Stan Wijnans

8 Artificial Intelligence in Robotics Art

Of equal importance to my discussion is the field of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) which attempts to create and understand intelligent beings. Russell, Stuart & and Norvig (2002) note that “... it is clear that computers with human-level intelligence (or better) would have a huge impact on our everyday lives and on the future course of civilization”. We could imagine that Artificial Intelligence with “inclusion of the neural networking programming concept could be trained to  recognise individuals [or robots] from their gesture patterns and movement characteristics” and that if neural networks were included in AI programms interactive systems could be “trained to recognise individuals (or robots) from their gesture patterns and movement characteristics” Garthe Paine (2002:8). Artist Kenneth Rinaldo imagines “an ideal of this kind of robotic art as ‘a cybernetic ballet of experience‘, with the computer / machine and viewer / participant involved in a grand dance of one sensing and responding to the other allowing new sculptural and virtual algorithmic manifestations which will far surpass our wildest imaginations” (Woolf, Sam and Bech 2002:2). As we previously saw, Schoeffer tried to achieve the same goal in 1956 with ‘CYSP1’. Rinaldo emphasizes the lack of body and sensory elements to reach his interactive ideal of ‘a cybernetic ballet of experience‘ and resumes in the writing below:

Structurally, computers continue to develop, and seem to mimic the successive stages of development that less evolved forms have gone through, progressing from single transistors (cell) to very large scale integrated circuits (neuron) to massively parallel neural networks (brain). Many would say, that what is still lacking in computers, are the body and sensory elements that would allow them to develop a form of consciousness. I believe we represent that body as a remote sense extension, which rejoins with the computer as information processor and integrator. We further act as that body by continually researching, manufacturing and modeling ever-faster hardware/ software. Theorists are further citing the web as an expanded form of an emerging consciousness. Roy Ascott calls this a ‘Noetic network’ in which our minds and the information networks come together to create a new space of consciousness
(Rinaldo 2002:4).

Ki Consciousness in artificial systems, machines and architecture. The Japanese know this spiritual energy to be intrinsic to technology (Roy Ascott 1996)

only epistemically autonomous robots capable of dynamically creating new mappings between sensors and actuators and of constructing their own sensors could fulfill Rinaldo’s vision. Autonomous devices can determine their own relations with and knowledge of the world, construct their own sensors ans share key propertis that lead to their epistemic autonomy
(Bird et al in Woolf et al 2002:2).

 

Bird, J., Layzell, P., Webster A. & Husbands, P. (2003) 'Towards epistemically autonomous robots ; exploiting the artistic potential of physical systems'. Leonardo Journal 6:2.

Paine, G. (2002) 'Interactivity, where to from here?'. Organised Sound 7:3. International Computer Music Association.

Rinaldo, K. (2002) 'Technology Recapitulates Phylogeny : Artificial Life'. Ohio State University.

Woolf, S. & Bech, T. (2002) 'Experiments with reactive robotic sound sculptures'. Interact Lab Dept. of Cognitive and Computing Sciences Sussex University, Brighton.