A 21st Century Bestiary
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Anne Galloway's opening keynote presentation at Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, Australia
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A 21st Century Bestiary
- 1. A 21st Century Bestiary Anne Galloway
- 3. Pets
- 4. “When we speak about weatherpets, it’s assumed that more meaningful forms of communication are being avoided. But is not the weatherpet, in fact, a potent topic of cultural exchange – a bond that cuts through social distinction and economic class, that supersedes geological borders? Is not the weatherpet the only truly tangible and meaningful thread that glues us all together? Is not the weatherpet the only truly global issue? In truth, contemporary culture is addicted to weatherpet information. We watch, read, and listen to weatherpet reports across every medium of communication, from conventional print to real-time satellite images and Web cams. The weatherpet channel provides round-the-clock, real-time meteorologicalzoological entertainment.” — Diller + Scofidio Alexander Trevi
- 11. Livestock
- 12. POULTRy. INTERNET. Keng Soon The, Shang Ping Lee & Adrian David Cheok. 2006.
- 17. TEAT TWEET: dairy diary. Critical Media Lab, University of Waterloo. 2010.
- 18. The internet of things (detail). Cisco. 2011.
- 19. Smarter planet: smarter food. IBM. 2010.
- 23. “A hypothetical farm of 10,000 dairy cows could fulfill the power requirements of a 1MW data center.” – Hewlett Packard Labs, 2010
- 24. Wildlife
- 29. PIGEONBLOG. Beatriz da Costa, with CinaHazegh & Kevin Ponto. 2006.
- 30. PIGEONBLOG. Beatriz da Costa, with CinaHazegh & Kevin Ponto. 2006.
- 31. Cyborgs
- 32. Mouse-Assisted Interplay. Vanessa Harden. 2009.
- 33. Mouse-Assisted Interplay. Vanessa Harden. 2009.
- 34. Luka, the wifi dog. Anab Jain. 2008.
- 35. Cyborg beetles. Hirotaka Sato et al.. 2010.
- 36. Corrupted C#n#m#. Angelo Vermeulen. 2009-2010.
- 37. Respiratory dog. Revital Cohen. 2008.
- 38. DIALYSIS SHEEP. Revital Cohen. 2008.
- 39. Pets, livestock, wildlife,cyborgs, and the “inherent splendour” of the “insignificant” everyday.
Editor's Notes
- Thank you – it’s a pleasure to be here.
- Originating in Europe in the Middle Ages, bestiaries are illustrated compendia or books of beasts. The images here are from the 12th century Aberdeen Bestiary.More concerned with the presentation of allegorical tales and moral fables than with factual information, medieval bestiaries provided an introduction to mythical and real animals, along with guidance on what to value and how to live in the world. "But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.” Job 12: 7-10I’m evoking bestiaries today because I hope that we might see the web and related technologies – as well as ourselves - a little differently through this metaphorical lens.
- I’d like to start with pets because they are the animals that are “closest” to us.They also allow us to think and talk about love.
- As a sociologist of science and technology, I know that when we talk about new technologies, we tend to focus on everything that is bright and shiny and new about them, and we tend to imagine these technologies as things that will make everything different or better.But by focussing on the web and related tech as a contemporary forum for animal-based allegory, I want to bring us back to the realm of ordinary lives and everyday experience. Because everyday life is where people actually live, and maybe we can still learn something from the animals. Something that helps us see what cultural theorist Ben Highmore calls the “inherent splendour of the insignificant.”The quote on the slide is Alexander Trevi, from the wonderful Pruned blog, re-writing Diller + Scofidio on their Blur project: http://pruned.blogspot.com/2011/07/strange-pets.html
- Usuallyconsidered to be “beneath” intellectualanalysis or attention because our relationships with pets are often sentimental, it is precisely their absence from serious discussion that interests me.Cultural theorist Erica Fudge, in her book Pets, says that “pets are good to think with” because they compel us to ask “why do so many people choose to live with pets?” How many people here have, or have had, a pet? How many of you talk about your pet with other people? How many of you consider your pets to be companions? Friends? Part of the family?What I find so interesting is that pets can clearly demonstrate that people have incredibly meaningful relationships with non-humans, and that might help us understand the relationships people have with another kind of non-human: the computer.http://animal.discovery.com/the-spot/
- How many of you have taken photos/videos of your pet? How many of you have photos/videos of your pet on your computer or phone right now? How many of you have posted photos/videos of your pet online?Did you know that there are currently 31,746 dog groups on Flickr, 27,144 cat groups, and 14,690 pet groups?There are also 18,742 wildlife groups and 461 livestock groups.A YouTube search for cats yields 119,000 results, and 118,000 for dogs. People love animals.http://animal.discovery.com/the-spot/cat-people/
- But, of course, we know that the Internet is, in fact, made of cats.(See Rather Good’s video: http://youtu.be/zi8VTeDHjcM TheLOLcat phenomenon began with 4Chan’s “Caturdays” posts circa 2005-2006, and gained a broader public through the “I Can Has Cheeseburger” blog in early 2007.But the important thing about all these cats – all these animals – is really pretty simple: They bring us together.As Josh Green wrote in his 2007 receiver magazine article, “Oh Hai! Cats, the internet, and tactical communities” “Time magazine's profile of the lolcat phenomenon … describes internet memes as a form of cultural curiosity, "a running gag", often possessed of a "mindless, goofy quality", that self-replicates across the "collective imagination" of the internet. More than just a running gag, however, the internet meme serves as an object around and through which communities are formed. While perhaps apparently "mindless" in form, they provide a sort of cultural glue that's used in a variety of ways to bring people together across an increasingly fragmented media landscape.”http://www.receiver.vodafone.com/19-oh-hai
- We know that the web is good for bringing people together, and it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that it’s also good for bringing people together with animals.Community bulletin boards have long helped animals find people who love them, and people find animals they love that have been lost.This is the American Humane Society’s Centre for Lost Animals. I like that the interaction design presents two simple choices: have you lost your pet or have you found someone else’s? And the visuals really help drive home the fact that love is at stake.http://www.thecenterforlostpets.com/
- It’s important to pet owners and caregivers that they know where their pet is.On the right we have an older Garmin GPS device – we don’t need the antenna anymore - that tracks an animal’s movements.http://sites.garmin.com/astro/ + http://sites.garmin.com/gtu/ On the left is the Pet’s Eye View camera, which visually records where an animal has been.http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/pets/afbc/ As it turns out, my cat’s life – like many others - is rather boring. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1208916/Review-The-petcam-reveals-Tigger-goes-travels.html
- Moving forward in time, we get a tweeting cat door that takes advantage of existing pet RFID implants/collars and Twitter. “When a pet tries to enter the pet door, a RFID reader will read the RFID tag that your pet has on the collar. If the tag is authorized, the latch of the pet door will open, a picture is taken of the pet, and uploaded to Twitter along with a funny random message, for example: "Penny is in playing with a ball of yarn." The pet door works in the same way when the pet tries to go out. A picture is taken and uploaded to Twitter along with a message, for example: "Gus is out to play poker with the fellas." The messages are chosen at random from a list of possible messages.”http://www.instructables.com/id/Tweeting-Cat-Door/
- Movingone step further away than pets, but still in the realm of domesticated animals, we find livestock.If pets allow us to think and talk about love and companionship, livestock animals allow us to think and talk about where our food comes from, as well as more philosophical matters like life and death.
- This is the Mixed Reality Lab: Singapore’s Poultry Internet project, or what they also call a “human-pet interaction system.”I have to admit it’s a bit perplexing to me that they chose chickens, which are not typically considered pets, but there you have it.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q9nwjWivZk According to their CHI 06 conference paper, the project: “[L]everages on the reach of the Internet to connect humans and pets at different locations. This system has a tangible interface encompassing both visual and tactile modes of communication. It allows humans to interact remotely with pets anytime, anywhere. The pet owner views the real time movement of the pet in the form of a pet doll sitting on a mechanical positioning system. Meanwhile, the real pet wears a special jacket, which is able to reproduce the touching sensation. The pet owner can tangibly touch the pet doll, sending touch signals to the pet far away. Also, the pet owner receives a haptic feedback from the movement of the pet.”portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1125505I should also admit that I find this project more than a bit creepy, but I’m willing to concede that the system may have some unintended or alternative uses that are more positive.
- More recently, and probably much more familiar to people, is Zynga’s 2009 FarmVillegame, which allows Facebook users to play at (virtual) farming. http://www.farmville.com/ It used to be the most popular Facebook game, but has now – a bit ironically, perhaps – been replaced by CityVille.http://www.sys-con.com/node/1084929 + http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/229402805http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1991915_1991909_1991768,00.html Of course, I would be more inclined to make the argument that FarmVille does little to educate people about farming and animals, but it has attracted millions of players who can self-identify as a (new) type of farmer or animal caregiver.
- Gametheorist and designer Ian Bogost has perhaps best summed up the gameplay of Facebook games like FarmVille with his Cow Clicker parody.http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=111596662223307 http://www.bogost.com/games/cow_clicker.shtmlAccording to Bogost, Cow Clicker is a: “Facebook game about Facebook games. It's partly a satire, and partly a playable theory of today's social games, and partly an earnest example of that genre.You get a cow. You can click on it. In six hours, you can click it again. Clicking earns you clicks. You can buy custom "premium" cows through micropayments (the Cow Clicker currency is called "mooney"), and you can buy your way out of the time delay by spending it. You can publish feed stories about clicking your cow, and you can click friends' cow clicks in their feed stories. Cow Clicker is Facebook games distilled to their essence. And this is how he describes his relationship with the game: “In creating Cow Clicker, I rather felt that I was partaking of method design, embracing the spirit and values and ideals of the social game developer as I toed the lines between theory, satire, and earnestness. The Internet is paralyzing because it contains so much potential information. Even over the few days I spent developing Cow Clicker, I found myself watching people play, listening to feedback, and imagining changes. I "listened to my players" and made enhancements far beyond what was reasonable for a work of carpentry or a simple parody. It's hard for me to express the compulsion and self- loathing that have accompanied the apparently trivial creation of this little theory-cum-parody game. Have I fully represented the distillation I hoped to accomplish? Or is some feature missing? And ought I not to add it if so? Where's the vampire cow or the werewolf cow or the cthulhu cow? Ought I not to make them? Perhaps I became consumed myself. Such is the spirit of the day, it would seem: mundane, outward obsession whose worst trick is to disguise itself as fruitfulness.”http://www.bogost.com/blog/cow_clicker_1.shtml
- But if FarmVille-type digital interaction “disguises” itself as “fruitfulness,” then the UK’s National Trust MyFarm project may well provide a fruitful alternative.A sort of low-tech augmented reality, or more appropriately, farming-at-a-distance, MyFarm is a real (offline) farm that is partially managed by online farmers.http://www.my-farm.org.uk/ As they describe it: “MyFarm is a big online experiment in farming and food production, giving 10,000 members of the public a say in the running of a real working farm. The farm is on Wimpole Estate, near Royston in Cambridgeshire. The MyFarm Farmers will join forces on this website to discuss and make decisions on every aspect of the farm: the crops we grow, the breeds of animal we stock, the new facilities we invest in and the machinery we use.The aim of the farm is to be profitable, and to maintain the highest standards of sustainability and welfare. The core of the project will be the regular votes (at least one a month). At the beginning of each month, we will open a question to the MyFarm community. For the following three weeks, we will discuss and debate - the Farmers will be able to give opinions and ask questions of Richard the farm manager and his team, and we will provide information and input from the farm team and industry experts. The vote will then go live, with Richard setting the options, and Farmers will have a week to make their choice.Alongside this, there will be a constant stream of blogs, videos and podcasts, so Farmers will be able to keep up to date with everyday events on the farm. We know from research that many people in the UK are increasingly disconnected from the realities of how food is produced. Meanwhile, food production is becoming increasingly important both globally and nationally.The National Trust looks after a large amount of land, and we want the public to understand the role we play and how it benefits them. Over the past few years the National Trust has done this by creating 1,000 new allotments on Trust land, running thousands of events and giving away millions of seeds to encourage people to grow their own food at home, highlighting the importance of sourcing local and seasonal food in the Trust's 150 restaurants, and working with local groups to create three Community Supported Agriculture schemes (one of which is at Wimpole). This project will take things to a totally new level and encourage widespread debate around food and farming, as well as making people aware of the National Trust's role.”I was never a FarmVille player, but I really enjoy participating in MyFarm. It has taught me more about farming than I ever imagined and it has done so with remarkably simple technologies like webcams, online discussion forums and voting systems. The combination of online and offline activities is, I think, the real key to its success. And I think it does exceptionally well in its role as an educational tool that leads to robust (public) debates about agriculture.Incidentally, given my research interests, if I had designed MyFarm I would have employed more context-aware tech. But I have no reason to assume that would have made the experience better and I think that’s worth remembering whenever we have the opportunity to use new tech.Also, as an aside, has anyone else noticed how childish the online/game farm aesthetic is? I can’t help but think that it belittles farming and farmers.
- The matter of pervasive computing and farming is my current research, and when it comes to the Internet of Things and animals, nothing has caught the public imagination quite like the image of an Internet of Cows – even leading some to question if it is the new internet-enabled fridge, something we use to describe technological possibility but that no one really wants or needs.But it’s not that simple. Livestock were some of the first non-humans on the web, and long ago inducted into the realm of high-tech intervention.http://www.designculturelab.org/2011/07/20/an-internet-of-cows-and-sheeps/https://mocana.com/blog/2011/09/06/the-internet-of-cows/
- Take dairy cows, for example. This is the Critical Media Lab’s Teat Tweet project.Yes, you can follow cows on Twitter! http://criticalmedia.uwaterloo.ca/teattweet/Taking advantage of the fact that a combination of robotics and RFID are already managing milk production, this project attempts to show people a little bit about how milk is produced.It combines, and reframes, existing farm data (e.g. milk quantity and production time) with bucolic poetry to present a more lively view of where our food comes from. But I think my favourite part of the project is how it also reveals technological failure. From RFID tags that can’t be read to milking machines that can’t be accessed, the cows (through human intervention) end up showing us how and when the technology works and when it doesn’t work.And although I’ve learned all sorts of interesting things about cows and milk and technology, I don’t know how compelling such things are over the long-term. On the other hand, I don’t know that they need to be.
- But we need to go beyond Twitter to get to the Internet of Cows, and Cisco’s recent infographic for the Internet of Things does just that.http://blogs.cisco.com/news/the-internet-of-things-infographic/Again we can see how much data are already produced by livestock, which makes it easier to understand how animals already belong in this emerging technological scenario. But one of the things thatlivestock tracing can teach us is that there are concrete obstacles to cloud computing across national boundaries, including regulation and privacy issues: “Each cow generates on average about 200MB of information per year. Factor that figure for an entire herd and that is more information than a local server can manage. Generally, this shouldn’t be a problem in most circumstances given the proliferation of remote storage available in cloud computing. Indeed, Sparked uses Microsoft’s Azure service to store and access table storage in the cloud. And therein lies a peculiar problem. With a patchwork of different data privacy regulations in countries throughout Europe, considerable confusion exists over which laws in which countries have jurisdiction over cloud computing. It has even been suggested, in a country neighbouring Sparked, that animals’ rights to data privacy would inhibit the company’s ability to market its product widely in Europe. Should concerns about regulation arise…firms expect an opportunity to negotiate with national governments for a workable solution. Small companies like Sparked, however, don’t enjoy such assurances and must operate with great care under regulatory uncertainty since one enforcement action could shut down their business. Especially complicating the regulation of cloud computing is its diffuse nature. One can never be certain which path, and through which countries, internet communications take. Moreover, purchasers of cloud services can seldom be sure in which country their content and applications reside.”http://www.iteuropa.com/news/features/cows-under-cloud
- Still, the political, ethical and sheer marketing potential of food traceability is significant.Take IBM’s Smarter food initiative. By tracing food from “farm to fork” international biosecurity-based regulatory requirements can be met, and consumers can be offered assurances that their food is safe.http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/food_technology/ideas/index.html?re=spf
- Butthese efforts don’t need to employ pervasive computing, or even be technologically complex. “My Eggs is the latest range of quality free range local eggs from Chippindale Foods.The eggs are sourced from 6 regional farms in Yorkshire and the North East UK.”http://www.wheresyoursfrom.com/Each egg is machine-stamped with an ID number that can be entered into the company’s website in order to identify the source farm. The website then uses standard marketing strategies to communicate to customers that the brand identity of the egg is one of “ethical” production by “real” farmers.While such a service can indeed offer something of an education in agricultural production, and bring individual farms and farmers back into public consciousness, there is no inherent reason why this kind of production is more “ethical” than any other.
- Some of you may be familiar with Icebreaker merino products from NZ. They produce performance, or sports, gear, and have made a huge impact on the global fine wool market by trading on NZ’s “100% pure” brand identity and offering an online traceability service called Baacode.As an aside, using puns is difficult and should probably be avoided. On the other hand, this one makes me giggle.http://baacode.icebreaker.com/site/baacode/index.htmlNow, each Icebreaker garment is assigned a number that, like the eggs, can be entered into the company’s website to reveal its source. However, unlike the eggs, it is effectively impossible to trace a single garment to a single source when wool from multiple animals and locations is combined for sale and later manufacturing.
- Nonetheless, as a marketing endeavour Icebreaker’s Baacode may be peerless. The detailed information on how their wool is produced in the most “ethical” ways possible makes it easy for the company to claim that they “have nothing to hide.”But it’s also useful to know that this “transparency” is not technologically-enabled beyond using the web as a medium of communication.For example, the use of GPS and RFID could add a degree of technological verifiability – but it still would not ensure a greater degree of “ethical” production.
- Now, when I think of ethics,livestock and technology, I find myself increasingly turning to HP Lab’s work on using farm waste to power data centres.A simple fact remains: To do what we do, to do what we’re all here today to get excited about doing, we need more power. Another simple fact is that livestock production has a massive, and largely negative, impact on the environment. If there is any way to use one problem to solve the other, then I think we have an ethical opportunity – if not also a responsibility - to do so.According to 2010 research by HP Labs: “Data centers need a lot of energy. Dairy farms create a lot of methane. Now a team from HP Labs has done the math to show that one could be used to support the other. The research appears in a paper presented today at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) International Conference on Energy Sustainability in Phoenix, Arizona. “There is an industry need to explore new concepts in data center design,” says Tom Christian, Senior Research Scientist in HP’s Sustainable IT Ecosystem Lab, and project lead. And while the idea of cow-powered data centers may sound esoteric, says Christian, “there’s a lot of value to be found in challenging conventional wisdom to solve issues faced today and ten years from now.” As data centers require ever more power to operate, they’re increasingly being located near existing power generation or cooling resources. One largely untapped source of energy, however, is the methane generated by manure on farms around the world. If released into the atmosphere, methane is 21 times more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide. But it can be captured and used to power electrical generators. The HP ASME paper shows how a farm of 10,000 dairy cows could generate 1MW of electricity, enough to power a typical modern data center and still support other needs on the farm.”http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2010/apr-jun/wastefordatacenter.html
- Moving along the continuum of human-animal relations, I’d now like to focus on livestock. All cultures distinguish between pets, livestock and wildlife, even if the animals that appear in each category can vary significantly across cultures.Returning to what we can learn from the animals, I think that wildlife allow us to think and talk about nature and culture - or what it means to be human and what it means to be animal.
- The Smithsonian National Zoo webcams offer an extraordinary glimpse into the lives of animals that many people would not otherwise see. As an educational tool, this simple use of the web is remarkably successful.http://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/webcams/default.cfmBut you may have noticed a tendency in some of the examples I’ve given to anthropomorphise animals, and this is never more true than with wildlife.This isn’t necessarily a problem – wonderful stories about animals appear throughout human history and across all cultures – but biologist Marlene Zuk brings up an interesting point worth considering: “If we convince ourselves that animals reflect our own feelings — nothing more, nothing less — we are cheated of discovering what other species are really like, and we run the risk of homogenizing them into one giant beastly human reflection. What's more, we often impose our biases on animals, assuming that what we see is what humans do.And then we miss things.”http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/12/opinion/la-oe-zuk-animalcams-20110612 In other words, for all the things that the web and related technologies allow us to see and learn about animals, what do they make invisible or impossible?
- After webcams, the most popular form of animal interaction and communication online is Twitter.This is Brian Pigeon’s blog and Twitter feed, which can best be summed up as the online diaries of a London pigeon. As urban wildlife, the pigeon can offer glimpses both of being animal and – more so in this case – of being (in the) city.Brian has received a fair amount of press, and continues to be a great example of how new technologies can be used to tell very old kinds of stories.http://pigeonblog.wordpress.com/ http://twitter.com/BrianPigeon
- But location-aware or tracking technologies like GPS have long been employed in wildlife management.For example, German biologists use tiny GPS devices to track insects.http://cms.uni-konstanz.de/en/wikelski/
- TheMafikeng Game Reserve in South Africa uses locating devices in the horns of their rhinos to help park officials monitor their movements. Alarms go off if the animal starts running (rhino stampedes are bad) and if the animal doesn’t move for more than six hours (excessive sleep is also bad). But mostly the devices are used to help identify poaching threats. “Conservationists hope that by upgrading the animals with technology of the 21st century it may help ensure this endangered species will still be around at the end of it.”http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9116000/9116106.stm Relatedly, RFID may yet find support amongst farmers who are concerned about cattle rustling.http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/as_cattle_rustling_increases_so_does_the_need_for.phphttp://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ranching_in_the_cloud.php
- Bycombining several of the technologies and animals mentioned so far, the PigeonBlog project takes things a step further by getting the birds to actually collect data for public use – a sort of citizen science, if you will. “PigeonBlog enlists homing pigeons to participate in a grassroots scientific data gathering initiative designed to collect and distribute information about air quality conditions to the general public. Pigeons are equipped with custom-built miniature air pollution sensing devices enabled to send the collected localized information to an online server without delay.”http://www.beatrizdacosta.net/pigeonblog.phphttp://www.pigeonblog.mapyourcity.net/
- “Pollution levels are visualized and plotted in real-time over Google’s mapping environment, thus allowing immediate access to the collected information to anyone with connection to the Internet.”I think this kind of project has amazing potential, but think it’s also worth mentioning that not everyone wants to be a data collector or has the ability to make sense of the data collected.http://www.receiver.vodafone.com/the-rise-of-the-sensor-citizen
- Finally, and in a way coming full circle, my last topic bring together examples of pets, livestock and wildlife configured into unique – and sometimes fictional – animal-tech hybrids or cyborgs.For me, one of the most interesting thing about fictional designs is that we can use animals to discuss issues that would be too contentious if we used people. In other words, it may be more ethical to do some things to animals than to your child or grandmother – although of course, it also raises the issue of what we can do to, and with, animals.But really, the main thing that the cyborg category allows us to think and talk about is the very nature of humans, animals and technologies and how each is constituted by interactions with the others.
- An online dating servicecan quickly become strange and exciting when mice are added. “Inspired by The Mouse Fanciers, an existing subculture that breeds and shows prize winning rodents, this piece draws on current dating trends existing today such as internet dating or speed dating. Mouse Assisted Interplay imagines a dating service where individuals meet and interact via their pet mouse, drawing on similar situations that currently exist amongst dog owners in parks. The mouse owners meet on mousematch.org, a dating website that is structured according to the different genetic strains of mice. Once an owner establishes contact with another owner through their breeding profiles, they can then meet.”http://mousematch.org/
- The use of evocative images like this one take something familiar and render it strange, almost magical. “A wearable tube-like habitat permits the owner to bring their mouse to dates or events. The social artefacts embedded in this garment serve two purposes. Firstly they allow the owner to interact with their pet through touch and sight. And secondly, they promote the interaction between mice and between users.The intercommunication between the two mice could serve as a test of romantic compatibility as well as an opportunity to engage in a dialogue. This project offers individuals an alternative way to meet a compatible partner.http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/vanessa-harden/mouse-assisted-interplayRegardless of how the viewer feels about mice, this project has the capacity to demonstrate how our relationships with animals can be leveraged to bring us together with other people, and with new technologies.
- The fictional Luka Live project uses a dog to raise some important questions about the future of pervasive computing, networked animals and augmented pets: “Set in the fictional future town of Little Brinkland, the project presents the story of Andrew, a Pet Implant Consultant whose business offers to insert a new kind of networked wifi microchip under the skin of pets. He advertises his business using his own augmented dog Luka as a brand ambassador. A billboard and an advertisement in WIRED magazine are used to promote their business. Luka is presented as a multifunctional pet offering enhanced features such as a ‘Personal Hotspot’, ‘Secure Data Storer’ and a ’Unique Podcaster’. Another billboard on the high street is a call for people to ‘rent a spot’ on Luka. Anyone can advertise their own service or product by placing a message on Luka’s data chip. As the dog wanders the neighbourhood, he will ‘drop stealth advertisements’ on the smart mobile devices he encounters. Andrew also places stickers which advertise Luka’s Daily Live Podcast, for regular visitors to the park nearby. By designing a remote control that will manage and control Luka’s data and networks, Andrew attempts to retain control of this new augmented pet.”https://lukalive.wordpress.com/ I like this project because it offers a softer version of the kind of ubicomp advertising that appears in Minority Report. In other words, it may very well be a dystopian future we face, but there is enough ambiguity in the project to allow a more nuanced discussion about the possibilities.
- Thisproject isn’t related to the web, but I wanted to show it in conjunction with the next example.In a DARPA-funded project, researchers at UC Berkeley have managed to create actual, living remote-controlled beetles. “Eventually, the mind-controlled insects could be used to ‘serve as couriers to locations not easily accessible to humans or terrestrial robots’.”http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/09/video-cyborg-beetle-takes-flight/ Now, I don’t know about you, but the idea of a swarm of beetles remote-controlled by the US military absolutely terrifies me. It’s sort of like Starship Troopers where the bugs are supposed to be the “good guys.”Yikes.
- However, I am deeply heartened by the Corrupted C#n#m# project, which seems to offer the ultimate artist/hacker counter-point to those military-grade beetles. Assuming, of course, that they’re not employed by the government, police or military – at which point they would become extra-frightening. “Corrupted C#n#m# is an artistic inquiry into the physicality of digital media and explores the boundaries of experimental cinema.In the most recent stage of Corrupted C#n#m# - the so-called Entomograph – Madagascar hissing cockroaches were transformed into ‘cyberinsects’ capable of disrupting video data.”http://www.angelovermeulen.net/?page_id=152http://www.angelovermeulen.net/?p=83http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.159945624076318.36078.104132616324286&type=1 In other words, these are data-disrupting, data-corrupting insects. Imagine! An insect DDoS attack!Again, this is the stuff of science fiction, but real. And it raises very real social and political issues that we might not otherwise be able to, or inclined to, discuss.
- Moving back to the fictional realm, the last project I want to present is Revital Cohen’s Life Support. Again, it has nothing to do with the web per se, but it does an exceptional, I think, job of using animals to raises deeply important questions around whether or not animals themselves can serve as technological devices.http://www.revitalcohen.com/project/life-support/ The first example is the Respiratory Dog, which uses retired greyhounds as respiratory devices for patients who need mechanical ventilation. “A pedigreed greyhound is bred by the racing industry. Like his purebred parents, he has long, powerful legs, hypoallergenic fur and a large chest capacity. He will spend the first twelve months of his life being trained to chase a lure. Over the next three to five years the dog spends his days at kennels and is taken racing weekly to make profit for its owners. By the age of five, or earlier, the greyhound retires from the racetracks. Instead of being euthanised (a fate thousands of retired greyhounds suffer each year), the dog is collected by the NHS and goes through complimentary training in order to become a respiratory assistance dog. When training is completed, the greyhound is adopted by a patient dependent on mechanical ventilation. It then begins its second career as a respiratory ‘device’. The greyhound and its new owner develop a relationship of mutual reliance through keeping each other alive.”What interests me is how an animal can be used to question the often dehumanising aspects of machine-based medical treatment. The project does a good job, I think, of creating a symbiotic, mutually-beneficial relationship between people and animals, while simultaneously extending our understanding of technology.
- And I’ve saved my favourite project for last: this is Dialysis Sheep and it uses a transgenic lamb to provide compatible blood for dialysis patients. “During the day, the dialysis sheep is free to roam in the patient’s back garden, graze to cleanse its kidneys, and drink water containing salt minerals, calcium and glucose. At night, the sheep is placed on a special platform at the patient’s bedside. The transgenic sheep’s kidneys are connected via blood lines to the patient’ s fistula (a surgically enlarged vein). During the night, peristaltic pumps remove waste products from the patient’s blood by pumping it out of the body, through the sheep’s kidney (a natural, organic filtering system) and returning it, cleaned, to the patient. This happens over and over again throughout the night. Each time the “clean” blood is returned to the body, it picks up more waste products from the cells it circulates through, and brings these newly-collected toxins back to the sheep’s kidney to be removed. The sheep urinates the toxins.”I find this project simultaneously deeply disturbing and incredibly beautiful, but it serves, for me, as a very powerful reminder of how animals can help us think and talk about difficult and troubling things that we sometimes prefer to keep hidden – despite how common or routine they are.It also challenges us to rethink the boundaries between people and animals, animals and technologies.http://www.designculturelab.org/2011/08/06/dialysis-sheep-sacrificial-lambs-black-sheep-and-speculative-designs-publics/
- Over the last 45 minutes I’ve taken you on a whirlwind tour of pets, livestock and wildlife as they are connected to the web and related technologies. And I brought them all together into a 21st century bestiary of cyborgs that asks us to think a bit differently about some crucial social, cultural, political and ethical issues facing us as human beings, and as people who work with new technologies.I hope that the examples I’ve provided have also inspired you to think more about how everyday life may involve simple habits and pleasures, but it is through those aspects of culture that the web and related technologies can have the most profound impacts.
- Thankyou for listening, and the animals for making all this possible.