!brute_force is an umbrella title for an ongoing research platform. The work is set up as a grid where a human and a dog climb through a landscape of tiles, while their physiological data is captured and classified by an AI. By means of a generative procedure, gathered data has been translated into structural mesh patterns embedded in soft robotic morphologies. The robots enact the performativity of an evolutionary algorithm that transduces data into vectors and generates new deviations by applying a method for continually introducing as much difference into the system as possible. Through an extension of mutant values, the data eventually becomes an independent entity, pushing the soft robots towards the transformative potential of the algorithmic unknown.
Maja Smrekar & Jonas Jørgensen, !brute_force: Soft Resilience (2022), performance installation with 9 soft robotic tiles. Approx.3.5x5x3.5m. Photo: Hana Josic
Exhibited at: Ars Electronica Festival, Shanghai (2022), Festival IZIS (2022), MSU (Museum of Contemporary Art) Zagreb (2023)