Arche-techne: On the architectural and philosophical scaffolding of new technology concepts for robotic materials

AUGUST 9: ADAM PARKER

Thursday, 6:30pm at RMIT 8.11.68

A common feature of modern robotic devices is that they are designed within the categorical framework of the robot understood as a biomimetic system. This can be as overt an influence as the anthropomorphic nature of an android, or as subtle as the worker replacement of a Cartesian manipulator arm. Biomimetic influences on robotic design can be seen to manifest in robot morphology, where animal locomotion and perception studies play a considerable role in suggesting engineering research directions and solutions, as well as in control systems, which commonly use models derived from various methods of modeling organic cognition. Biomimesis also shapes the very categorical structures we use to describe robots as robots, and outlines their social purpose.

A major outcome for robotic user interfaces of this trend to biomimesis is that the problem is often couched in terms of communication with a synthetic organism. A lot of progress has already been made along this communicative path, as was also made in human-computer interaction. Yet, thanks to tangible interaction and other fields of interaction research, we know that computers are not simply communication devices and can be conceived otherwise – so, following this analogically, how might a robot be alternatively conceptualized? And what might we gain from so doing?

In approaching this problem, my research has been necessarily grounded in a pragmatic analysis of robotic engineering. At the same time, it has operated in an analytic-critical fashion between the twin poles of architectural practice (in a broad sense) and philosophy. In particular, I have been influenced by Bergson, Heidegger, Whitehead, von Glasersfeld and de Landa (amongst others), and those visionary aspects of architectural practice (such as the Crystal Chain, Futurism, Bruce Goff, the various movements of the sixties and seventies and so forth) in which technological structures were brought into question. This has led me to conceptual design solutions for robotics that explore and exploit the categorical nature of how we approach the artifacts we design.

Alternative robotic technologies under investigation, such as massively parallel microrobotic lattices, hold the promise of a reconceptualization of the robotic as a material process, and thereby suggest the potential for interaction systems based on systems embodying this approach – systems in which the properties of such robotic materials might be malleable, shiftable, even seemingly unnatural. Such robotic materials would be inherently haptic, tangible and spatially transformative, raising a range of opportunities and issues for interaction designers, foregrounding recent key theoretical areas of concern such as embodiment and process.

This presentation will firstly outline the current state of play in engineering massively parallel microrobotics, then explore how my definition of a new conceptual space for technological pr the engagement of the different yet intertwined disciplines of philosophy and architecture. This will serve as a point of departure for a broader discussion of the nature of technology stewardship – what I term the arche-techne, or the defining-principles-leading-bringing-into-being of the technical-conceptual.

Arche-techne