Aleksandra Akromaitė
Ecological robotics, biopolitics and creative practice
The theme of this laboratory Ecological robotics, biopolitics and creative practice falls within my investigation areas since my bachelor degree studies, where I got interested in Foucault’s works that led me to observe and mark new manifestations and configurations of power dynamics, new signifiers of excess and new performance of emotional state. One of my projects , - where my inquiry started with numbers, i.e. a base of civilization, structure and order. There my historical insights began with the original meaning of the word ruler and its later extension: from a person (god, ruler, king) to a measuring device. The instrument that contained power and order, granted at that time by an acknowledged authority. The work consisted of 4 pieces: Exit, Picturesque Route: Europa, If I tried to draw 1 meter and a worksheet map.
This project based on modulating historical exploration, science, Foucault‘s concepts, also disclosed to me the growing unused height called vanity height of one of the power, excess symbols such as skyscrapers. A new kind of race has emerged - the construction of the tallest building in the world, where the circumstances reminds the situation of the Babel Tower.
Currently I am working on my investigation sur+ of memory, second part mortification/sorrow composite, here I am keen to condense today’s new ways of exploitation of sorrow, mortification, it's marketing. It doesn't matter if it exploited by a corporation or an extremist group, it is used as some sort of currency, instrument to achieve a precise outcome. And it couldn't be achieved without the extensions formulated by technology, availability of floating bullets of information.
Also, the topic of my present projects adjoins with this laboratory theme, with my interest in emotional representation in robotics, for example, the visuality of langur monkey-robot and his correlation, impact for alive langur monkeys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8ZVl2x-euA
Here the objective goal is to get as close as possible to live langur monkeys so that the robot monkey would not be excommunicated as an alien. But within humanoids there is still a small differences, that are mindfully left for the sake of being able to differentiate the live one from the unreal one. These spectres/points/tensions are important to the third part of my current research.
As a creative process firstly I navigate towards raising relevant discourses, doing mixed research, as an after-effects of doing that, comes some sort of material decision. Here they are: https://transmissionfor.wordpress.com/
The prospect of participation in this laboratory really caught my attention. Usually I do my research by reading, mapping and listening, with the focus of my work on in-between the main field and the margins. The topic of this laboratory correlates to my professional discourses and areas of investigations since my bachelor years. One of my enquiry thesis was about walking man phenomenon through analysis of historical contexts, figures, incidents and its institutionalisation in society, e.g. the state of fugue, dromomania. I think, it has developed into the current feeling of weightlessness that takes the material form of an astronaut in a cosmic station. I mark suspension as the inner state/symptom of humans today: there is no longer the Walking Man of Giacometti with a solid ground under his feet, just a man in suspension. And with this kind of wondering, the concept of horizon disappears, the ingrained mental kinship between the wanderer and the horizontal line crumbles, which was determined as a necessity, formed by illusion. And this new type of space comprehension prevails, it’s were the vertical line is invisible, however, is essential in perception. It also goes further, it has its externalisation in everyday surroundings. For example, the possibility of evacuating a building is changing: to get out of a skyscraper safely is not to use the stairs, but parachute your way to the sky. The sign of the running man through the door starts to float.
The philosophic discourse on the cosmos is regular in my research (practical and theoretical work), as a transparent mantle. I analyse different commands of science, philosophy and psychology that intertwine and usually, instead of providing an answer, I raise new hypothesis or questions. Such an exploration avoids brackets, it does not signify stagnation, it offers a possibility to be supplemented through dialogue and space, time.