Stooge (the telerobotic puppet) 2010

Meet stooge - I created him in February 2010. Stooge is a computer generated puppet who responds to visual movements (a human-machine interface of sorts). The name Stooge relates metaphorically to the subservient nature of computers within the complex symbiotic relationship between man and machine: Stooge is the viewers henchman or willing sidekick who waits patiently before being called into action. The gestures are captured via a webcam and interpreted by software to control the appendages.

Initial investigations with Stooge at the development stage were focused around the technical or practical questions relating to the project - typically “how on earth do I create a remote interface that allows a machine to be operated at a distance?” In the case of stooge, computer vision was employed as the interface, with the role of the machine being fulfilled by a computer generated (Adobe Flash) puppet. Computer vision can be broadly defined as the science/investigation of machines that can see, and it is this area of science and technology that appeared most sympathetic with the concept for stooge - since vision has played an important role in the techno-organic theories of the late twentieth century. We only have to refer to the achievements of artificially enhanced vision enterprises (such as the development of sophisticated surveillance systems and apparatus similar to the Hubble space telescope) to realise its importance to Western hypothesis concerning man/machine transformations.

Reflecting critically on the achievements of stooge results in a number of questions surrounding the debates into cyborgs/human-machine interfaces/teleoperators. Stooge was designed to comment on the human interface with machines across distance (we have already defined the principles and concepts of a teleoperator) It is a fundamental assumption that teleoperators always have man at the centre of the control loop - Stooge, however, appears to turn on its head this anticipated dominance by the human participant. Instead of mirroring the viewers kinematics (as one would presumably expect from an installation of this type) stooge grins defiantly in the face of the audience as he responds to the movements but interprets them in apparently random and unorthodox manner. The irony being that in contrary to Stooge mimicking the ‘puppeteer’, it is stooge who emerges as the master. The audience, apparently confused and somewhat frustrated by the rogue movements of the puppets apparent disobedience to carry out its instruction, begin to replicate Stooge’s projected activity. The machine has manipulated itself into a position of control and just as N. Katherine Hales wrote in her essay The life Cycle of Cyborgs: Writing the posthuman “Humans are becoming more like androids, just like androids are becoming more like them”

Perhaps more alarmingly, the resulting scenario of a machine influencing the decisions of man is not a far cry from what many feel will herald the apocalypse - as the denizens of the Sci-Fi realms will testify by citing cyborg bodies such as the Terminator and the artificially intelligent machine consciousness’ of Larry and Andy Wachowski’s Matrix. I am not convinced for one moment that Stooge will be a harbinger of the Four Horsemen, but there are important debates that are (albeit incredibly simplistically) raised through this relatively unsophisticated puppet.