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University of Southern Denmark Enacting the Soft Automaton: Empirical Ontologies of Two Soft Robots from Technical Research and Media Art Jørgensen, Jonas Published in: EVA Copenhagen 2018 DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EVAC18.23 Publication date: 2018 Document version: Accepted manuscript Citation for pulished version (APA): Jørgensen, J. (2018). Enacting the Soft Automaton: Empirical Ontologies of Two Soft Robots from Technical Research and Media Art. In EVA Copenhagen 2018: Politics of the Machines - Art and After (pp. 1-9). [23] British Computer Society. Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC) https://doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC18.23 Go to publication entry in University of Southern Denmark's Research Portal Terms of use This work is brought to you by the University of Southern Denmark. Unless otherwise specified it has been shared according to the terms for self-archiving. If no other license is stated, these terms apply: • You may download this work for personal use only. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying this open access version If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details and we will investigate your claim. Please direct all enquiries to [email protected] Download date: 05. Oct. 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC18.23 Enacting the Soft Automaton: Empirical Ontologies of Two Soft Robots from Technical Research and Media Art Jonas Jørgensen Digital Design Department IT University of Copenhagen Rued Langgaards Vej 7, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark [email protected] This paper examines two soft robots from technical research and media art respectively and the practices through which they come into being. Departing from a juxtaposition of video presentations of the two robots, the empirical ontologies of a soft robot enacted in practice are analysed. The paper argues that two different versions of softness are being done and that the two sets of practices concomitantly respecify “knowledge” and “autonomy” as concepts, with different ethical and political implications. Soft robotics. Soft material robots. Media art. Robotic art. Empirical ontology. 1. INTRODUCTION This paper seeks to unpack the notion of a soft robot In the course of the past ten years, soft robotics has through an ontological mode of analysis inspired by become a thriving subfield of technical robotics Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Departing from the research. Despite an observable tendency towards assumption that ontology, understood not as “that convergence, a number of different definitions of soft which is” but as “how things exist”, is entwined with robotics and what a soft robot is still exist within the ethics and politics, the paper explores the practices technical literature. Wang and colleagues (2017), for of designing, constructing, interacting with and instance, remark that soft robotics “encompasses thinking about soft robots within two projects of solutions that interact with [the] environment relying technical robotics research and media art on inherent or structural compliance”. Whereas Rus respectively. How are soft robots “being done” and and Tolley (2015) define soft robots as “systems that by which means are different versions of soft are capable of autonomous behavio[u]r, and that are materiality enacted? What tendencies and primarily composed of materials with [elastic] moduli capacities of soft matter do these different soft in the range of that of soft biological materials”. robots actualise? In what sense is softness rendered active or agential? Constructing robots from soft and elastic materials yields a number of technical benefits that include 1.1 Approach safe interaction through passive compliance, the possibility for shape-shifting and bodily adaptation, As mentioned, the approach taken is inspired by ease of control through morphological computation, ANT and the so-called ontological turn within and the potential to reuse stored elastic energy. But Science and Technology Studies (STS). It is soft robots are equally endowed with a specific grounded in the argument put forth here that reality, expressivity and a different aesthetic than their rigid as we inhabit it, is performed within different precursors. These latter aspects have recently practices. Reality itself is thus multiple, not in a begun to be explored in a number of appropriations social constructivist sense, but in a deeper of soft robotics technology by artists, designers and ontological sense (Mol 1999). And an object, such architects. Examples of soft robots featured in as a soft robot, can come in various versions, that artworks that were produced prior to soft robotics’ despite sharing physical similarities, or even being emergence as a field, however, also exist. physically identical, might diverge ontologically. In © Jørgensen . Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. 1 Proceedings of EVA Copenhagen 2018, Denmark Enacting the Soft Automaton Jørgensen their studies of Atlantic salmon, John Law and medium. Consequently, when analysing video, one Marianne Lien (2012) put this in relational terms as obviously runs the risk of mistaking an edited “different salmon are done in different practices” and representation for “the thing itself”. In my analyses, I “different salmon are being enacted”. And aim to stay aware of the limited and mediated Annemarie Mol (2014) has similarly articulated this access to practices the two videos offer. Both videos notion in her argument that each version of are clearly censored and staged accounts practicing stages, performs, does, and enacts a influenced by specific agendas and aspirations as different version of “the” object, which must therefore well as the affordances of video as a medium. But be considered “an object multiple” (Mol 2014). analysing the practices as they are depicted in these Within the ANT tradition this assumption of videos rather than doing field ethnography, I argue, ontological multiplicity is operationalised in holds a different potential. Precisely because the interpretive strategies that foreground and study videos are self-representations emerging from the practical ontologies empirically by paying close practices they depict, what is included or excluded attention to the practices and networks of relations betrays assumptions about what is important and through which a specific version of an object is unimportant within these practices. Comparative brought forth. analysis can thus function as a means to become aware of the blind spots of each video and In the case of soft robotics as an emerging potentially reconstruct some of what is left out in technology, the indeterminacy and multiplicity of the each of them. A further resource, that forms a object in question, is perhaps even more readily backdrop for this work, yet remains a tacit voice in apparent, as the technical object, a soft robot, is the text, is my own involvement with soft robotics, currently still being invented and articulated. But that have unfolded as both academic research and what a soft robot is and does, is also already artistic practice, over the course of the past two gradually becoming more specified and stabilised years. through the contingent processes, actions, and discourses that make up practices. At this juncture, Embracing the situatedness of my own account, I it is therefore relevant to consider how different have chosen to let the paper reflect its process of enactments of “a soft robot” diverge, and that, given coming into being by starting the analysis with the choice between these different versions, to excerpts from notes that I originally jotted down reflect on what politics and ethics that are enacted in while watching the videos on my computer as a conjunction with their differences. prerequisite for writing this paper. Unless otherwise specified, quotations come from these notes. The main interest of this paper is therefore to explore how soft robots get put together within two different contexts and associated sets of practices. 2. TWO VIDEOS Consequently, its focus lies on analysing the An upbeat yet restrained music played on practices and the soft robot ontologies they enact – acoustic instruments is heard (it is similar to the how specific versions of “a soft robot” emerge and kind of music that is featured in commercials for how these might differ. Furthermore, the paper products). The first images we see is of the semi- seeks to engage with the merits and drawbacks of transparent Octobot with its characteristic blue these two different ways of assembling “a soft robot”. and red fuel chambers and channels. It is seen It aims to extend the specific risks and potentials from above on a white background. The title of “that singulari[s]e each position”, to use a the video then emerges in the white space next to formulation of Isabelle Stengers (2005a). the robot along with the Harvard seal … 1.2 Analysis of video / analysis of practices A few further methodological remarks are needed before continuing, about how this paper extends the analytical practices of ANT and STS. Unlike most work anchored in the STS tradition, this paper is not based on ethnographic fieldwork. Instead it utilises two videos as its most immediate empirical materials. Even if ANT as a theoretical formation is critical towards the notion that there is ever such a thing as an unmediated access to the field, or reality as such, the kind of access to practices provided by a video obviously differs from the one obtained by Figure 1: Still image from the opening shot of the first being present at a physical site and associating with video. Courtesy of Harvard SEAS. informants. Moreover, a framing evidently occurs The first video (Harvard University 2016) when practices are translated into the video disseminates research from an academic paper 2 Enacting the Soft Automaton Jørgensen published as a letter in Nature, one of the most We see footage of the manufacturing of the robot, prestigious high impact science journals.

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