Autotelematic Spider Bots is an artificial life installation by Ken Rinaldo and Matt Howard. It consists of 10 spider-like sculptures that can sense and interact with the public in real-time. Because on this, they self-modify their behaviours, based on the interaction with the viewer, themselves, their environment and their food source. The spider bots are chimera’s, they see like bats with long-distance ultrasonic eyes and shorter distance infrared eyes, and twitter like birds. Their necks are very flexible and unlike their looks might suggest, they contain a certain aesthetic grace when doing their unique walking motion.

Working to combine elements of engineering, architecture, entymology and more, Rinaldo tried to create a quasi-ecosystem that would sense, react and ‘speak’. [1] [2] He does have experience in these installations as he created Autopoiesise in 2000. It consisted of 15 robotic sound sculptures. Like Autotelematic Spider Bots, the elements in Autopoiesis modified their behaviour over times as a response to public interaction, exhibiting individual and collective behavior. [3] As Rinaldo says, “I am interested in the intertwined symbiosis of all living things at all levels and scales. What is happening in our technological world is a systemic approach which doesn’t take on ecology and communication.” [4]

Eduardo Kac and Marcel.li Anunez Roca wrote in Robotic Art that robots are a new kind of art. “Robots are not only objects to be perceived by the public […] but are themselves capable of perceiving the public, responding according to the possibilities of their sensors.” [5] This description aptly fits the interactive Autotelematic Spider Bots.

Sources:

[1] Website artist

[2] More information on art work

[3] Edward Shanken, red. Art and Electronic Media. London: Phaidon, 2009: p. 160

[4] More information on art work

[5] Edward Shanken, red. Art and Electronic Media. London: Phaidon, 2009: p. 249