Archive Dreaming, which was first presented at SALT Galata, is user-driven; however, when idle, the installation “dreams” of unexpected correlations among documents.

In this project, a temporary architectural space is created as a blank slate for light and data to be applied as materials that form a volume of an archive visualized with machine intelligence. By training a neural network with images of documents, Archive Dreaming reframes memory, history and culture within the understanding of a museum for the 21st century.

Credits

As part of the five-year program The Uses of Art—The Legacy of 1848 and 1989, organized by L’Internationale, Archive Dreaming was realized with the support of Google’s AMI program.

SALT Research and programs: Vasıf Kortun, Meriç Öner, Cem Yıldız, Adem Ayaz, Başak Çaka, Merve Elveren, Ari Algosyan, Dilge Eraslan, Sani Karamustafa

Google’s AMI program: Mike Tyka, Kenric McDowell, Andrea Held, Jac de Haan

Refik Anadol studio members and collaborators: Raman K. Mustafa, Toby Heinemann, Nick Boss, Kian Khiaban, Ho Man Leung, Sebastian Neitsch, David Gann, Kerim Karaoglu, Sebastian Huber

The interdisciplinary research is based on experiential investigations. The results are presented in form of experimental prototypes such as LightScale II or lead to professional creative projects such as SINGULARITY, which was developed with the choreographer and Assoc. Prof. Carol Brown.

http://www.arc-sec.com
http://www.carolbrowndances.com

From intelligent street lights that track vehicles and pedestrians (along with bird songs and gunshots), to emotional-recognition systems in retail stores, to in-ear personal assistants, soon our urban environment could be full of autonomous AI systems that change the character (and constituents) of the “local.”

We asked a range of questions in initiating these projects: what are the ecologies created by embedded AI, what would the interactions be like, how do the different systems interact with each other, and what role should design play? What about the well-being of the AI systems? What are the day-to-day implications of the technology and methodologies of AI/ML—neural nets, supervised/unsupervised learning, the edge/fog/cloud network infrastructure, or the methods and biases of data scientists?

The projects use a mixture of media and working technology to explore the human impact of pervasive AI entities and architectures. They are speculative, experimental, even strange, embrace the potential complexities, and are neither utopian or dystopian. The goal is to reveal insights and inspire discussion relevant to emerging design practices that combine the human, the civic, and the smart thing.

Media Design Practices is an experimental program where critical making is used to explore design and the impact of emerging ideas from science, technology and culture. ArtCenter College of Design is a private nonprofit college in Pasadena, California. The work presented was created by Kiana Bahramian (US), Stephanie Cedeño (US), Reina Imagawa (JP), Yeawon Kim (KR), Xiaoxuan Liu (CN), Michael Milano (US), Claire le Nobel (CA), Godiva Reisenbichler (US), Yidan Sui (CN), Nan Tsai (TW), Jason Wong (US), Nicci Yin (US/TW) and Hao Zhang (CN), who are graduate students in the Media Design Practices MFA program at ArtCenter College of Design. The curators of The Internet of Enlightened Things are Phil van Allen and Ben Hooker, who devised and led a class of the same name which provided the foundation for this work.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.mediadesignpractices.net/research/ioet

This town has a secret: Networked Colluding in the Internet of Things

Stephanie Cedeño (US), Nicci Yin (US/TW)

This town has a secret: Networked Colluding in the Internet of Things investigates secrecy as part of the fabric of a neighborhood, and how devices with artificial intelligence conspire. Drawing inspiration from mafia and mobster archetypes, the project takes the connectedness of IoT devices to an absurd future: a networked community of AI agents who secretly control the neighborhood.

A Committee of Infrastructure

Jason Wong (US)

A Committee of Infrastructure interrogates the issue of agency and representation within the domain of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Using the familiar forum of a city council meeting, the project considers how humans and AI systems interact and negotiate with each other in a local government setting.

Mr. Rogers talks about Artificial Intelligence

Godiva Reisenbichler (US)

Mr. Rogers talks about Artificial Intelligence asks the question: How can we demystify the new and contentious manifestations of ubiquitous artificial intelligence, as American television personality Mr. Rogers did for the medium of television in his educational TV series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood?

When AIs Go Feral

Claire le Nobel (CA)

When AIs Go Feral imagines how the animal life of a neighborhood is modified (and is itself modified) by artificial autonomous agents. Inspired by a real-life story about a flamboyant real-estate developer who imported non-native species of birds onto his private ranch, the project uses the suburban birdsong soundscape to explore a constantly mutating and evolving hybrid ecosystem.

Intelligent Devices Retirement Preserve

Michael Milano (US)

Intelligent Devices Retirement Preserve imagines a parkland where intelligent agricultural machinery can continue to roam and interact with people after decommissioning. The project considers roles for specific classes of smart devices beyond the end of their designed obsolescence, particularly autonomous farming equipment; which will have acquired a unique data set of pastoral media through a life of tending crops and livestock.

Department of Parks and Recreation: AI Upkeep

Xiaoxuan Liu (CN), Godiva Reisenbichler (US)

AI Upkeep proposes that the AI systems controlling cities are made open and legible to the public in the form of physical “decision trees”. How might pruning these civic interface structures literally and figuratively reshape a neighborhood?

Training a car to dream

Hao Zhang (CN)

Training a car to dream comprises a series of machine learning apparatuses for training the neural nets of autonomous vehicles. What does it mean to be a bad driver in an autonomous vehicle? Can an autonomous vehicle be trained to dream of – to hallucinate and then simulate—a more thrilling, less uniform, transit experience for the benefit of its occupants?

Insectile Indices

Yeawon Kim (KR)

Insectile Indices considers how electronically augmented insects could be trainable to act as sophisticated sensors, working in groups, as part of a neighborhood policing initiative. The project is partly an investigation into the ethics of this controversial idea, but also an aesthetic exploration of such a deliberate alteration to an wildlife ecosystem.

Listening City

Nan Tsai (TW)

Listening City explores human relationships in the imagined context where infrastructure can, literally, hear what you say and “usefully” intervene by reacting accordingly. Inspired by outcomes in sentiment analysis, the project looks at how radical sensitivity can be embodied by AI city infrastructures and how this extreme “smartness” can change the behavior of even our most passing comments.

The Hallucinating City

Kiana Bahramian (US)

The Hallucinating City imagines a city rebuilt, conjured back into existence by strategically “hallucinating” forms from fragments of excavated media and metadata. The project explores the blurry line between nostalgia and AI hallucination, and the powerful yet contentious role machine learning can play in materializing something tangible and concrete from a transient and fragmented past.

Rules of Utopia

Yidan Sui (CN)

Rules of Utopia imagines multiple homeowner’s associations (HOAs), each with different rules governing the behavior of intelligent devices within the town of Utopia. What are the conflicts that could arise between districts with different sets of rules, and how do the thresholds of autonomous-device regulations respond accordingly?

While Rock Print appeared massive, it was relatively lightweight due to the use of foam-glass gravel. Two years later, the research breakthroughs are responding equally strongly to an ecological and technological agenda: No additives, no substitutes, no mortar, no formwork, just real string and real gravel. It is the purest yet most highly advanced presentation of the robotic fabrication of jammed gravel held in place by computed and robotically placed string patterns to form architectural structures. It is a solid massif built up from loose rock: a Manistone.

Credits

Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zürich

Team: Petrus Aejmelaeus-Lindström and Gergana Rusenova (project lead), Ammar Mirjan, Romana Rust, Hannes Mayer, Fabio Gramazio, Matthias Kohler

In cooperation with: Prof. Hans J. Herrmann, Dr. Falk K. Wittel with Pavel Iliev (Institute for Building Materials, ETH Zurich)

Project funding: ETH Zürich Foundation

Selected experts: Self-Assembly Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

About the artists

Gramazio Kohler Research
Since its inception in 2005 the research group at ETH Zürich led by Prof. Matthias Kohler and Prof. Fabio Gramazio has been at the forefront of robotics and digital fabrication in architecture. With their robotic laboratories and work ranging from prototypes to building elements, they have inspired architects and researchers alike to explore the capacities of the industrial robot as a universal tool of the digital age.

Read more: starts-prize.aec.at.

This project is presented in the framework of the STARTS Prize 2017. STARTS Prize received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 732019.

Uwe Rieger (DE), Carol Brown (NZ)

Singularity s a two part performance blending data, dance, music and architecture in a 360-degree haptic-digital environment. Marked with tracking devices, three performers become an experiential interface, transforming virtual and physical movement into mutable architectural spaces.

Large 3D holographic constructions are interactively drawn and moved by the dancers in a space defined by a live-render program, motion-tracking cameras, projection, and haze particles. A digitally augmented world materializes as wormholes, kites, watery walls and magnetic particles. Audience and performer experience an intermixing of techno sound, movement and data through immersive transforming arcs of light.

Credits

Creative Directors: Uwe Rieger (architecture), Carol Brown (choreography)
Design and programming: Yinan Liu
Design and graphics: Ying Miao
Music: Jérome Soudan (Mimetic)
Performers: Zahra Killeen-Chance, Adam Naughton, Solomon Holly-Massey
Lighting Consultant: Margie Medlin

The project is supported by Creative New Zealand, and the University of Auckland.

With assistance from architects, designers, craftsmen and teachers, the students participating in Vorderhand design and build products in the respective crafts & trades workshops. The first step is for youngsters to come up with offbeat ideas by giving free rein to their creativity and inventiveness. Next, these innovative ideas are implemented, whereby the key criteria are for each student to personally perform as many job steps as possible under expert supervision and with the use of professional tools.

This exhibition showcases a selection of these creations:

Der hängende Diener
Pia Beer (AT), Alena Feuerstein (AT)

Over all
Kenan Ergin (AT), Emre Ergin (AT)

Summerboard
Thomas Bereuter (AT), Martin Faißt (AT)

Kraftmassage
Roman Fink (AT), Marcel Sparber (AT), Daniel Bader (AT)

Power of the Bauer
Daniel Pfanner (AT), Patrick Bechter (AT)

In 2017 the Ö1 Mobile Atelier is designed by any:time, the Linz-based architect team Jürgen Haller and Christoph Weidinger. The industrial-style pavilion is constructed out of logistics elements, such as intermediate bulk containers, and thereby continues the architectural structure of the POSTCITY into the courtyard outside.

Throughout the festival, visitors not only get information about Ö1 and the Ö1 festival program and events at the Ars Electronica Festival. First and foremost, people can experience and get information about a scientific project from the Ars Electronica Futurelab together with Wacker Neuson, an Austrian company producing construction machinery: Together they make it possible for festival visitors to pilot a big digger shovel using nothing but their thoughts and their eyes, by getting attached to a brain-computer interface mask.

The viewer can experience this surface adapting to the environment, inviting in light, moisture and sound. The wing-like units of the surface are modular and can thus be replaced or expanded. It is also possible even to mass-produce cheap individual units using printing technology. The information necessary for production and the design files for this project are published open-access on Github.

Credits

This work was produced with the support of the JST ERATO Kawahara Universal Information Network Project.