ARS ELECTRONICA ARCHIVE - PRIX

The Prix Ars Electronica Showcase is a collection where all the artist submissions for the Prix since 1987 can be searched and viewed. The winning projects are documented with extensive information and audio-visual media. ALL other submissions are displayed with a basic metadata in list form.

Artificial Intelligence & Life Art Anerkennung - Honorary Mention 2023

Interspecies Robot Sex

Miriam Simun

How will humans (and their robots) continue the reproduction of fruits after the bees are gone? An investigation into two responses to colony collapse disorder—a compendium of forces that threaten the extinction of honey bees, a ”companion species” upon whom the global agricultural system depends.

In China, human laborers inseminate pear flowers by hand, one-by-one, on an industrial scale. Biomimetic design is done with cigarette filters on a tiny family farm in Cangxi, and with chicken feathers on the largest fruit orchard in the world in Anhui. Every spring, 7,000 day laborers arrive in Anhui to inseminate pear flowers.

As Chinese salaries grow, pollination labor is becoming too expensive for pear production to remain profitable, and simultaneously the middle class has given rise to the domestic Chinese tourist. A rural town invents a ”traditional pear blossom festival”, and in the hope that if there are no pears in the future, at least the flowers will attract tourists and their money. A new way to extract capital from pear trees—through symbolic representation— is selfies with flowers galore rather than caloric nutrition as pears.

Meanwhile at a Harvard University laboratory, engineers are building the Robobee—tiny drones designed in close study of insect morphology, ostensibly for artificial pollination.

Evolutionary design is extracted from natural systems in order to build efficient robot drone “bees” folding the drone metaphor back in on itself. The preposterous nature of replacing complex and interdependent ecological systems with robots is not lost on the lead engineers, and we learn that the Robobee is destined for activities in the world beyond just pollination.

An investigation of life and death, labor and technology, and interspecies sex in an era of late-stage capitalism and ecological crisis.

Links: https://www.miriamsimun.xyz/interspecies-robot-sex, https://soundcloud.com/miriam-simun/interspecies-robot-sex-vibratory-pollinator-score

Interspecies Robot Sex (Part II of Survival Trilogy), 2022

种间机器人性 (生存三部曲第二部), 2022

A work by Miriam Simun

来自米里亚姆•西蒙的作品

该作品的原始版本包括嵌入定制座椅中的振动乐谱

The original version of this work includes a vibratory score embedded in custom seating

丽莎·安·勋伯格由蜜蜂和黄蜂的原始录音组成的振动乐谱

Vibratory score composed with original bee and wasp recordings by Lisa Ann Schonberg

HD Video with 3-Channel audio and custom seating

带三通道音频及定制座椅的高清视频

Supported by Creative Capital

由创意资本支持

Additional support from the List Visual Arts Center and La Becque Résidences d'artistes

List 视觉艺术中心和 La Becque 艺术家驻留项目提供额外支持

Special thanks: Junwei Li, Liyong Sheng, the Cangxi Pear Farmers Collective, the Harvard Microrobotics Lab, and the Dangshan Fruit Orchard

特别感谢: 李君伟, 盛力勇, 苍溪梨业农民集体, 哈佛微型机器人实验室, 和砀山果园

Featuring: Lao family and the residents of Qingyan Village, the performers of the 12th annual Cangxi Pear Blossom Festival, Rob Wood and students of the Harvard Microrobotics Lab, and the workers of the Dangshan Fruit Orchard

主要人物：劳氏家庭和青盐村的居民们，第十二届苍溪年度梨花节的表演者们，哈佛微型机器人实验室的罗布•伍德和学生们，以及砀山果园的工人们

Direction, camera, editing and sound composition: Miriam Simun

导演、摄影、剪辑和配音: 米里亚姆•西蒙

Additional Camera: Yiyang Cao

附加摄影：曹艺洋

Production and Translation: Yiyang Cao

制作和翻译：曹艺洋

Audio Mix: Juan Neocochea

混音：胡安•尼昂科切阿

Subtitle Translation and Additional Research: Huiyan Li

字幕翻译和补充研究: 李惠妍

Music: “Jeu de Robin et de Marion” by Igor Tkachenko and Victor Sobolenko

音乐：伊戈尔•特卡琴科和维克托•索博连科的 “罗宾和马里恩游戏”

“Rosemary“ by Jay Chou

周杰伦的 “迷迭香”

This work is supported by Creative Capital with additional support by MIT List Visual Arts Center and La Becque.

Miriam Simun (US) works at the intersection of ecology, technology and the body, spanning multiple formats including video, performance, installation, drawing, writing, and communal sensorial experiences. Trained as a sociologist, Simun adopts the position of “artist-as-fieldworker,” conducting in-depth and corporeal research that guides the final material form of the artworks. Recurring questions revolve around the role of the sensorium in scientific and ecological knowing, shifting interspecies relations amidst rapid ecological crisis and technological development, and the construction of knowledge and violence of categories. Simun’s work has been presented internationally.