Mark Pauline (born December 14, 1953) is an American performance artist, new media artist, and machine inventor. He is known as founder and director of Survival Research Laboratories. [1] [2]
After high school he had a job at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, as a sub-contractor maintaining target robots. [3] He is a 1977 graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. [3]
Pauline founded SRL in 1978 and it is considered the premier practitioner of "industrial performing arts", and the forerunner of large scale machine performance. Although acknowledged as a major influence on popular competitions pitting remote-controlled robots and machines against each other, such as BattleBots and Robot Wars , Pauline shies away from rules-bound competition preferring a more anarchic approach. Machines are liberated and re-configured away from the functions they were originally meant to perform.
Pauline has written of SRL, "Since its inception SRL has operated as an organization of creative technicians dedicated to re-directing the techniques, tools, and tenets of industry, science, and the military away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or warfare." [4] [5] Since its beginning through the end of 2006, SRL has conducted about 48 shows, with long titles such as "A Cruel and Relentless Plot to Pervert the Flesh of Beasts to Unholy Uses". [6]
In the summer of 1982, Pauline severely damaged his right hand while experimenting with solid rocket fuel. [7] In August 1990, ArtPark, a state-sponsored arts festival in Lewiston, New York, cancelled a Pauline performance when it turned out he intended "to cover a sputtering Rube Goldberg spaceship with numerous Bibles" that would "serve as thermal protective shields" and be burned to ashes in the course of the performance. [8]
According to Pauline "I like to make machines that can just do their own shows... machines that can do all that machines in the science fiction novels can do. I want to be there to make those dreams real." [9]
Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the Mirrorshades anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre.
Cog was a project at the Humanoid Robotics Group of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was based on the hypothesis that human-level intelligence requires gaining experience from interacting with humans, like human infants do. This in turn required many interactions with humans over a long period. Because Cog's behavior responded to what humans would consider appropriate and socially salient environmental stimuli, the robot was expected to act more human. This behavior also provided the robot with a better context for deciphering and imitating human behavior. This was intended to allow the robot to learn socially, as humans do.
BEAM robotics is a style of robotics that primarily uses simple analogue circuits, such as comparators, instead of a microprocessor in order to produce an unusually simple design. While not as flexible as microprocessor based robotics, BEAM robotics can be robust and efficient in performing the task for which it was designed.
Computer art is art in which computers play a role in the production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, video game, website, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditional disciplines are now integrating digital technologies and, as a result, the lines between traditional works of art and new media works created using computers has been blurred. For instance, an artist may combine traditional painting with algorithm art and other digital techniques. As a result, defining computer art by its end product can thus be difficult. Computer art is bound to change over time since changes in technology and software directly affect what is possible.
Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) is an American performance art group that pioneered the genre of large-scale machine performance. Founded in 1978 by Mark Pauline in San Francisco, the group is known in particular for their performances where custom-built machines, often robotic, compete to destroy each other. The performances, described by one critic as "noisy, violent and destructive", are noted for the visual and aural cacophony created by the often dangerous interactions of the machinery. SRL's work is also related to process art and generative art.
I, Robot is a 2004 American science fiction action film directed by Alex Proyas. The screenplay by Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman is from a screen story by Vintar, based on his original screenplay Hardwired, and named after Isaac Asimov's 1950 short-story collection. The film stars Will Smith in the main role, Bridget Moynahan, Bruce Greenwood, James Cromwell, Chi McBride, and Alan Tudyk. Set in Chicago in 2035, highly intelligent robots fill public service positions throughout the world, operating under three laws to keep humans safe. Detective Del Spooner (Smith) investigates the alleged suicide of U.S. Robotics founder Alfred Lanning (Cromwell) and believes that a human-like robot called Sonny (Tudyk) murdered him.
Mazinkaiser is a Japanese anime OVA produced by Brain's Base and Dynamic Productions, based on the Mazinkaiser design that debuted in Super Robot Wars games and the original Mazinger Z manga by Go Nagai. The OVA follows Kouji Kabuto, Tetsuya Tsurugi and the rest of the "Mazinger Team" as they fight against Dr. Hell's Mechanical Beasts while Kouji stumbles upon a forgotten laboratory where he finds Mazinkaiser, the most powerful robot ever built. The series chronicles Kouji's experience with the machine as he copes with Kaiser's power while defeating Dr. Hell's forces.
Hardware is a 1990 British science fiction horror film written and directed by Richard Stanley, in his feature directorial debut. It stars Dylan McDermott and Stacey Travis, and also features cameo appearances by musicians Carl McCoy, Iggy Pop and Lemmy. An example of the cyberpunk subgenre, the plot of Hardware follows a self-repairing robot that goes on a rampage in a post-apocalyptic slum.
Stelarc is a Cyprus-born Australian performance artist raised in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine, whose works focus heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centred on his concept that "the human body is obsolete". Until 2007 he held the position of principal research fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England. He is currently furthering his research at Curtin University in Western Australia.
Eric Paulos is an American computer scientist, artist, and inventor, best known for his early work on internet robotic teleoperation and is considered a founder of the field of Urban Computing, coining the term "urban computing" in 2004. His current work is in the areas of emancipation fabrication, cosmetic computing, citizen science, New Making Renaissance, Critical Making, Robotics, DIY Biology, DIY culture, Micro-volunteering, and the cultural critique of such technologies through New Media strategies.
Paco Nathan is an American computer scientist and early engineer of the World Wide Web. Nathan is also an author and performance art show producer who established much of his career in Austin, Texas.
Christian Ristow is an American robotic artist. He is known for his robotic performance art under the name Robochrist Industries, his animatronics work in film and television, and his large-scale interactive sculptures.
Kent Larson is an architect and Professor of the Practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Larson is currently director of the City Science research group at the MIT Media Lab, and co-director with Lord Norman Foster of the Norman Foster Institute on Sustainable Cities based in Madrid. His research is focused on urban design, modeling and simulation, compact transformable housing, and ultralight autonomous mobility on demand. He has established an international consortium of City Science Network labs, and is a founder of multiple MIT Media Lab spin-off companies, including Ori Living and L3cities.
Do-it-yourself biology is a biotechnological social movement in which individuals, communities, and small organizations study biology and life science using the same methods as traditional research institutions. DIY biology is primarily undertaken by individuals with limited research training from academia or corporations, who then mentor and oversee other DIY biologists with little or no formal training. This may be done as a hobby, as a not-for-profit endeavor for community learning and open-science innovation, or for profit, to start a business.
Neri Oxman is an Israeli-American designer and former professor known for art that combines design, biology, computing, and materials engineering. She coined the phrase "material ecology" to define her work.
Google Brain was a deep learning artificial intelligence research team under the umbrella of Google AI, a research division at Google dedicated to artificial intelligence. Formed in 2011, it combined open-ended machine learning research with information systems and large-scale computing resources. It created tools such as TensorFlow, which allow neural networks to be used by the public, and multiple internal AI research projects, and aimed to create research opportunities in machine learning and natural language processing. It was merged into former Google sister company DeepMind to form Google DeepMind in April 2023.
Design fiction is a design practice aiming at exploring and criticising possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts. It is a way to facilitate and foster debates, as explained by futurist Scott Smith: "... design fiction as a communication and social object creates interactions and dialogues around futures that were missing before. It helps make it real enough for people that you can have a meaningful conversation with".
Marcelo Coelho is a Brazilian American computation artist and designer. His work focuses on the boundaries between matter and computation, and includes interactive installations, photography, wearables, and robotics. Coelho is currently Head of Design at Formlabs, a Lecturer at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and Principal Investigator at MIT's Design Intelligence Lab, a research lab inventing new forms of expression and collaboration between human and machine intelligence.
Garnet Hertz is a Canadian artist, designer and academic. Hertz is Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Art and is known for his electronic artworks and for his research in the areas of critical making and DIY culture.