Delay Lines (feedback)

Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson‘s works are characterized by transformations of the biological and mechanical; gemstones record, metals have memory, sounds are given shape and fluids must be maintained for computational machines to perform and create.

Delay Line (Feedback)

Dubbin and Davidson approach robotics both conceptually and materially through the many disciplines that intersect within this field of research. Developed in the framework of a remote artist in residence programme promoted by the EPFL College of Humanities, the installation Delay Lines, (feedback) is a new, site-specific variation of the work begun in the context of If the Snake, the Okayama Art Summit 2019. For Delay Lines, (feedback), the artists focused on the biomimicry involved in the development of soft robots, and how humans relate to these soft forms.

The robotic creature was developed in collaboration with the Okayama University System Integration Laboratory, which produced one of the first soft robotic manta rays 13 years ago. In Delay Lines (feedback), Dubbin and Davidson’s knowledge in the field of soft robotics is enriched by data developed in collaboration with Professor Auke Ijspeert’s Biorobotics Lab. The visualisation explores the relationships between the manta and the simulated virtual environment. This project is also a material transformation study on silica. Scientific glassware typically found in laboratories is combined with glass forms to transport water through a series of pathways. This organism of glassworks is connected to a computational device. Simulations of an underwater world are affected by the computer’s temperature as well as the movements of the manta. This warmer water becomes an environment for an artificial manta ray housed in its amnionic world, coupling organism and machine, chip and foetus.

Delay Line Feedback has been featured in several exhibitions since then. In 2023, it was added to the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou.

Partner: Biorobotics Laboratory (BioRob)

Nature of Robotics: An Expanded Field

Delay Lines (feedback) was produced as part of the residency programme developed by EPFL Pavilions and the College of Humanities. In the winter of 2020, EPFL Pavilions devoted its program to the theme of robotics to initiate a thought process on the emerging perspectives and scenarios of this rapidly expanding field. Nature of Robotics: An Expanded Field aimed to highlight the state of the art of the robotics discourse in the Swiss academic context, as well as to foster contemplation on the expansion and impact of this scientific area on our imagination and its future uses for understanding our environment. Through artists’ works and scientific productions from EPFL laboratories, Nature of Robotics invited contemporary reflection on the place of artificial agents in our natural and social ecosystems.

Visions emerging from the laboratories were juxtaposed with speculative creatures, drawings, diagrams, and videos produced by contemporary artists. Two major trends stood out in society’s overall perception of the history of robotics development. The first corresponded to the desire to replace man with machine for the automation of tasks: the advent of robotic industrial machines and automation. The second corresponded to the utopian search to produce a near-perfect being, free from biological needs: these were humanoid robots. However, this exhibition focused on lesser-known paradigms of this science, addressing the issues of interrelations between natural and artificial agents. COVID-19 introduced a novel sense of precariousness, and the role of technologies was questioned in light of a global phenomenon that challenged us at our most fundamental level. Just as Bruno Latour had foreseen in relation to the ecological crisis, “the whole fabric of life” was implicated in our response to COVID-19. The virus outbreak first affected us in our bodies, then in our habits, intensifying our dependence on technology for survival and communication; at the very origin of the pandemic were the consequences of our controversial relationship with the environment and the violent alteration of ecosystems. The disruption caused by the pandemic reframed all our concerns: on a deeply intertwined scale, animals and humans, the environment, biology, and technology appeared as the interdependent factors of an ongoing crisis. All were actors/agents of what could be an overcoming or even transcendence of its destructive forces. Nature of Robotics widened the scope of this reflection, questioning robotics as a science; it revealed how technological advancements and developments were structurally dependent on a process of investigation and learning through “observation” of the natural world. Cautious observers and inventive creators, artists, and scientists explored the complexities of our biological ecosystems.

Nature of Robotics – An Expanded Field, a live discussion that took place as part of In Conversation, with artists Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson, the director of the EPFL Biorobotics Lab, Professor Auke Ijspeert, Jonathan Arreguit, Ph.D., from the EPFL Biorobotics Lab, and the exhibition curator, Giulia Bini.

Melissa Dubbin & Aaron S. Davidson

@Pinault Collection

Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson apply collaborative processes in their practice and engagement with materials. Their works are characterized by transformations of the biological and mechanical; gemstones record, metals have memory, sounds are given shape and fluids must be maintained for computational machines to perform and create. Pneumatically driven creatures question and restate notions of empathy with synthetic intelligence. Silver, iron and silica, the materials of information storage, are recast and animated by water and air to maintain equilibriums and generate new forms. Dubbin and Davidson’s most recent projects explore relations between the environment, computing, robotics and artificial life forms. Their work has been described as addressing “processes of transmission and reception, interference and transference”* often seeking to materialize immaterial or ephemeral states of matter (sound, light, air, time). Together they have co-authored a body of work producing forms, objects, images and experiences across a variety of mediums and disciplines.

Melissa Dubbin is a graduate of the Masters Program of Experimentation in Art and Politics (SPEAP) at SciencesPo, Paris, founded & directed by Bruno Latour, where she was a fellow from 2013-2014. Dubbin received her BA with honors in Moving Image Arts from the College of Santa Fe. Dubbin teaches at Parsons School of Design at The New School, NY and the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.

Aaron S. Davidson is a graduate of the MFA program at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College. Davidson received his BA in Studio Arts from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque where he studied photography and electronic music. Davidson is a professor at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York in the Foundation Arts Department.

Dubbin and Davidson live and work in New York and California.

Melissa Dubbin & Aaron S. Davidson website