Restore Cosmic Order (2024)
Restore Cosmic Order is a cute, mostly helpless robot that says terrible things. The robot is a ruin from a far future built on the chassis of a vacuum. It is in constant movement around the space. A microphone identifies voices in its surroundings to which the work responds. An AI has been trained on a world where sustainability and ecological health have taken on an authoritarian aspect. The robot ‘cleans’ and it shares propaganda from this failed future. The hope is to reveal the abstracted nature of ideological thought and the absurdity of situating it in authentic, lived contexts.
Restore Cosmic Order
By placing ideological objects into contact with the world, their absences and their unsuitability for living might be revealed. Restore Cosmic Order is a vacuum driven by a customized AI that attempts to engage the public and spread propaganda from a future in which protection of the natural world has taken on a totalitarian aspect. The words are frightening, but the robot is cute and generally helpless which casts the underlying beliefs behind it into sharp relief.
The work was first presented at Shipwreck in SÍM Hlöðuloftið and was developed as part of the Factitious Residency at UKAI Projects.
Costume: Mihoko Maeno
AI Model: built from code developed by Ryan Kelln
Support: Michael F Bergmann, Kasra Goodarznezhad, and Luisa Ji
