𝙙𝙞𝙨𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 II

disarming II continues the disarming series by shifting the encounter from the fallow cornfield onto a gym mat. A used KUKA KR6 R900-2 industrial robotic arm, freed from its mounting base, durationally learns locomotion across days and weeks of exhibition. What the work foregrounds is not the capability of machine learning but its performativity, the way in which a learning process, made visible and audible, transforms the perception of everyone present.

A Reinforcement Learning agent continuously trains on observations from the physical robot and its embedded virtual environment. Crucially, the virtual robot’s orientation is decoupled from that of the physical robot, leading to moments of virtual success paired with physical struggle and vice versa. This designed discrepancy suspends easy judgment and opens a space to observe the projections, attributions, and shifting relationships between all involved entities.

The learning is deliberately stretched and inefficient. The loud frictional sounds of metal dragging across textile fill the room. Over time, the robot’s steel surface and the mat’s fabric slowly reshape one another, accumulating physical traces of the encounter from one exhibition to the next. What begins as a performative situation gradually becomes sculptural, the material record of a machine and its environment inscribing themselves into each other.

For further background on the work, see this alt.HRI paper presented at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3721488.3721636

Core team

Emanuel Gollob – research, concept & production

Advice and support

Markus Krampl – video documentation

Amir Bastan – real-time robot control

Magdalena May – scenography

Creative Robotics – robotic hardware support

WRO ART Center team – curatorial and organizational support

Hardware | KUKA industrial robot arm | Mini PC | gym mat

Software | Reinforcement Learning | vvvv gamma | bunraku.xyz | Robot Sensor Interface

Acknowledgements | Supported by BC Gallery | This work was realised within the framework of a European Media Art Platform residency program at WRO Art Center with support from the Creative Europe Culture Programme of the European Union

References excerpt

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Riskin, Jessica. Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life. University of Chicago Press (2007)

Slager, Henk. The Pleasure of Research. Hatje Cantz Verlag (2015)