Artwork: Zoodram 4 by Pierre Huyghe (2011)
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/pierre-huyghe-zoodram-4
Huyghe let (or manipulate) a hermit crab make his home inside Brâncuși’s 1910 sculpture, Sleeping Muse, thus creating a poetic living ocean ecosystem in a glass aquarium.
Context/questions/discourse of existing work
The tension between the human and the non-human, the borders between fiction and reality, between make-believe and the real, between life and an imitation of life, Donna Haraway’s concept of the cyborg as a liberating synthesis of human, animal, and machine.
Perhaps – the aquarium as a metaphor for the museum.
“In an ambivalent symbiosis of the human and the animal, the crab and the girl’s face travel through a human reproduction of the sea. They embody the encounter of two species, not dissimilar from clumsy attempts at communication with extraterrestrial life.” – https://fotografmagazine.cz/en/magazine/living-with-humans/profiles/pierra-huyghe/
Alternative resolutions – soft technology
Soft robotics feel relevant in the context of the artist’s exploration of the borders between life and an imitation of life.
Additionally, Pierre Huyghe often utilizes animals in his artworks – an act that inherently involves an ethical question since his animal collaborators obviously can not give consent. Some will even argue he treats animals as objects, and therefore, his related artworks are criticized in the context of animal abuse:
“… The aesthetic distance taken by the artist undermines empathy” – https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/descartes-dick-dog-pierre-huyghe-lacma/
“Huyghe reinforces, instead of challenges, a social construct that systematically privileges some living creatures while harming others.” – https://hyperallergic.com/181315/art-with-a-dose-of-imperialism-pierre-huyghe-at-lacma/
Soft technology can allow for imitation of nature without cruelty. However, will the interesting tension dissolve if the entire installation is an artificial structure? Perhaps a combination of living ecosystems and soft robots – but then the ethical issue remains the same.
Related technical research
Design and structure analysis of multi-legged bionic soft robot J. Xu, B. Liu, K. Li, Y. Feng, H. Zheng and Y. Gao, “Design and structure analysis of multi-legged bionic soft robot,” 2020 International Conference on Advanced Mechatronic Systems (ICAMechS), 2020, pp. 180-185, doi: 10.1109/ICAMechS49982.2020.9310122. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9310122
Main points:
- Most soft robot, inspired by worms, performs peristaltic crawling motion and has disadvantages in climbing over steps. However, the crab crawls sideways and can climb over certain height of a step. When crawling, they raise side near the step, to reach the step with the leg on this side, then the leg on the other side stretches to push the crab over the step. Inspired by the crawling process of crabs, the article present a soft bionic robot that simplifies the 8 legs of crabs into a four-legged structure and can climb over obstacles.
- The robot adopts the structure similar to crabs, and its four legs are raised alternately. The robot has four feet, each leg is divided into two parts: thigh and shin. The thigh can bend upward to lift the leg, and the shin can bend down under the body.
- It is driven by a stay wire mechanism. A steering gear is installed in the middle cavity to control direction and the stay wire is connected to the disk. Thigh consists of spine and a set of hollow elastomer chambers and the shin is a flat plate.