Erik Conrad // Sky Frostenson // Adrian Herbez // Garnet Hertz // Ryan Schoelerman // Margaret Watson // So Yamaoka

Garnet Hertz

Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

(Cockroach-controlled mobile robot)

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.

Live demonstrations of this project will be given by the artist at 2pm daily during the course of the exhibition.

http://conceptlab.com/control/

About the artist

Garnet Hertz is a Fulbright Scholar, Research Fellow at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and is also completing the Critical Theory Emphasis at UCI. Hertz's current thesis work consists of developing hybrid insect/machine systems, taking cybernetic-inspired forms as an origin to analyze contemporary developments in "cyborg" existence: artificial life, body modification, biorobotics, genetic engineering and posthuman theory. He has shown this work at SIGGRAPH, and also is founder of Dorkbot-Socal, a monthly lecture series. Popular press about his work is widespread, disseminating through 25 countries including The New York Times, I.D. Magazine, The Washington Post, USA Today, NBC, CBS, ZDTV and CNN Headline News.
http://www.conceptlab.com
http://www.conceptlab.com/control/
http://turing.ace.uci.edu/~ghertz/

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