Objectives
My intent is to create a tool as a platform of experimentation on aesthetic practices. The work is named after the poem of Charles Baudelaire, 'Albatross'. The poem encapsulates central streams of Romantic thought. The inert perceptual paradigm of the Romanticism constructs a reference point of conceptualizing the work. I feel that the antithesis between the technological/mechanical and the Romantic illuminates my intention to create a perceptual mecha-organism.

Albatross is an autonomous structure that will roam the space until the end of its life, mapping and scanning the area. It has two limitations; the limitation of the space and the limitation of the radio frequency (RF) that influences the movement of the robot in the physical space and the trace-making in the virtual space, accordingly.

I am intrigued by the 'blind' and mechanical kind of vision. By 'blind vision,' I mean that the robotic structure is reorganizing information according to its electrical sensory configuration. The data that are collected are transposed to the visible spectrum.

Photography as a process is based on the camera-obscura phenomenon. The innovation of photography, however, is based on the chemical stabilization of the picture on the film or paper surface. Using the robotic structure as a moving collector of data, I wish to introduce a process of image collection that does not have a reference to photography, but to simulation.

I am interested in low-level (i.e. Bit level ) management of electronic and mechanical structures that reference the body of aesthetics. I believe that by investigating the mechanical structures as they interplay with vision and perception is, in meaning, an investigation on the true nature of the image and the cultural and social use of such. That is: the human transposition and amplification of the meaning. Technically speaking, coding might describe processes that are acted in a visual form. Using such programming tactics enables me to control elements in a level that do not belong primarily to the visual mode but to the conceptual.

Inside the Albatross, the structure computes temporal maps that extend 'virtually' around the robot; - the area of interaction is the area of recognition. The robotic structure defines space constantly and reforms the image of the surrounding space according to a sequence of sensory inputs connected to the robot's body. When the robot 'exits' the temporary virtual space, that virtual map is deleted. After each deletion of the temporal map the collection process reoccurs and the world is reshaped again. Therefore, the virtual map built 'dynamically' is superimposed on the real surface (i.e the area on which the robotic structure travels) and becomes apparent by the motion of the robot. The juxtaposition of the simulation and the real is understood though the comparison by the viewer's comparison of the two maps: the marks by the visualization software and the traces made by the robot.

On Artificial Life
Artificial life, as prescribed in the myth of the golem, carries along with it our pro-historic essence of god. This theological approach is eradicated by the metaphor of the mechanism, as applied to the sciences during the 18^th century.

As a visual artist, I am intrigued by artwork that gradually reveals itself to me. I am eager for the moment when the artifact surprises the maker. The metaphor of life has been used to describe the power of an artifact’s aura or the strength of the idea that it signifies. In the technological realm, artificial life practitioners define life very differently; nevertheless, the meaning of aliveness is transposed to the mechanism by the observer.

Just as we look for elements of aliveness in art, a growing knowledge of our own biology changes our explanation of art. Not so unexpectedly, we witness art demystified by biological explanation. Derek Hodgson presents a thesis that 20^th century art can be explained in terms of visual recognition functions⁴. In his article, he establishes a connection between the visual experimentations of abstraction in reference to the pre-attentive system of recognition, which refer to lower level mechanisms for processing visual information and general pattern recognition. His thesis interests me for his idea of the apparatus of recognition and the way it establishes aesthetics. Can our cultural artifacts be explained as an after-effect of a biological necessity such as survival?

Recreating thus visual tools that establish connection to biology and vision and in extension, a separate reason of their own existence, we can create a new art. An art that is a reference not our own biological existence but to the artificial; the constructed.

On archeology
Gathering small artifacts, chunks of data (objects, buildings, remains, etc.) is a methodology that archeology uses for recovering the history of remote realities. The recomposition of all the collected objects into an argument results in an assumption of that remote reality. The 'image' is an assumption, an interpretation of the reality. Like the city of Fedora in the Invisible Cities, where all the versions of the city are maintained '... not because they are equally real, but because all are only assumptions.' ⁵ The process of recompilation into 'an image' of reality is an aesthetic practice. This process is appearing in both the creation of the object as well as in the reaction of the subject. Likewise, I want the viewer to enter the site where the robotic structure moves as if he is entering an archaeological site, looking for signs to interpret actions and processes.

On Limits / Borders
Survey tools and geometrical methods developed in the 17^th century introduced ways to map the physical space by defining it and establishing a network of communication.⁶ Maps are the results of such methodology and as Armand Mattelart says '...the path to reason' motivated by the 17^th century intellectual reforms.

Maps are compiled of blocks that contain the information of space in a finite and visual reason. The survey data are transformed though the Renaissance cyclopic vision into visual data. Lev Manovich, on the other hand, defines database as '...a collection of individual items, with every item possessing the same significance as any other' ⁷ .The digital data is analogous to the finite surveying data. But whereas map survey data constructs an analogue continuum, every item of digital data is a discrete but abstract value. Every item, defines the limits of itself in the same way that survey data presents a continuum. A map is a collection of information, a collection of data; a database. During the nineteen sixties, the Situationists created emotional portrait maps of the urban environment. The emotional data became an equally important state that counteracted to the physical identity of space.

On Limits / Borders II
I can carry a one kilogram easily; I can walk a few kilometers; I can jump a few meters; I can run a kilometer; my voice can be heard a couple dozen meters away; I can throw a stone a dozen meters away; I can fall from a few meters height and live; I cannot fly; That is my scale of capabilities. The area of my abilities constitutes my scale; that is the human scale. The limits, the line of the activities, the area of influence, the points inside the circle, are known. It is familiar, therefore not interesting to explore. All the other points that are left outside the circle are excited by the aura of the unknown.

On tiny invisible Machines.
A block of code, independently of how effective it is, is a simulation of a small mechanical machine. It can be argued that statements such as ‘loop’, 'for' etc. simulate schemes of mechanical structures. For example: what programmers call a 'loop' can be actualized as an point moving in the periphery of a circle etc.⁸ The virtualization of the mechanic in algorithmic form and the use of code as the structural components of such construction establish concepts used by engineers, transposed to the neotechnic age ⁹.

The elusiveness of the computing machine's mechanics poses a problem on process readability. The trend that was promoted by the past decade was to amplify the invisible processes to a readable layer – the interface. However, the interface becomes a formalistic symbol empty of the process that originates it. But the electrical excitement is hidden under the silicon layers. Excite¹⁰

For example, in his sculptural environment 'Skin & Control' Chris Csikszentmihalyi uses references to complex systems (the representation of a nuclear plant control facility ) to comment on the discrepancy of the computing machine in relation to reality. The installation consists of multiple screens, simulations of mechanical structures, and a great number of buttons and switches. I perceive Chris Csikszentmihalyi's interface as an attempt to make visible the 'running' processes that are hidden from the user's eye.

Erkki Huhtamo examines the history of the medium (software & software art) and the surrounding tendencies, as he says, '... towards hiding the code'¹¹. This is a practice that has been embraced by commercial groups and institutions working with such technologies. Software (thus code) establishes itself as a creative platform in conflict with the social and institutional practices of technology. The commercial field markets software as a tool, and then the artist uses code to propagate it as a creative platform. Open source networks and artist collectives that share their code projects with the public have emerged. The act of sharing the code or multi-using the 'tiny invisible machines', can be characterized as a socially ingenious act that promises to break the cultural boundaries.

On recognition
A provocative anthropological issue is the requirement of cognitive process in the understanding of visual language. Research reveals that certain pictures can be understood without cognitive process. Other discourses inhabit ideas that conception and evaluation of the visual relates to social and cultural conventions that actively play and form the process of cognition¹². Pearson suggests that at some point in the process of recognizing a picture, the outline of the object and the actual object excites similar neural processes¹³. The results of such research provide approaches to the relation of hardware and software.

The act of transposition is a part of the perceptual process. This is particularly true in scientific visualization, where the object represented is a non-visible abstract form. The abstract form is transposed into color information or shape data or both; it is brought to the optical state.

The quality of transposition is visible in immersive technologies. The body, even if still, is transcended to a virtual movement. The experience of movement is felt because of the stimulation of the visual cortex.

Watching a picture and focusing your attention on a visual artifact is a form of transposition. The attention of the observer is fragmented from the space and time and immersed into a visual artifact.

On Code
Software art practices embody the integration of computing devices in our everyday life. Code is being integrated in our cultural, social and profoundly our economic systems. I feel that such integration defines our practices; it therefore shapes our cultural body. If that is the cause, then software art comes as an effect and such practices and are reflected in the production of our cultural artifacts.

My interest in code and coding derives from the process of conceptualization and composition. In this case, it comes in the form of function though algorithms – the transitional function. In a more practical sense, code allows me the control of the individual processes; the tiny invisible machines. In visual terms, the management of the picture is processed on the level of the primary picture elements that compose it; that is, the digital information. The malleability of the process though the means of the code is the control mechanism to manage the digital data as a plastic material. A picture then can be the process itself. The point where the process becomes the picture is the point where simulation becomes an autonomous mode of vision.

Technology has always been surrounded by the aura of magic. Technologists as magicians act on us as great illusionists, making us believe that we are present, instead we are somewhere else, making us believe that we see everything instead we are blind, making us believe that what we see as the truth instead is just an illusion. The illusion is where the technique beholds. Art in its baroque periods always encouraged illusion and excess.

Illusions are innate in the digital. In the act of transition from the mechanic to the code, we observed that in the digital nothing is visible other than the external layer. All the processes and transformation are hidden from the eye. Therefore the process itself is never evaluated for its ingenuity but by the result.

Short Description
I am using custom electronics and the Pic micro-controller to create a perceptual machine. The robotic structure in this first realization will follow a very simple form in order to help me solve problems in programming and manufacturing.

A series of light-sensitive sensors and touch switches on the structure provide perceptual bits of the environment that surrounds the machine. The power fluctuations, charge rates, and resistance values represent the quantified perception that is stored at a temporal location in memory. A Radio Frequency module (RF) transmits the collected data robot to the main processing unit running custom made software. The software stores the data and then it projects the data onto the screen. The visualization reflects the location of the physical mecha-organism and the sculptural simulation of its perception. The structure is traveling the available space and collects data of the space and its 'obstacles' (organic or not). The mechanical structure implements a configuration that allows the marking of the actual space by leaving marks on the floor surface, implying the human act of drawing. It marks the points of interaction between the machine and the space – the limits of the activity of the robot. The first element that is emphasized is the relationship of the two processes of mapping-- the virtual and the physical. The interaction of such a mecha-organism with space promotes the recognition of the differences and similarities among the duality of the process. The action of marking the physical space creates an obvious relation between the physical and the virtual space. In addition, the perception of a mark in the physical space is reflected in the software visualization.

On Images
An image in the digital paradigm is defined as a finite set of digital values, called picture elements. Pixel, the abbreviation of the term PICcture ELements, is defined as the abstract sample of which the image matrix is comprised. Depending on the color system and the way on which the pixel information is stored in the computer memory, each pixel has typically three or four dimensions of variability such and Red, Green, Blue, or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, etc.¹⁶ The number of distinct colors that can be represented by a pixel depends on the number of bits per pixel.

In addition to the information that defines the color and intensity of the pixel, more information can be stored to define the opacity: that information channel is called Alpha.

A drawing in the 'analog' sense involves the action of mark making on a surface. The marks can represent tone and color. The marks are usually organized in relation to the human scale. The image represents an incomplete assumption of reality as captured from the draftman's perceptual totality.

On aesthetic form
Speaking about the aesthetic of the computing machine, is about speaking on the visibility of the invisible. The form is managed through processes in a scale so different than that of the observer. The scale is the scale of the electrical charge. The aesthetic diffusion of the work is a shell, an illusive cover that is managed by technique other than the innate qualities of machine. Icons of experience are constructed around the electronic processes producing a shell-- the shell of the aesthetics of the machine.

On technique
Nevertheless, if aesthetics are so deeply inter-shaped with the medium; then the technique is what is essentially shaping the aesthetic of the work. Technique is the platform on which aesthetic is managed. Technique and time outline the "process". It is the point where the artwork, as Schrödinger's cat, can be both dead and alive.

On patterns.
Emanuel Kant defined imagination as recognition of similarities and differences of things. Imagination defined as quality of the aesthetic judgment that is to differentiate or draw together elements presented to perception. The quality to distinguish similarities and differences holds a major position in 17th century categorization of knowledge. Where knowledge is categorized in typological qualities.

Technology and the arts
Technology was always a part of the arts. Chemistry was part of color production; materials and techniques were necessary in the production of artwork. The separation of the above is due to reasons that seem not to originate from the field of fine arts. Fine arts are by definition connected with the making of objects and thus with the knowledge of management through such materials . However, it is not the theme of this paper to explore the origins of such separation. Nevertheless, a pattern is recognizable: that the techniques, methods of management, and artifact production of a civilization are essentially connected to the methods of material production. The Bauhaus movement, for example, stated in its expression exactly that point: where art making techniques and methods of production had to be realigned according to models that the current production methodology dictated.

The view of the Cyclops
The Western investigations of the visual are centered on one focal point and reconstruct vision accordingly. I am referring to the tradition of the Renaissance and the transition to photography. The element of time is neglected¹⁷, only implied by static representation. With photography and in extension the moving image qualities of the composite and time become central plastic matter; introducing montage as a management tool of reality.

Étienne-Jules Marey's photographs provide a pathway to explore the digital. Particularly, elements of reality lose their static narrative quality; the sequence becomes quantitative; recording thus describing a process.

Various mediums were integrated into the computing machine through methods of simulating the previous medium. The computing machine thus is rendered to a multimedium. However, as an effect, the computing machine inherited the methodologies of the previous media. The explicit difference is that the innate language of the computing machine is not adapted to the older methodologies. The computing machine's primary plastic material is the transition function or the algorithmic process. Since code is the main and only process, ‘montage’ (photographic assembly) must transform to a different form. Algorithmic manipulation, data transformation and information sharing and exchange are all innate qualities of the digital.

The problem of such a transition from analogue to digital is profoundly visible in other fields. For example, take the recent conflict of the recording industry and the Peer-to-Peer sharing software. The two worlds, the established commerce and the computing machines, enter a conflict that call ethics into question. The ethics of the computing machine are shaped by the medium's connectivity and the innate qualities of the media. It is problematized when the ethics born from the machine's innate language come into conflict with established social boundaries-- the established culture and the 'artificial' culture.

Interplayed concepts.
Military technology has functioned historically as a motivating element for technological innovation, Louvois (1619-1691) as a France secretary of war reforms the army by establishing horse farms to standardize the size of France's equine cavalry. That idea seems relevant to industrial revolution practices and the computing device methodologies with interchangeable parts; in fact it is the precursor of such methodologies.

Robotic and mechanical devices have been used by the industry and the military intensively. Recently companies like Irobot¹⁸ started producing robotic machines for the consumer market, ' not ... destined for a museum, but practical, cost effective machines that profoundly impact our lives'.

 

On Surveillance, (On a Da Vinci Drawing).
Did they find it offensive? How did they feel being the subject of the observation? Observed or Surveyed? I remember one drawing of an ugly couple, in one of Da Vinci's numerous notepads. It was intended for a picture of hell or something related. Yet they were there, the observer and the model, close to each other for some moments in time. Maybe one never learned he/she was surveyed. To observe is to crystallize an idea in a finite moment in time, to survey on the other hand implies a constant presence of the observer, in constant sight of the model. The model is always changing, moving, but the eye of the observer is there.

On Control
Today is Thursday the 31... tonight ... Overcast with rain showers at times. Low 42F. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Tomorrow... Mostly cloudy. High 57F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Cloudy with rain developing. A rumble or two of thunder is possible after midnight. Low near 45F. Winds E at 15 to 25 mph. Rainfall near a half an inch. Saturday... Rain and thunder. Highs in the low 50s and lows in the low 40s. Sunday... Rain/snow mix, windy. Highs in the upper 40s and lows in the low 40s. Monday... Times of sun and clouds. Highs in the upper 50s and lows in the low 40s. Tuesday... Plenty of sun. Highs in the upper 50s and lows in the mid 40s. Wednesday... Partly cloudy. Highs in the upper 50s and lows in the mid 40s. Thursday... Scattered thunderstorms. Highs in the mid 50s and lows in the low 40s. Friday... Cloudy with rain. Highs in the mid 50s and lows in the low 40s. Saturday... Showers. Highs in the low 50s and lows in the low 40s. and still I know the weather for the almost the whole next month.

On Narration
The narrative of the work comes out of the animation and the recognition of the data that have been collected. However, that narrative is enhanced by the motion of the robotic structure. The repetitive and determined motion of the robot opens the narrative and comments on the nature of our own visual perception. We interpret the artificial behavior of the robot according to our social and cultural background; therefore, the narrative is projected on the object rather than animated from it.

The robotic structure is the observer and the observed simultaneously. Therefore, the borders of the artwork and the viewer are blurred.

1Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. 1994. The University of Michigan Press. p. 6

2 Crary Jonathan. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. The MIT Press. 2001.

3Hodgoson, Derek. Graphic Primitives and the Embedded Figure in 20^th century Art: Insights from Neuroscience, Ethology and Perception. Leonardo Journal. Volume 38. 2005. p. 55

4Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Harcourt. (1974). p. 32

5Mattelart, Armand. The invention of communication. University of Minnesota Press (1996).

6Manovich Lev. The language of New Media. The MIT Press. 1995. p.218

7'Skin & Control', Location One, December 2004,

8Mattelart, Armand. ' The invention of Communication' . 1996. Unniversity of Minnesota Press. p.152

9'Excite, excite, and our hearts fire the heart beat itself. 'Excite' ' Catherine Richards 'charged hearts' http://www.innovation.ca/innovation2/essay_richards.html

10Huhtamo, Erkki. WebStalker Seek Aaron reflection on digital arts, codes and coders. http://www.aec.at/ (visited February 2005)

11 Ware, Colin. Information Visualization: perception for design. Morgan Kaufmann.2004

12Pearson D. Hanna, E., and Martinez, K. Computer-generated Cartoons: In images and understanding. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge 1990.

ibid. 3

13http://www.backspace.org/everything/e/hard/texts2/Tyson.html Visited March 31^st 2004.

14McLuhan Marshall. 1964,1994. Understanding Media: The extensions of Man. MIT Press 1994 p.8

15Étienne-Jules Marey (1830 – 1904) photographs are exceptions of such statement and the start of elements of motion and time into static imagery. The motives of such photographic investigation were scientific i.e. to visualize the flight pattern of i.e. a bird or an incest etc.

16µhttp://www.irobot.com/§ a company created during the late 80's by Rod Brooks, Colin Angle, and Helen Greiner.