Towards a Live Networked Display of Artificial Life Forms in Zoos
VIVARIA is the plural form of 'Vivarium', a term that describes a place artificially prepared for keeping animals under natural conditions for study and research. The project asks: 'Why look at artificial animals' (in the spirit of John Berger's essay 'Why look at animals'?)
'The zoo to which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them,
is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters'
(Berger, 1980: 19).
VIVARIA is a proposed collaborative project between zoos and local arts organisations in the UK and Europe, employing the metaphor of the zoo to examine artificial life forms, creativity and the relationships between humans, animals and machines. The project works on the premise that given the historical purpose of the zoo, it is perhaps surprising that zoos do not include examples of artificial life in their collections.
VIVARIA builds upon a completed online research project EZITT (European Zoos Information Technology Training Project), funded by the Leonardo da Vinci EU Programme involving Paignton Zoo (UK), Dresden Zoo (D), Dublin Zoo (IRL), Decin Zoo (CZ), Budapest Zoo (HU) and the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) based in Amsterdam (NL).
VIVARIA will commission artworks as a result of the collaborative process between the arts organisations and the local zoos and with support from STAR (Science Technology Art Research). We feel that it is important that artists are not imposed, but at the same time we have selected some artists we feel may provide some starting points for selection (the list of artists is available elsewhere). There are also a number of artists in the CAiiA-STAR research group whose work relates to the Vivaria proposal, including Eduardo Kac, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. One or two artworks will be commissioned at each participating venue resulting in a series of simultaneous displays integrated into the zoos' collections.
Relationships between displays and venues will be apparent from the Vivaria website that will further include a range of artificial life forms developed online and for download inhabiting various virtual spaces. Thus the scope of the zoo is extended through the use of virtual space and through an engagement with the issues of virtual life. Commissions may include artists working 'in residence' addressing the subject of artificial life thus questioning what we consider to be natural life. A diverse range of artworks will be sensitive to their context but are not expected to directly reference or parody animals. For instance, the project server activity is currently displayed on the Vivaria website as an example of a crude life form or complex system, developing the analogy of the zoo or cage to that of the server and project space. Like a life form, the server requires to be networked to function as if part of a community with complex operations unfolding in real time.
VIVARIA will comment on process, disorder as much as order, and accepted taxonomies. On the website, other software artworks will use life-like codes to challenge representational forms and ways in which programmers/artists might look anthropomorphically at their code/artwork, as they watch them create, perform, interact with other objects, feed, reproduce and die. Vivaria seeks to integrate these creative and technical developments in the context of late capitalism and developments in biotechnology.
The project follows a research and development stage, funded by the Arts Council of England (New Media Fund), and developed through i-DAT (Institute of Digital Art and Technology), University of Plymouth, in collaboration with Relational/Spacex.
For more information contact: geoff@generative.net