horsepower: February 2016

Thursday 25 February 2016

Horse vs horse carriage vs car vs horse robot

What I find meaningful in connection with the Horsepower project is a thought of Lev Manovich (McLuhan), describing emulation of the new forms from old ones. Within the Horsepower project, I wonder, why to make something scientifically possible to achieve, if there are other more practical ways to gain power feed then from almost fatless rotten horse meat. This artistic base is opening all sorts of questions about life, different meaning of value shifting, different perception of contemporary time - with arts and technologies included.

From exhibition Wheel 5200 years at Mestni muzej, Ljubljana

Lev Manovich in his Softbook writes: "Therefore while we can say that today we live in a “photographic culture,” we also need to start reading the word “photographic” in a new way. “Photographic” today is really photo-GRAPHIC, the photo providing only an initial layer for the overall graphical mix. (In the area of moving images, the term “motion graphics” captures perfectly the same development: the subordination of live action cinematography to the graphic code.)

One way in which change happens in nature, society and culture are inside out. The internal structure changes first and this change affects the visible skin only later. For instance, according to Marxist theory of historical development, infrastructure (i.e., mode of production in a given society – also called “base”) changes well before superstructure (i.e., ideology and culture in this society). To use a different example, think of the history of technology in the twentieth century. Typically, a new type of machine was at first fitted with old, familiar skin: for instance, early twentieth century cars emulated the form of the horse carriage. The popular idea usually ascribed to Marshall McLuhan – that the new media first emulates old media – is another example of this type of change. In this case, a new mode of media production, so to speak, is first used to support old structure of media organization, before the new structure emerges. For instance, the first typeset book was designed to emulate hand-written books; cinema first emulated theatre; and so on."

Stroji: velika ilustrirana enciklopedija; Mladinska knjiga ljubljana 1982 (pages at the bottom of the photos)

A few years ago I was designing characters for robots (Trash robots) and I remember that I was intrigued with the old perception of a robot, coming from the drawings of automata or early sci-fi films, where a robot was like tin can resembling human figure and robust movement. With a progress of film media character or conceptual design and robot movement in sci - films evolved as well. Even robots used in industry evolved.

Worldwide known company Boston Dynamics, launched from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992 and bought by Google in 2003 - works in the field of an engineering and robotics design. Interesting research goes on in the different types of movements from quadruped to biped, multi ped and other.

Some similarities to a horse robot (actually called dog or cat) are in two videos below.
(Looking on YT directly: subscribe button for BD or visit www.BostonDynamics.com.
In the time of writing this post, BD has made big progress with biped robot Atlas.)

The Legged Squad Support System (LS3) is a rough-terrain robot developed by Boston Dynamics designed to carry 400 lbs of payload and travel 20 miles without refueling. LS3 has sensors that let it follow a human leader while avoiding obstacles in the terrain. (2012)

Spot is a four-legged robot designed for indoor and outdoor operation. It is electrically powered and hydraulically actuated. Spot has a sensor head that helps it navigate and negotiate rough terrain. Spot weighs about 160 lbs. (2015)

If we get a bit off the road with Galvani frog experiment and Beuys's hare creating of realities within life, the question of living and nonliving, as I think now, is based on classical, modernist and postmodernist notions.
Classical:
- who, what, when, where creates life aka what is life
- constant reanimation aka circle of life: birth - life - death
- the idea of the creation
Modernist:
- relations between body: body as flesh and body as meat
- engineered movement in space powered by a material of a body
- the uncanny (das unheimlich) and the reference point/points
Postmodern:
- what is an interaction of installation and how does affect a viewer
- what is a viewer's perception of the identity of installation
- human is not the centre of Universe aka non-anthropocentric plurality
- the intersection of art and science / technology
- DIY & DIWO

The general idea of the project Horse power (or my work) is based mostly on the idea of value shifting between ethical value and price value. Frankly, this can be everything everyone imagines. Although today seems that both are the same, in the term of non-anthropocentric evaluation difference is based on the humanist discourse of one white man vs the posthumanist value and equality of all living. Simply stating that if chicken on a farm has a price so the human does. When chicken (cyborg, robot etc.) has a value as every living concept in Universe so does our life as human have a value.

Interesting site:
http://www.theposthuman.org/

Some of the readings:
Genetics: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy

Cary Wolfe: What Is Posthumanism?
Francis Fukuyama: Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution
Gregory Stock; John H Campbell: Engineering the human germline : an exploration of the science and ethics of altering the genes we pass to our children

Hans Moravec: Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence
Donna J. Haraway: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
Donna J. Haraway: When Species Meet

Articles:
Andy Miah: Posthumanism: A Critical History
When We Have Never Been Human, What Is to Be Done? Interview with Donna Haraway
Peter S. Williams: Mere Humanity

Kinetics of movement and some more robots:

Saturday 20 February 2016

Horse anatomy and movement

This post might not be much of use for the development of an art project, but might be some of the insight on it. As a student at Academy of Fine Arts and Design, I was fascinated with movement or even just a notion of it in the artwork. I remember reading and looking some books then and as studying it making photocopies from them for measurements. There is one book that I liked most – I don't know what was it. But have some copies of horses:

Another book that I like most and it is good for studying animal movements – Manfred Zoller: Gestalt und Anatomie – Ein Leitfaden fur den bildnerischen Weg
and the photo book of Eadweard Muybridge: Horses and Other Animals In Motion.

Eadweard Muybridge: Animated sequence of a Belgian horse walking

Muybridge was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-photographs. In the 1880's entered a very productive period at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, producing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, capturing what the human eye could not distinguish as separate movements – upper book has 45 Classic Photographic Sequences that were published under the auspices of the previously mentioned University of Pennsylvania in 1887 (source mostly from Wikipedia - link bellow).

Eadweard Muybridge: Animated sequence of a horse pacing

Eadweard Muybridge: Animated sequence of a race horse galloping

Before comming to The University granted research Muybridge made first experiments today called Sallie Gardner at a Gallop – an upper last appeared sequence which consists of series of photographs consisting of a galloping horse, the result of a photographic experiment on 15. June 1878.

Eadweard Muybridge: The Horse in Motion

Links to Muybridge and horse movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_gait

And another book on movement and anatomy of horse - I really recomend this for reading:
Sarah Pilliner, Samantha Elmhurst, Zoe Davies: The Horse in Motion: The Anatomy and Physiology of Equine Locomotion

Some thoughts from the book on horse gait. One of the most cultivated animals on the level of movement throughout history is a horse (and a dog). Different movement is classified as horse gaits. Those are various ways in which a horse can move, either naturally or as a result of specialized training by humans. Each gait has a characteristic sequence of footfalls, which determines the number of beats per stride and gives rise to the rhythm of the gait. Tempo is used to describe either the speed of the rhythm or the velocity of the gait. Cadence is used to indicate that a gait combines rhythm with impulsion. Gaits can be described as symmetric or asymmetric. In a symmetric gait right and left sides move in a similar way.

Anatomy of horse – his skeletal structure and muscles are important in the effect of the way the horse moves:
The front legs are attached to the rib-cage by muscles and ligaments, not to a collar bone. Instead, the horse’s body is slung in a cradle of muscle between the two shoulder blades. These muscles allow the horse’s trunk to rise and fall or to lean a little to one side, helping the horse keep its balance, particularly when cornering at speed.
The front legs bear more weight than the hind legs, and hence, there is more concussion involved with the movement.
The head and neck act as a balancing weight.
The muscles which bring the front legs forward are attached to the neck.
The spine has limited sideways and up and down movement between the neck and tail. In practical terms, the trunk is almost rigid, and its role is to transfer the power generated by the hind legs into forward motion.
The hind legs have a bony attachment to the spine for effective transfer of the forces of movement.

Further readings:
George Stubbs: The Anatomy of the Horse
Klaus Dieter Budras, W. O. Sack: Anatomy of the Horse
Lowes Dalbiac Luard: The Anatomy and Action of the Horse

Wednesday 17 February 2016

Horses in visual culture

The horse has been for more than 6000 years close part of human civilization in regard to transport by land – since travel is defining the feature of progress. Before the development of the steam locomotive in the early 1800s and later cars, the only way to travel on land faster than human pace was by horse.
Although horse evolved from smaller, dog-sized extinct Hyracotherium over 45 to 55 million years, Humans began to domesticate horses around 4000 BC, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BC: some first notions of domestication were probably on the steppes of southern Russia and Kazakhstan, and introduced to the Ancient Near East in about 2300 BC. Before this time, people used donkeys, different animals from the cattle family (Bovidae) or other animals (dromedary, lama and other cameleids, elephants - animals which would get domesticated and not to kill owner during work) as draught animals and beasts of burden. The British Museum held the exhibition in 2012 titled: The horse: from Arabia to Royal Ascot where they write that: ''The adoption of the horse was one of the single most important discoveries for early human societies. Horses and other animals were used to pull wheeled vehicles, chariots, carts and wagons and horses were increasingly used for riding ...'' as well horses were of important use in war depending on the form of warfare. The type used varied with whether the horse was being ridden or driven, and whether they were being used for reconnaissance, cavalry charges, raiding, communication, or supply. In non-nomadic societies horses were also throughout history restricted to the upper classes as the status symbol. The symbolic meaning of horse in used in many religious and other spiritual rituals: in Christian religion horse is an attribute of Saint George, killing a dragon with a spear.

Links:
http://blog.britishmuseum.org/2012/05/22/horses-and-human-history/
http://www.academia.edu/9849038/A_Different_sort_of_Horse_Power_The_development_of_the_horse_as_a_status_symbol_in_the_late_Middle_Ages

horse on Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_horse_domestication_theories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_warfare

Down are some representations of horse through history: