Rich Gilbank
Swarm Hunger
With the ever-growing development of technologies designed to fulfill societal needs, we have come to accept these solutions as permanent fixes to the side-effects of decadent lifestyles. But what parallels can be drawn between the emergent characteristics of humanity and their robotic counterparts? Are there societal problems which cannot be satisfied with technology? This project is an exploration of the properties of emergence and 'swarm logic'. Using a number of independent agents with specific rulesets acting in the interest of themselves, patterns begin to emerge and formation of structures focused on the good of the total system become apparent. Swarm Hunger is one step toward the development of these structures, and development will continue in the future.
Biography
Rich Gilbank is a New Media artist from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, currently entering his fourth year in the New Media program at Ryerson University. With this program, he has studied under such influences as Norman T. White, robotic-art pioneer, and David Bouchard, a graduate of the MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces group. Recent projects include a tangible sequencer interface, Tempaural, which implemented physical blocks for the sequencing of audio samples, allowing one to literally build their own soundscape. Some of his other projects are heavily oriented toward making visible the effect of computing culture on society and feature metanarratives of the interaction between humans shaping technology and technology shaping humanity. He is thrilled to be involved with MKL on his first artist-in-residence program, and looks forward to returning to Austria on future projects.
