Leonardo

Living Sculpture: The Art and Science of Creating Robotic Life

Author(s): Yves Amu Klein
Source: Leonardo, Vol. 31, No. 5, Sixth Annual New York Digital Salon (1998), pp. 393-396
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576604 .
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Living Sculpture
The Art and Science
Abstract
Thisarticlediscusses the author'sartwork.He
describeshis attemptto integrateunusual
technologieswithhis aesthetic sensibilitiesto create
evolvingsculpturesthat manifestlearnedbehaviors
dependenton theirinteractionswiththeir
environmentand theirviewers.He describespast
projectsand recent workssuch as Octofungiand the
GeneGeniesoftware,as wellas his goals forthe
futureof whathe calls "LivingSculpture."
I am currently involved in the construction and display of a
body of work I call "Living Sculpture,"which represents a series
of works that attempts to bring emotional intelligence and
awareness to sculptured life forms. The process of creating a liv-
ing sculpture is challenging due to the complexity involved in
having that sculpture integrate multiple changing inputs and
react in real time. From finding appropriate materials to devel-
oping technologies for gesture, locomotion, sensory input, and
behavior, countless technological and physical obstacles have to
be overcome to achieve a unified sculpture. I consider my work
to be an attempt to find a symbiotic balance between classical
artistic expression and contemporarytechnologies.
I try to incorporate a sense of biological design into my
sculptures.When we observe a living organism, we can see detail
and complexity from any scale or from any angle. I believe that
a living sculpture should embrace this intricate detail as much as
possible. As a design progresses from the inner basic systems to
the complex outer systems, surprising and elaborate aesthetic
and behavioral effects may emerge that exceed our expectations.
My goal is to make my living sculptures interesting and exciting
from any perspective, unlike a painting which has a back that
has not been treated with the same care as the rest of the art-
work. Still, hardly any of the details in my sculptures are simply
? 1998 Yves AMU Klein, received 1 March 1998
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artificial life art
of Creating Robotic Life
YvesAMU Klein
for aesthetic purposes. Each line and curve should have a signif-
icant effect on the functionality and aesthetics of the piece in
order to survive the design process. In a sense, I apply some of
the principles of naturalselection to a sculpturein progress.
A living sculpture should be interesting (appealing to our
senses) not only in appearancebut also in behavior. A sculpture
should respond appropriatelyas people interact with it, and dif-
ferent people should provoke different responses from the
sculpture. I try to imbue my sculptures with both instinctive
behaviors and more complex responses. For example, an aggres-
sive viewer may trigger a defense mechanism within the sculp-
ture, while a passive viewer may experience a more subtle and
pleasing reaction. The more time the viewer invests in develop-
ing a constructive relationshipwith the sculpture, the more inter-
esting the response should become. Thus, I try to make pieces
that show depth of design as well as depth of behavior. Func-
tionality and aesthetics are tightly linked within the art and create
a sense of unity and homogeneity.
andLadyBug
Scorpibot
The Scorpibot (Fig. 1) was my first attempt to integratea neural
network into a sculpture. The sculpture's neural network is
implemented in hardware,as wires and transistors,instead of in
software as neural networks are often built. The Scorpibot is about
6 feet tall and has a black rubbery skin and a fiberglassshell. The
piece uses infrared and touch to receive information about the
outside world. The Scorpibot moves around by using a tread sys-
tem like the ones seen on the militarytanks everyone is familiar
with. The tank base sprouts a long and fierce-looking vertical
stem tipped with a single hinged claw. The claw twitches and
moves up and down if the artwork becomes agitated. Consider-
ing the simplicity of its brain, this robotic sculpture was able to
Yves AMU Klein, 12415 N. 61st PI., Scottsdale, AZ 85254,
U.S.A. Email: yklein@netzone.com.
LEONARDO, Vol. 31, No. 5, pp. 393-396, 1998 393
 manifest quite surprisingbehaviors. fear or curiosity, and the brain will
rThe Lad' Bug (Fig. 2) is made of cast instruct the legs to move accordingly.
aluminum. It rolls on three wheels and is Occasionally when nothing much is hap-
constantly listening for human voices. If pening, Octofungiwill become bored and
it finds the pitch of a voice appealing,the examine its surroundingsmore closely.
;$f 1 I~sculpture will drive to the person for a Octofungi'slegs use shape memory alloy
visit. The brain uses a combination of as their motive force. This interesting
stereoscopic sound-locating hardware and material is shaped like a fine wire, yet it
a software neural network to control the has the unique ability to contract when an
piece. The neural network listens for voic- electrical current is passed through it. The
es of a particular pitch, while the hard- movement produced by the wire is
ware tries to locate the source of the extremely nonlinear, producing a pleasing,
sound. Although the brain of this artwork lifelike motion. Also, the wire is silent, so
is based in software and can be trained to there is no sound of motors or solenoids
respond to people's voices, the training to mar the aesthetics of the sculpture.
process is manual and the sculpture can- As originally envisioned, Octofungi
not learn new behaviors on its own. would have four processors working in
parallel.Two of the processors would act
Octofungi as the forebrain, handling interaction with
.....':':::=
I|' L Octofungi (Figs. 3 and 4; see Color Plate the outside world, while the other two
A) is an octal-symmetric (eight-legged) would act as the hindbrain, handling low-
polyurethane sculpture about 12 inches level communication with the rest of the
tall. Octofungi'sreactive dance atop its artwork. Currently, Octofungiuses neural
podium resembles the graceful move- networks in two of the processors, while
ments a sea anemone in calm water. Octo- the other two are simple algorithmic feed-
fungi'snervous system is a neural network back controllers which manipulate the
Fig.1.The Scorpibot(1992), a 6-foot-tall that makes decisions based on its eight legs according to the brains' instructions.
mobilesculpturewitha blackrubberyskin, simple eyes and its history of interactions.
a fiberglassshell, and treadsfor locomotion. Once Octofungihas learned to recognize GeneGenie
Scorpibotreceives information aboutthe out- the environment in which it is located, it Octofungiis still changing. The next ver-
side worldfrominfraredand touch sensors; relaxes until something happens to change sion of its brain has yet to be integrated
the hingedclaw on the end of its longvertical the environment, at which point it will into the artwork. The software used to
stem moves about ifthe creaturebecomes become agitated until it has gotten accus- develop Octofungi's new personality creates
agitatedby the information received. tomed to the change. Octofungi learns a population of virtual neural network
its environment brains within a host computer that breeds
by adjusting the them for interesting (desired) behavior.
strengths of its This brain-breedingsoftware, called Gene
neural connections Genie [1], incorporates the computer
towards the long- equivalent of time-dependent hormonal
term average of flows, hyper-dimensionalneural geometry,
what it sees around electrical neural "noise," and both DNA
it. Usually, thirty and reproductive structuring based on
seconds or so of a biological models. The neural structure of
nonchanging envi- the brains created by the software is
ronment is enough genetically determined, as are the brains'
to relax Octofungi. hormonal flow patterns. Gene Genie uses
Then, if something digital data structuresto emulate the func-
changes in the envi- tionality of a biological brain. Whereas
ronment, Octofungi DNA corresponds to amino acids in the
will recognize the biological world, in this digital world it
change and will corresponds to the structure of the brain
evaluate its magni- itself and to the different functions it can
Fig. 2. The cast-aluminumLadyBug(1993), 20 x 30 x 17 in., rolls tude and impetu- perform. As a brain's DNA is scanned,
on three wheels, listeningfor an appealing human voice. When it ousness. The change Gene Genie creates the brain specified by
hears a voice pitch it "likes,"it will drive over to that person. will trigger either the DNA. The DNA specifies the links

394 YvtesAMU Klein,Living Sculpture

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between digital neurons, the hormonal
links between neurons, the types of hor-
mones that a neuron can send or receive,
and the actions associated with them, as
well as the time it takes a hormone to
transit from one digital neuron to anoth-
er. In addition, the software emulates the
electrical noise associated with biological
neural structures.
The combination of neural networks
and time-dependent hormonal flow can
potentially create brains that are much
more flexible and "fuzzy" than conven-
tional neural networks. For example, the
injection of a particularhormone into the
brain can simulate an emotional change,
thus changing the brain's behavior. As the
hormone slowly spreads throughout the
brain, it may trigger other hormone
releases, modifying or exacerbating the
behavioral change. As this is happening,
electrical noise may allow unrelated sec-
tions of the brain to communicate weakly
with one another, giving the partitions a
sort of gestalt of the brain's state. As the
program runs, new brains are built on the
fly according to their genetic model. They
are then tested for desired behavior and
are allowed to breed with one another,
depending upon their performance in
these "fitness" tests.
These processes mimic the biological
notion of survival of the fittest and tend
to produce populations of brains with a
desired type of behavior. The user can
specify the desired behavior by way of a
fitness function. The program comes with
an extensive library of elementary fitness
functions, which can be combined togeth-
er modularly to produce more elaborate
objectives. These modules, in turn, can be
combined again to produce still more
elaborate objectives, ad nauseam.
In addition, the program allows a pop-
ulation of brains to be derived from a set
of "seed brains," allowing one to evolve
individual brains for particular traits and
then combine the populations together to
allow the evolutionary process to deter-
mine the best way of merging these
behaviors into a complex system. Finally,
Gene Genie allows a finished brain to be
exported as source code so that program-
mers can use the resultant brain in real-
world projects.
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SymbioticSculpture
Another idea of interest to me is the
concept of creating symbiotic robotic-
biological sculptures. My main goal for
this type of project was to colonize two
different species that would normally kill
one another into two sculptures that
would interact with each other in a
friendly and cooperative way. The first
project I worked on of this nature was a
relationship between a sculpture and an
ant colony. However, despite my enthusi-
asm for the project, I discovered that it is
extremely difficult to achieve a truly har-
Fig.3. The eight-leggedOctofungi(1994-96), a 12-inch-tallsculptureof colored polyure-
thane, microglass beads, and naturalfibers. Drivenby a neuralnetwork,Octofungimoves
its legs in gracefulpatternssomewhatresemblingthe movementsof a sea anemone.
monious and harmless ecosystem. The
survival and prosperity of the living
organism is extremely important to me. I
want it to be able to benefit from the
relationship, while the sculpture benefits
in turn from the biological component.
My ultimate goal is to create sculp-
tures that can replicate so that they can
change their form and behavior as the
generations pass. One idea I have been
investigating is creating a cellular sculp-
ture. The basic concept involves a multi-
tude of self-contained robotic cells that
can interconnect themselves much like a
self-propelled Erector Set. The parent
sculptureswould need to be sophisticated
enough to assemble a copy of themselves
and imbue the child with a new genetic
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code. The parents would need to undergo
courtship and sexual reproduction in
order to create the child's genetic pattern.
This will introduce new genetic code into
the population thus ensuring variation and
diversity.After a few generations, the par-
ents would die and would become spare
cells for future generations to use. It is
obvious that such a project would be
extremely costly because of the number
of cells necessary for such a cycle to per-
sist, but hopefully my less ambitious pro-
jects will provide the necessary funding.
I am currently working with three
engineering assistants, Jason Harris,
Michael Hudson, and Keith Causey, who
are helping me in the quest for more life-
like sculptures. Future projects will incor-
porate greater autonomy and behavioral
intelligence, genetic reproduction, and
bodily functions such as eating and
digesting. To this end, I am investigating
new sources of power such as a distilla-
tion process in which the piece would eat
organic matter and convert it into usable
energy for fuel batteries. Recently planned
is a 6-foot-high device with three large
graceful "leaves" that unfurl to face in
any direction. One side of each leaf will
display by way of surface-mounted, light-
emitting diodes (LEDs) the image of the
environment on the other side of the leaf
YvesAMU Klein,Living Sculpture 39 5
 ? . --. ~
i w
,
ii .II MII!il.
Fig.4. A schematic of Octofungi(left)showingthe jointingof two of its eight legs, witha matchingcross-sectionview (right).
captured by three RGB scanners located
on each leaf. This display will duplicate
the pattern on the opposite side of the
creature in similar fashion to the camou-
flage of the squid or octopus. It is tenta-
tively dubbed Tila.
I have encountered many people who
ask me whether robotic sculptureis art, or
some misdirected attempt at science. I
can't really answer this question; history
will determine the nature of robotic sculp-
ture. However, I believe that science is an
art, and art is a science, and the two
become separated only when society
becomes a culture of specialists.Art needs
to evolve in order to survive as a living
discipline;it can no longer exist as a static
canvas without becoming a part of human
history. Art must liberate itself and
396 YvesAMU Klein,Living Sculpture
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become a living participantin our dreams. his wife, Kathy, and their daughterJoseffa.
As art continues to evolve, classifications He was born in Nice, France, and grew
between art and science will continue to up in Paris and Ibiza, Spain. His studies
become more fuzzy, and the world will include two years of architecture and
continue to become more interesting. design at Met de Peningen (Paris), two
years of cybernetics at Les Arts et Metiers
Note University (Paris), two years of computer
1. Gene Genie was developed by my company, science at Arizona State University, and a
LoraxWorks.It was designedwith my sculptures bachelor's
degree in Sculpture from Ari-
in mind, but because of its great extensibility,
zona State University. Yves has participat-
flexibility,and generalityat its core, I intend to
make a sharewareversion, a demo version, and a ed in group exhibitions at Scottsdale
proprietary version. They will be posted on Lorax Center for the Arts; the Harry Wood
Works Web pages at netzone.com/-yklein. Gene
Genie was programmedin SymantecC/C++ and Gallery
at Arizona State University, Pascal
Code Warrior3 by Jason Harrisand was written de Sarthe Gallery (Los Angeles),
for Mac OS 8. CrashArts (Phoenix), and La Fiac (Paris).
He has exhibited his work in solo exhibi-
tions at Air de Paris Gallery (Paris), Wal-
Yves AMU Klein is an artist who works ter Storms Gallery (Munich), and
and resides in Scottsdale, Arizona, with CrashArts.
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