical changes. The objects will have to be interactive, allowing the user to experience the object, not only choosing its appearance in a 3D environment, but also feeling it. Shops and vendors will have to develop new approaches for their customers, which will demand a different set of simulation systems.

Finally, on the forth level, the level of the means of reception, one sees the receptor transformed into co-creator of the object they intend to acquire. For complex products, such as houses, for instance, where the process happens through successive steps, maybe reception will need to be intermediated by simulation environments allowing sub-levels of detail to become available for different set ups. A building, for example, demands adequacy regarding the topographical, climatic and geological conditions of the place where it will be built. Additionally, its characteristics should be able to express the peoples´ needs and aspirations, adapting to diverse cultural backgrounds and to local biotypes in different countries.

The present essay aims to delineate only a few possibilities inherent to the technological mode of production of industrialized contemporary societies. Thus, aware of such possibilities, artists, designers and architects can look for strategies to explore that mode’s semantics, amplifying its semiotic potential. Since one can say that technologies have designed the sociological environment, new policies are needed to maintain freedom, allowing anyone the exercise it in many different ways, searching to develop unexplored socio-cultural landscapes. In Brazil many artists are exploring just such a situation. This essay will now consider a few of those who are developing works aligned with the ideas delineated above, and their work will be summarily described in the next section. 

The Brazilian theoretician professor Arlindo Machado describes the panorama that philosopher Villém Flusser has created in Brazil as one reflecting on Brazilian artists´ practice in terms of its being an incentive for their eagerness to explore computational tools with which to seek to understand their intrinsic processes. Through such endeavors a few Brazilian artists have sought the amplification of the potential symbiosis between rational thought and intuitive and sensorial processes. Rational thought is immanent within digital technology. On the other hand emotional and sensorial processes—which have been explored by artists for ages—are more complex.

Meanwhile, as software and computer languages are not created to be explored by artists, designers or architects and, since their goals are sometimes opposed those of scientists, engineers and businessmen, it is extremely important for them to know computer languages in order to create software that explores the conceptual, the emotional and the sensorial fields. In order to clarify this statement, a few relevant examples in Brazil of interactive and physical computer artwork dealing with the concepts explored before have been chosen:

1. Affective bracelet is a piece of jewellery created by Flávia Amadeu, which features a galvanomic skin-resistance sensor that measures biometric signals of its users, translating them in five coloured lights to unveil their emotional state. The bracelet is also built with natural rubber from the Amazon, aiming to sustainably add value to natural products.

2. Caracolomobilis primus is a work in progress conceived by the group SACI based on the visionary concept of computational constructs that are almost architecture, mobiles and mutable, able to recognise, answer and express emotion and affect when sharing the participants´ emotional states.¹⁰ The artificial responsive organism is controlled by a kinetic system while an affective system allows its expression through sounds, and an illumination system lights it up. The artificial organism is now in prototype form. It opens and alights when the participants enter the installation space. It emits sound when they touch two steel bars. In doing this they communicate to the artificial organism their biometric signals which are then translated as emotional states and converted into five different sounds. This means that the space will answer to the participants’ touch. Inside the dark blue installation space, the organism will hang from the ceiling over a mirror lake. It is also made with natural rubber from the Amazon, coloured with fluorescent dark blue pigments that respond to black light (dark violet), aiming to add value to natural Brazilian forest products. This installation aims to involve people from different disciplines in thinking about and developing interactive affective tools as a mode to create more symbiotic and visceral human/machine interaction.

Figure 02: Caracolomobilis primus: the object

Figure 03: Caracolomobilis primus: the installation

3. Op_era: hyperviews by Daniela Kutschat and Rejane Cantoni is an installation dealing with high dimensions. It used projections of a hypercube as flashed lines of lights, using the property of image latency at the viewers´ retinas to create a feeling of immersion—as if one were inside a hypercube.

Figure 04: Op_era Hyperviews at Artificial Emotion 2, Itau Cultural Institute, 2004.

4. Palavrador is an interactive computer artwork conceived and produced in 2006, during the 38th Winter Festival sponsored by UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) in the Diamantina city, a UNESCO-declared world monument. During 15 days, the group Palavrador,¹¹ made up of artists and professors from Brazilian Universities and abroad, used a trans-disciplinary methodology to create content that could reflect the complex scenario entwining the arts, science and philosophy. Palavrador is a poetic cyberworld built in 3D. It uses computational procedures applying artificial life behaviors based on autonomous agents and computer graphics techniques to create poetic boids (virtual robots) and expressions.

Figure 05: images of wandering poems in Palavrador at Diamantina Winter Festival, 2006.

5. Responsive membrane, created by the author, is an artwork that seeks new metaphors to disclose the potential functionality of responsive materials created by nanotechnologies, as well as attempting to build a first step towards the creation of artificial organisms intended to become movable parts of buildings. It creates a responsive surface, extremely sensitive, which is affected by computer stimuli. The surface’s structure was manufactured using nitinol wires, a metallic memory-shape alloy. The surface reacts to electricity variations changing its configuration when stimulated by the computer by means of the participants action. The surface’s membrane was created with natural rubber from the Amazon area, as part of a project that develops low technology chemical processes for rubber production so as to add value to the products of small communities of rubber extractors in the Amazon Region.¹²

Figure 06: Responsive membrane at Artificial Emotion 2, Itau Cultural Institute, 2004.

6. Vestis is an interactive wearable computer, created by Luisa Paraguai. It is a costume for performances, comprised of several rings. The rings have sensors that respond to the performers´ body and to stimuli from the environment. It is thus a changing costume, not something one wears just to cover the body but something that enacts its own performance, working in symbiosis with the person who wears it.

Figure 07: Vestis at Siggraph 2005.

Figure 08: Vestis at Banco do Brazil Cultural Center, 2004.

7. Vozes/Voices is an interactive computer artwork by Suzete Venturelli, which transform the interactors´ voices into smoke-like particles. The artwork explores the metaphor that the users’ vocal sounds also disappear in the air like smoke, and it stimulates the participants to share their voices in order to discern its visible manifestation on a white screen.

Figure 09: Vozes, installation at Banco do Brazil Cultural Center, 2004.

Reverberations

Interactive art and physical computing have driven many researchers to look for improvement in the field of human-computer interaction. Sometimes the attempt is to delegate many boring tasks to computers, sometimes a search for ways to make them more akin to intelligent beings, at other times a search for more symbiotic forms. One may consider that these achievements are allowing the emergence of something new that uses these two complementary realms, the natural and the artificial.

Over the last few decades, as previously stated, many industries began to use CAD/CAE/CAM systems and robotic processes for the creation of goods. The use of online rapid prototyping,¹³ 3D desktop prototyping and manufacturing devices such as stereo-lithography, surface-generation and laser-sintering systems, for sand, metal and plastics is increasingly commonplace. However, at least in Brazil, very few designers are researching the impacts associated with such technology in their own practices.

Tania Fraga is a Brazilian architect and artist. She holds a PhD on the Communication and Semiotics Program at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo (PUC) with a Post Doctoral at CAiiA-STAR. She was Professor and Co-ordinator of the Graduation Studies of the Art Institute at University of Brasilia, Brazil, from 1987-2004 and member of the Advisory Research Committee of the Banff New Media Centre in 2003, Canada. She was Visiting Scholar at the Computer Science Department at The George Washington University, Washington DC, 1991/1992 and Artist-in-Residence at The Bemis Foundation, USA, 1986, with a grant from the Fulbright Commission.

Notes

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Ideology of the Imaginary in the 21st Century was a Symposium presented by the Experimental Art Foundation, in association with the 2007 Adelaide Film Festival, and supported by the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council. Curated by Melentie Pandilovski.

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