As a follow up to your review of the MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic
collaboration to produce undersea robots capable of transmitting data and
samples from the oceans depth. Your readers should be aware of a project
called Nereus, a hybrid remotely operated vehicle capable of diving to the
depths of the Mariana Trench and the Pacific Ring of Fire.
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=57586&ct=162
"Building on previous experience developing tethered robots and autonomous
underwater vehicles (AUVs) at WHOI and elsewhere, the team fused the two
approaches together to develop a hybrid vehicle that could fly like an
aircraft to survey and map broad areas and then be converted at sea into a
tethered, remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that can hover like a helicopter
near the seafloor to conduct experiments or to collect biological or rock
samples under real-time human control. The present trials of Nereus are
being conducted in this tethered, ROV mode of operation."
"On its dive to the Challenger Deep, Nereus spent over 10 hours on the
bottom, sending live video back to the ship through its fiber-optic tether
and collecting geological and biological samples with its manipulator arm,
and placed a marker on the seafloor signed by those onboard the surface
ship. ³The samples collected by the vehicle include sediment from the
subducting and overriding tectonic plates that meet at the trench and, for
the first time, rocks from deep exposures of the Earth¹s crust close to
mantle depths south of the Challenger Deep,² said Fryer. ³We will know the
full story once the shore-based analyses are completed back the laboratory
this summer and integrate them with the new mapping data to tell a story of
plate collision in greater detail than ever before accomplished in the
worlds oceans.²
³We hope that Nereus will help scientists investigate some of the Œbig
questions¹ of our time questions of vital societal importance such the
relation between seafloor dynamics and global climate change,² said
Whitcomb.
Further, in the project described by Roger from the MIT collaboration with
Cabell Davis at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, WHOI :
"researchers are developing a compact, low-power, holographic imaging
system that can be used on gliders and drifters and designing
software/hardware solutions for on-board image processing and automatic
identification of plankton from holograms. This research will allow
autonomous collection of high-resolution spatio-temporal data on plankton
size and taxonomic composition- a fundamental need in the study of aquatic
ecosystems. This type of sampling will help solve the problem of sparse
taxonomic data in biological oceanography. This is critical data in the
understanding of climate change and the oceans." The creative use of
robotics to image plankton using holographic imaging has a cultural context.
Warming climate is changing the numbers and composition of phytoplankton&lsqauo;the
base of the food web&lsqauo;along the western shelf of the Antarctic Peninsula.
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=55986&ct=162
Joseph Ingoldsby
Landscape Mosaics
On 7/13/09 12:02 PM, "roger malina" <rmalina@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> Murat
>
> yes both military technologies and computer game technologies
> are driving much development related to cyborgs, the more interesting
> work of course being in the serious games area
>
> i get uncomfortable with the political generalisations - how are artists
> contributing to 'the basic human condition' by creating other ways of
> imagining /perceiving/feeling using technological
> apendages/extensions/hybridities ?
>
> i agree that the motivation that drives technologies=such as military
> ones= determines
> the direction that the technological development takes, but at the same time i
> am enough of an optimist to feel that artists through their work can
> create recontextualisations
> that then determine the cultural appropriations
>
> sundar sarukkai in his on line text on science and the ethics of
> curiosity quotes an
> eastern proverb that fits" ³the nature of the task of the ³ought¹ is
> the other-directedness of the ³is²
>
> artists projects are so grounded in the 'is' of being' that they i
> think can redirect technologies
> in ways that are life enhancing
>
> so again yasminers=it would be great to have more examples artists who are
> creating work relevant to the cyborg issue in its cultural context.
>
> Joseph Ingoldsby directed us to
> http://web.mit.edu/museum/exhibitions/robots.html
> Robots and Beyond:
> Exploring Artificial Intelligence at MIT
>
> where we see examples of artificial intelligence work
> with robots
>
> one of the interesting areas it mentions is underwater robots
>
> http://seagrant.mit.edu/research/current_research.php?CAT=exp
>
> there is an interesting undersea robot that can image plankton
> using holographic imaging
>
>
> Incorporation of a compact digital holographic plankton camera into
> gliders and drifters
>
> PI(s): Cabell Davis, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
>
> Project Summary: In this project, the researchers are developing a
> compact, low-power,
> holographic imaging system that can be used on gliders and drifters and
> designing software/hardware solutions for on-board image processing
> and automatic
> identification of plankton from holograms. This research will allow
> autonomous collection
> of high-resolution spatio-temporal data on plankton size and taxonomic
> composition-
> a fundamental need in the study of aquatic ecosystems. This type of
> sampling will help
> solve the problem of sparse taxonomic data in biological oceanography.
>
>
> in order to control climate change to acceptable levels we need to
> understand the oceans,
> their processes and ecologies= we can imagine cyborgs that are humans
> with connectivity
> to flocks of data collection devices to give each of us better
> awareness of the the environment
> our senses dont allow us to connect to
>
> roger
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Murat Germen <muratgermen@sabanciuniv.edu>
> Date: Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 1:16 AM
> Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] ETHNIC CYBORGS
> To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
>
>
> hello all,
>
> the new military technologies and the type of soldiers it creates can
> also be subject to this discussion maybe. i am not a militaristic
> person at all but wars, it seems, constitute indispensable part of
> human history unfortunately. as there are amazing gaps between the
> ways people live, eat, consume and finally die; there is a similar
> inequality in fighting conditions. with the support of special drugs
> (like LSD in vietnam war and a lot of others in recent ones), special
> vision gadgets, special garments, multiple body attachments, sci-fi
> type rifles and very nasty / unfair bombs
> interactive-multimedia-simulation-educated soldiers turn into cyborgs
> i guess. and since they exist only in certain armies, they can be
> considered ethnic cyborgs. the originally poor periphery people sort
> of turn into legionnaire-avatars of certain cultures in order to make
> a living and finally end up being temporary "kings" (à la warhol) to
> the point of torturing locals in the context of a war-destroyed
> "other" culture. but interestingly enough, these legionnaire-cyborgs
> also fail at one point at the corps-à-corps combat and finally leave.
> so maybe there is still hope for the basic human condition...
>
> regards to all
> murat
>
> <<< +90 532 473 8970 (gsm mobile)
> <<< muratgermen@gmail.com
> <<< http://www.muratgermen.com
> <<< http://www.flickr.com/photos/muratgermen/
> <<< http://muratgermen.wordpress.com/
> <<< http://www.camgaleri.com/en/sanatci.aspx?id=27
>
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