Project Creation Philosophy:

Much of my work is inspired by the the philosophy of W. Grey Walter reasoning in creating artificial behaviours. He was a great behavioural robot creator from a time before ICs existed.

There is no serious difficulty about the elaboration of function, once the principles of mechanical "life" have been demonstrated in a working model. If the principles are preserved, no matter how elaborate the functions of the machine, its mimicry of life will be valid and illuminating. (The Living Brain, 131)

The robots I build have been designed to literally be used to see how an artificial environment can be used in the attempt to validate and illuminate principles of life. And to ask the question of whether a robot can honestly teach us anything about ourselves by its mechanized attributes. Or is it the ideas illustrated by their actions that trigger in our imagination that is most important.

Robotic Zoo (Modern Life):

Lecture on Robot Zoo Project: Robot's Brain Map from Jessica Field on Vimeo.

Schematic of Robot's Brain Map

Lecture about Robot Brain Map is scheduled to be recorded soon. It will be uploaded by August 2009.

This is a robot community project influenced by Raoul Vaneigem's book "The Revolution of the Everyday Life." The project will be an attempt to simulate whether his theorized causes of our own alienation from modern life is true.

Automata Theatre:

Presently taking what I learned from this project to a whole new level of theatre performance. I am ready to answer the question:

Automata + Coin Slots + Learning = Art Installation

This project is starting out using paper to make all the automata for the theatre performance, from there we will define all the variables in the formula and take the time to answer the question of how it will become an art installation.

Jessica Field © 2009

Based in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada

Last updated June 23, 2009