The German media artist Moritz Simon Geist has been researching for as long as 12 years in the field of media art, robotics, electronic music, and performance. In his works, he combines his scientific background as a research scientist at Fraunhofer Institute with his education as a classically trained musician on piano and clarinet. In this talk German media artist Moritz Simon Geist will give a short introduction in his work, research and projects. Moritz Simon Geist has been blending mechanics, kinetic and robotics with sound and music making for more than 15 years.

When a machine exhibits human-like perception, reasoning, and expression abilities, how will this digital soul manifest in physical form, and will this physical embodiment provide a different experience from digital media? From an artist’s perspective, we will discover the aesthetics and emotions hidden in perceptron, artificial neural networks, and traditional signal analysis. By exploring the connection between this emotional expression and animation, such as Disney animation principles, we delve into the synthesis of artificial personalities and how the physical structure, sensors, and errors determine these synthetic personalities.

We hope to understand the psychological, emotional, and conceptual impacts presented by subjective, dynamic, and unpredictable interactions in robotic artwork to address the challenges for artists when machines are no longer tools for creation but companions, and how this impacts the definition of human-centered art.

I research how poetic engagements with technology could open meaningful aesthetic experiences and new usefulness in everyday life. By reflecting on the risks of bringing physical engagements with autonomous robotics into life, I explore how unsafe, uncomfortable, or inconvenient interactions could be reconnected to living spaces as a positive resource.

“Footsie” is an interactive kinetic installation, consisting of a table and four robotic chairs. It embodies counter-intuitive physical interactions as flirtatious machines intended to mediate people’s relationships. Under the table, the robotic chair legs carry the motion of “footsie” and arms caress the back of the participant to cause understandings and/or misunderstandings between people. The bodily experience stimulates (playful yet unpleasant) paradoxical feelings while it tackles the controversial culture and social norms on touching others body or being touched. By intervening between a lonely human and an indifferent human, the mischievous robotic entity opens simultaneous interpretations on the meaning of Human-Machine-Interaction.

How can we use artistic robotic pieces as a site of research? Artistic projects are repositories of unfamiliarity – through investigating the edges, the uncanny, the space of possibilities, they create new kinds of encounters that saturate the senses. These experiences create a sense of possibility, opening a window to re-thinking the everyday. In this talk we will discuss two approaches to researching with and around artistic robots.

Firstly, ethnographic practices with the Lichtsuchende, a society of robot sunflowers help understand how people make sense of unfamiliar robots. Secondly, combining education and research with the robotic architectures of Phillip Beesley’s Living Architecture Systems Group created a speculative experience for rethinking robotic futures. In both cases, shifting people away from traditional robotic imaginaries, engaging with the pieces helps to develop an ecosystemic, entangled view of what the relations between people and robots should be.

Come Hither to Me! is a participatory robot theater that questions, provokes dialogue, and dismantles gender norms in intimate social interactions through satirical commentary. To critique stereotypical gendered expectations and imbalanced power dynamics, we used male-centered pick-up artist strategies as a communication model for our female-gendered robotic performer, enabling her to flirt, seduce the audience, and ask them out. Come Hither to Me! exemplifies Interrogative Robot Theater, our performative and critical approach to robotic embodiment and interaction design for performance and public intervention. This interventionist theater-making methodology builds upon Social Justice-Oriented Interaction Design and Theater of the Oppressed. While we use a social robot as our main performer, this artwork is not about the human and robot’s relationship. Instead, it problematizes interpersonal human relationships using the robot as a campy ironic representation of the human on stage.

I intricately explore the relationship between humans and technology, delving into philosophical inquiries. The exhibited artworks feature robots aspiring to embody human qualities, engaging in dialogues with spectators. Through these interactions, I address fundamental questions about life’s essence and the implications of technological civilization.

My work challenges established notions of life, presenting robots not as mere machines but as entities yearning to attain humanity. By orchestrating conversations between these robots and human viewers, I stimulate contemplation on the definition of life itself. The central query revolves around whether artificial entities can experience human-like emotions. These dialogues prompt viewers to critically examine the boundaries between artificial intelligence and human consciousness, fostering reflections on existence and ethical considerations related to the integration of technology into our lives.

The Probe Series evolved from my interest in how machine logic could live in physical space and manifest in physical ways to explore machine perception and sentience through mechanical installation driven by ML models. Set in the conceptual framework of a post-planetary space exploration design fiction narrative, the series frames machine perception as “alien” and speculates on a future where conscious machines can bear the trials of space travel to investigate “hostile” human-occupied environments in search of new habitats. The Probe Series follows this train of thought, where each installment of the more extensive series investigates one aspect of sensory perception (i.e., vision in Probe I and auditory sensation in Probe II) and data collection and analysis. In designing each probe or probe set, I researched and took inspiration from the human sensory systems of sight and sound, adapting and modifying these conceptual models for each machine.

This talk will trace the emergent artificial intelligences of my art installations detailing swarm robotics that look to the transspecies intelligence of plants, fish, insects, bacteria, and humans, interacting with robotic technologies. It describes living systems as the ultimate models for technological mimesis. Autopoiesis is an artificially intelligent swarm robot constructed with grapevines acting as individuals and a group. Siamese Fighting Fish control the Augmented Fish Realityswarm robots. Enteric Consciousness is a robotic tongue-chair controlled by living bacteria in a glass stomach. Fusiform Polyphony are six artificially intelligent robots photographing your face to compose a custom song, combining snapshots into a polyphonic symphony. The Opera for Dying Insects an artificially intelligent artwork tracking pill bugs as they compose a live tragic opera, addressing the global decline of insects. CRISPR Seed Resurrection is an interactive sculpture with robotic and sonic elements, singing about CRISPR technologies reseeding a dying earth.

https://www.kenrinaldo.com/
https://www.kenrinaldo.com/portfolio/autopoiesis/
https://www.kenrinaldo.com/portfolio/augmented-fish-reality/
https://www.kenrinaldo.com/portfolio/enteric-consciousness/https://www.kenrinaldo.com/portfolio/fusiform-polyphony-face-music-toronto-2011/
https://www.kenrinaldo.com/portfolio/opera-for-dying-insects/https://www.kenrinaldo.com/portfolio/crispr-seed-resurrection/