What emerges when we focus on the breath, the property and quality that makes bodies alive?
January 18, 2022
The formless breath navigates many places and bodies. It mediates our world and its ability to reshape consciousness and perception makes it a compelling quality to be studied. As breathing is intimately linked to our mental states, I wonder what artificial creatures can learn from displaying various breathing patterns and physical interaction with participants. And what we can learn from them in return.
I would like to explore behavior through a system of creatures that display various breathing patterns. Each creature can exchange breathing patterns and responses with other creatures in the system. Interaction with the creatures brings out behaviors such as sighing, moaning, coughing, sneezing, panting, laughing, soothing. The distance between the creatures and the amount and duration of physical interaction with participants influences the quality of interaction.
# concept
abstractness
synchronicity
intimacy
In Love With the World
by Anicka Yi
a r t i f i c i a l c r e a t u r e s
The family of creatures I imagine most probably start with one feature and this can develop more over time. The emerging behavior depends on the physical interaction of the audience moving them around (playing with proximity and composition). The creatures can synchronize breathing patterns when they are in proximity. For example participant can align a calm creature with a hyperventilating creature to sooth it with their slow breaths.
Sometimes it only takes one to influence the other. At other times more than one creature needs to help and sooth the extreme anxious one. Or perhaps a different breathing strategy? Like a symphony of giggles to calm and sooth. This interplay depends on bonds, traits and a dash of randomness that develop over time.
As an artist it is important for me to venture into the unknown. If I already knew exactly what the end result would be, how it would look like and behave like, what's left to discover? Therefore changes during this preliminary research will be inevitable and desirable. By analyzing existing works and gathering what intrigues me, I aim to reactivate such elements into new creatures.The two species in In Love With the World adds to the work its complexity. One specie responds to the environment & participants. The other interacts only with the same species. I wonder what significant behavior emerges from such a parameter and what does it tell us about learning from otherness?
In Love With the World
m e t h o d s
• autonomous system
• two species (social & 'non-social')
• olfactory refers to different historical time period
• responds to human heat
These airborne cephalopods respond to human heat by releasing smells
c o m p o n e n t s
breath expressions
panting
puffing
sighing
coughing
sneezing
laughing
moaning
soothing
huffing
scoffing
...
motion
shaking
vibrating
inflate/deflate?
open/close?
up/down?
...
visual
minimal
abstract
...
audio
human & non-human breaths
...
Technological Dreams Series
by Dunne & Raby
Technological
Dreams
Series
n o t e s
• non-typical robots
• design based on personality traits e.g. neediness, independance, helplessness
• speculative not primarily experiential or participatory centred work
keywords
abstractness
Why? To leave space for participants to dwell into their own imagination. To come closer to (radical) otherness without facial expressions and or a recognizable body. Perhaps the formless breath will take the bare shape of merely an organ.
synchronization
To align rhythms and bodies. To be in unison. Merge. Merge. Merge. To become one body. To practice embodiment?
intimacy
Without self-sensing technology but merely through kinesthesia and observing breathing bodies.What could these breathing creatures teach us about being human?
soft(n)
by Thecla Schiphorst
"
soft(n) explores intimacy and experience through physical interaction with 10-12 networked soft objects that exhibit emerging behavior when touched or moved within a space. The network recognizes the quality of tactile and kinesthetic interaction, responding to how objects are touched or moved. Interaction with the soft objects elicits behaviors such as humming, shaking, sighing, singing and shared moving luminous patterns.
soft(n)
n o t e s
• autonomous system
• interconnected objects
• quality of interaction determined by touch and movement
• unknown what participants felt during these sessions
(what did they discover on their own/collectively? how did it feel like?)