Natalie Jeremijenko's wicked engineering projects, notes by Regine DeBatty

We Make Money Not Art's Regine DeBatty took really comprehensive notes from a talk by Natalie Jeremijenko at the New Cultural Networks conference in Amsterdam. Natalie is one of my favorite scientist-provocateurs, who has spun out so many infinitely cool projects that it's hard to believe it's all the work of just one person. She's a subversive guerilla engineer who teaches kids to use technology to upset the applecart, and it's a better world that has her in it. Regine's insightful notes really give some sense of how exciting it all is.

Ooz is zoo backwards and without cage.

We are facing a new phenomenon of urban migration. It used to be the poor from rural areas who migrated to the city in search of work in the industry. Nowadays, the animals "formally known as wild" are migrating to our cities. So it might be time to rethink our relationship with the natural system.

Several remote-controlled robotic geese let loose in various urban areas. The robotic goose interacts with the local goose population. The interface allows people to follow the birds closely and interact in ways that would not otherwise be possible. The goose drivers (or "gooser") can 'talk to' the geese through the interface, delivering prerecorded goose 'words,' their own vocal impersonations, or other sounds (such as goose flute hunting calls). Each utterance via the robotic goose triggers the camera in the robot's head to capture 2-4 seconds of video recording the responses of the animal. These video samples upload to the goosespeak database that the participants can annotate.

Left to their own devices, the robotic geese repeat what another (real) goose has done a few moments before. It's like a big gameboy, except that the platform is your local park.

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

See also:
ETECH Notes: Feral Robotics and Some Other Quacking, Shaking, Bubbling Robots
Feral robotic dogs stage toxic dump tech-art-protest actions
Natalie Jeremijenko's "One Tree Project"
Make Audiozine: Natalie Jeremijenko's robots