Zen

a two-part exploration of balance and movement in robots of nature. the first, titled Zen, examines the naturalness—or unnaturalness—of human intervention in the Wilderness. the second part, Urban Rockfitters, extends the robot into sensing and autonomous reactions. both robots were built with found objects.

Created in MS 179: Robotics, Digital Media, and Environment at Harvey Mudd College

Why do people stack rocks? For public art, for mediation, for religion? There’s something alluring about the balance and harmony amongst the rocks—ensconced in nature, yet distinctly human. The concept of “balance of nature” extends back to ancient Greece. Claiming that ecological systems are in constant equilibrium, it assumes that nature will balance itself out to regulate life. Although modern science has determined that nature is chaotic and perpetually unbalanced, this concept continues to be widely popular in the public.

Zen consists of six hanging rocks that increase in size from left to right. Each rock is connected by string to other rocks in the system or hangs in static. As the servo motor shifts within its 180 degree range, the movement causes the rocks to push and pull on each other to varying heights in Wilderness. The servo motor moves in response to human movements via mouse control. However, there exists a motor angle where the rocks are perfectly aligned on the same horizontal axis—this is the Built Environment. It is aesthetically pleasing on the eye, yet the balance is unnatural. The juxtaposition of the mechanical balance in Wilderness with the visual balance in the Built Environment raises questions on the role of human interventionism and participation in natural systems.

Detail: starry canvas and servo motor

Urban Rockfitters

Urban Rockfitters is a simplistic robot of nature built from a repurposed art canvas, twine, and a variety of found rocks. The project contains three Objects: the Embodied, the Bodiless, and the Sensing. The Embodied encompasses the skeletal structure of the robot: the chains of rocks are tied to the central servo motor through puncture holes on the painted canvas. The Bodiless is the computer screen, which displays Perlin Noise waves in ocean ombre colors. Finally, the Sensing comes from the infrared range-sensor, which senses human movement in proximity. Changes in the sensor reading triggers frenetic movement in the rock chains via the servo motor, and also excites the waves on the computer screen, whose amplitude is proportional to the level of human proximity.

This piece draws inspiration from the kinetic sculptures of Alexander Calder and Arthur Ganson. In particular, I was inspired by the fluidity and movement in Calder’s signature mobiles, in which the shapes, delicately suspended in wire, move in response to air currents. While my rocks and twine are less elegant in medium, I wanted the piece to inherit a similar response to human movement through mechanical means. Another inspiration is Ganson’s Machine with 23 Scraps of Paper, in which wing-like scraps of paper are nudged by an intricate set of gears, as if birds flying in the sky. The gears serve as a centralized powerhouse and energy flows to incur actions in the peripheral points where the paper scraps are attached. In my project, the servo motor is the central point that triggers all of the subsequent movements in the rocks and the computer screen.

My choice of mediums was also intentional in representing a spectrum of natural and built objects. The rocks that I used consisted of “natural” rocks picked from the outdoors, large polished river rocks, and pearlescent fishbowl stones. In combination with the twine and hand-painted canvas of the night-sky, the project is an ironic interpretation of nautical kitsch, commonly found in Pinterest boards and New England weddings. Finally, I wanted to explore the piece’s meaning across different environments. In the gallery, I decided to position the piece within the interstice of two pedestals, while in the natural setting, the piece hung from a tree branch as if a hanging mobile. How does the interpretation of the piece change when it’s set in a constructed gallery space vs. a natural environment? Which parts of the robot’s body are considered natural or artificial in each environment?