The world is a mask that hides the real world.
Thatâs what everybody suspects, though the world we see wonât let us dwell on it long.
The world has ways - more masks - of getting our attention.
The suspicion sneaks in now and again, between the cracks of everyday existenceâ¦the bird song dips, rises, dips, trails off into blue sky silence before the note that would reveal the shape of a melody that, somehow, would tie everything together, on the verge of unmasking the hidden armature that frames this sky, this tree, this bird, this quivering green leaf, jewels in a crown.â¦
As the song dies, the secret withdraws.
The tree is a mask.
The sky is a mask.
The quivering green leaf is a mask.
The song is a mask.
The singing bird is a mask.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
roachmobile
Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine: Project Overview:
....The project-based element of "Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" consists of a cockroach-controlled mobile robot: a mechanical system that amplifies and tranlates the bodily movement and intelligence of a giant hissing madagascan cockroach into the locomotion of a mobile machine. The hybrid biorobotic system strives to illustrate that the simple embodied intelligence of a living cockroach provides a substantially captivating and novel control center ("central processing unit", CPU) for a mobile robot, producing tounge-in-cheek "emergent" and complex behavior akin to the goals of artificial life and artificial intelligence research....
The cockroach is placed on top of a modified trackball - a computer-mouse-type device - that is hooked up to some electronics. The cockroach is held gently in place above the ball so that when the cockroach moves it makes the ball spin: a little bit like a two-dimensional treadmill. The electronics (optical encoders) within the trackball send out small electrical pulses to some electronics that make the motors move in a similar direction to where the cockroach is moving on the ball....
The cockroach eats almost anything, although it is fed organic lettuce and canned Pedigree "Traditional Ground Dinner With Chopped Beef (Improved Recipe)" dog food. A couple of cockroaches have died after being fed Carl's Jr. - although this may have been a coincidence. As a sidenote, it is dangerous to feed cockroaches any fruit with a peel: almost all fruit bought in a grocery store is heavily sprayed with insecticide that will kill the insects....
Why is this project called "Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine"?
This is a little bit of a long story.
In 1948, Norbert Wiener published a book titled "Cybernetics: on Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" in which he coined the term "cybernetics". He used this term to describe the science of transmitting messages between humans and machines, or from machine to machine. Wiener saw human communication as a model for human-machine and machine-to-machine interactions, and that the quality of these communications influenced one's inner well-being: especially in a society in which people increasingly interact with and are reliant on machines. As the term cybernetics stems from the Greek kybernetis meaning "steersman", the process of designing machines that effectively respond to us is important and has direct impact on our social condition.
All of this theory has a large influence on the history of computing, communications, robotics control theory, and many other fields. This project somewhat takes Wiener's title literally: it's interested in control and communication in the animal and the machine. It's also interested in the history and social impacts of cybernetic theory within contemporary culture: especially hybrid bio/machine systems....
