Cyborganic BW–V2
Materials:
Bamboo, bask fibre, wool, natural dyes, conductive fibres, Ardunio, Xbee, sound sensors, vibration motors, electronics.
Concept:
Loss of biodiversity is posing an immense threat to the ecosystem, especially the drastic decline in insects endangers the food-chain and crop production. In response to this development many cities have started rewilding efforts, to increase biodiversity. In this work, we introduce the notion of Urban Cyborganics, as an approach to make these nonhuman urban spaces available to human perception and to develop awareness towards the necessity of rethinking how we align ourselves with the other species in our habitat. We define the Cyborganic, as a fictitious nature-human–machine hybrid. We introduce a cyborganic device, the Cyborganic BW-V2, a head-worn digital artefact fashioned from bamboo reeds and grasses, as a form of material and experiential storytelling. Leaning on the notion of sympoeisis, or becoming-with, the device enables its wearer to connect to rewilded sites of biodiversity in the city through haptic experiences, emulating an insect-like perception of the urban space.
BambooWhisper V1, is a sympoetic device for exploring otherness. Two wearable communication devices, each consisting of a felted garment with a conical bamboo headdress. Both devices incorporate an electronic system and a microprocessor, translating the wearers voices into movement of the protruding bamboo sticks and vibration in the other wearers’ device. The design of the headdress encloses the head, thereby directing the wearer’s vision forward and limiting their peripheral vision, amplifying somatic immediate proprioception and limiting distraction. We consider the creative result a vehicle for approaching our subject matter as opposed to it constituting the research in itself. For example, this device generates patterns of information in the form of rhythmic percussive structures which represent the source bio-data in new forms. Anomalies can become apparent that previously were invisible. Another implication identified is the user experience of haptic interfaces and their implications in HCI. The wealth of experiential capacity of the body informs what the artist identifies as ‘interface aesthetics’.
In its first implementation BambooWhisper augmented wearers perception of multilingual communication in an effort to reveal ‘umsprache’ as the Dadaists called it. By stripping away literal meaning from language, the aim was to reveal underlying patterns and rhythms core to communication, beneath cognitive systems of semiotic analysis.
The experiments revealed human propensity for anthropomorphism, as the technocrafted Cyborganic devices became agents in the conversation. Delay in feedback and their sensitivity to signals beyond human range of perception could have been viewed as faults however embracing this experience we understood the headdresses as insect-like.
Cyborganic BW-V2 (Bamboo Whisper-Version 2), approaches a sense based ontological inquiry into that which is other than human, whether labeled as trans-,post-, or non-human. The devices were programmed to detect insects, by reacting to environments conducive to insect habitation.
A series of experiments in the context of rewilded urban environments took place in Aarhus and Sydney where councils and private citizens are working to diversify the species inhabiting the city. Participants in the experiment, could experience a sympoetic link to other organisms living in the shadowy borderland of the periurban. The Cyborganic device evokes empathy with insects and how they might feel and in this way connect human experience to this feral city topology.
Urban Cyborganics: Experiments
Through guided walks in Aarhus as part of TEI Arts Track and in Sydney as part of the Sydney Design Festival, participants wearing the prosthetic device experience the environment from an alternative mind-set, emulating an insect and experiencing the city from a non-antropocentric view, thereby becoming aware of the city as a not purely human space. They enter a rewilded urban environment which largely goes unnoticed to us humans, “a city of crevices, borrows, cracks and places of weeds and rotting wood. It is the wild, feral city. Its citizens, a heterogeneous crowd of unregistered little creatures. For a long-time they were unwelcomed, hunted, displaced, exterminated” [1].
Cyborganic pioneers walked in rewilded locations in diverse environments in Denmark and Australia encountering biodiverse sites on their journey. Participants engaged in semi-structured interviews post-walk to evaluate their experience.
WALK ONE. 2.1 km from Vesterbro Torv to Frederik Nielsens Vej, Aarhus Denmark with Winnie and Minke.
“…like getting used to having a different shaped head…”
“oh it’s like a cricket” or something like that… insecty…”
WALK TWO. 1.25 km across grand drive meadow to Kensington Pond, Fernley Grounds, Centennial Park, Sydney Australia with Interaction Designer Ashleigh West.
“…it actually was quite crazy, it’s sort of an exciting feeling and it actually does change the way that you do perceive the piece and interact with the space, because it’s like a lightbulb moment in the sense where it sort of switches on, and you go, Ah!, maybe this is how they feel.
WALK THREE. 1.17 km from Martin Rd around the western corner wetland areas of Fernley Grounds Centennial Park Sydney with arborist Shane Trotter.
“When I actually put the hat on it kind of put me in that huntsmen perspective of looking for things.”
WALK FOUR. 1.42 km from Martin Rd to Kensington Pond, Fernley Grounds Centennial Park Sydney with artist Kassandra Bossel.
“The sound quality of it, and the feeling of it, going, vibrating on your head. But when it went off, it totally took your whole body with with it. This kind of made me feel a little bit like what I imagined an insect might feel like.”
Project partners:
Raune Frankjaer
Exhibitions:
• Make Known – The Exquisite Order of Infinite Variation 28th Jul – 8th Sept 2018, UNSW Galleries Sydney Australia
Publications:
• FLANAGAN P; FRANKJAER R, 2019, ‘Cyborganic wearables: sociotechnical misbehavior and the evolution of non-human agency’, in Koistinen A-K; Karkulehto S; Varis E (ed.), Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture, Routledge, New York, pp. 236 – 260, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429243042.
Open access:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9780429243042/reconfiguring-human-nonhuman-posthuman-literature-culture-sanna-karkulehto-aino-kaisa-koistinen-essi-varis
• FLANAGAN, P. ; FRANKJAER, R.Rewilding Wearables: Sympoietic Interfaces for Empathic Experience of Other-than-human Entities, TEI 2018 – Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, 18 March 2018, Vol.2018-, pp.611-616
•FLANAGAN P; Papadopoulos D; Voss G, 2015, ‘Intimacy and Extimacy: Ethics, Power, and Potential of Wearable Technologies’, in Barfield W (ed.), Fundamentals of Wearable Computing and Augmented Reality, edn. Second Edition, CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, pp. 32 – 53, http://primoa.library.unsw.edu.au/UNSWS:SearchFirst:UNSW_ALMA51173900630001731
•Frankjaer R; Flanagan P, 2019, ‘The technocrafted post-human: introducing cyborganics’, Virtualities and Realities New Experiences, Art and Ecologies in Immersive Environments, Renewable Futures, Acoustic Space Journal, vol. 17, http://rixc.org/en/acousticspace/issue/666/
•Flanagan P, 2017, ‘The Renaissance of the Sensual in a Vivacious World’, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, vol. 22, https://v3.pubpub.org/pub/the-renascence-of-the-sensual-in-a-vivacious-world-
•Flanagan P, 2015, ‘Evolutionary Wearables’, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 9187, pp. 622 – 630, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20898-5_59
Thanks
Eva Rodriguez Riestra
Claudia Terstappen
Kassandra Bossel
Shane Trotter
Ashleigh West
Winnie and Minke
Endnotes:
[1] Frankjaer, Raune. 2017. Cyborganics. Retrieved November 07, 2017 from http://frankjaer.de/cyborganics/