| MECHA_A38
///////// DARK_INVADER - Swarm Infrastructure / Mecha - DA>SI/M
Jason
Vigneri-Beane <jcvb@splitstudio.com>
Project
Statement
Dark
Invaders : Forthcoming.
DA>SI/M
--- MECHA_A38
/// DARK_INVADER :
MECHA_A38
is the designation for the pilot prototype in the Swarm Infrastructure
sub-series Dark Invaders. It is a mobile infrastructural module tasked
with environmental information harvesting, signal boosting and relay,
communications/public address and atmospheric influence. It includes multi-axis
self-leveling footings, adjustable screens, signal boosting/information
harvesting drones with pneumatic lift, optical calibration, heating/cooling
units, atmospheric water harvesters and filtration tanks. It is a mobile
nexus for the concentration and distribution for urban ephemera such was
air flow, information flow, vapor and water, light, signal and symbol.
It is both core and cloud.
The Mecha_A38///Dark Invader is designed to be deployed
in urban environments and, in particular, in Privately Owned Public Spaces
(POPS) in New York City. POPS are a special category of urban space wherein
developers are granted variances on bulk regulations in exchange for providing
an accommodation to the citizenry such as exterior spaces. While these
spaces are public they are also privately owned. These spaces can be welcome
relief or frameworks for profound tensions across fiscal and legal boundaries.
They can become lovely and accommodating urban oases or sites of oppression
that came to the forefront of public consciousness during the Occupy Wall
Street movement. Increasingly, it seems that the tension is increasing
as they become emphatically cleansed, secured, regulated and policed.
While one perhaps understands the complexities of the global city one
does not have surrender to the lack of expression, sense of homogenization
and feeling of paranoia that now sadly surrounds the idea of public space
in some globalized cities. The Dark Invader is meant to engage, in its
own small and optimistic way, with this evolving scenario.
The Dark Invader would be deployed as a mobile, automated and responsive
architectural agent with microinfrastructural capabilities. It can move
about, deploy its drones, project its content and provide its small services
to the public as it navigates these double-edged urban scenarios of opportunity
and constraint. It would be a kind of fellow-traveler that can comfort
people with climate and water, connect people with networking and messaging
technologies and boost the voice of those who would like to relay a small
message to a large collective.
The Mecha_A38///Dark Invader is conditioned by a hybrid purpose of providing
Amenity, Connectivity, Stimulation/Disruption and Mobility. It is designed
to be accommodating on the one hand and communicative on the other. It
accommodates citizens with heating and cooling systems, connectivity through
wi-fi drones, general and specific lighting at night and drinking water
throughout the twenty-four hour cycle of urban public space. These are
small, informal, personal and hyper-local amenities that are sponsored
by the Dark Invader in its role as a swarminfrastructural entity. At the
same time, it also intends to broadcast imagery, information, artwork
and real-time content received from passers-by. The idea is that citizens
could have a voice in the systematized and regulated territories of contemporary
urban space by texting content to the Dark Invader via mobile devices
or positioning material within the visual field of camera ready drones.
The Dark Invader is, however, polite and, due to its mobility, it can
arrive and depart from properties in such a way that is neither dependent
on nor subject to the locked-in regulatory protocols of those Privately
Owned Public Spaces. The drones it is outfitted with are even more transcendent
of the highly regulated terrain of urban life.
Amenity: As a micro-infrastructural entity it has heating/cooling equipment
and drinking water tanks to provide comfort to citizens of the stone deserts
that Privately Owned Public Spaces tend to be for the purposes of maintenance
and security. It has fixed lighting mounted to its upper mechanical rigging
as well as mobile lighting housed in its drones.
Connectivity: The Dark Invader is equipped with pneumatic wi-fi drones
that can dock to recharge and circulate in a near-field radius around
the location of their Dark Invader base station. As mentioned above, the
drones can also provide additional lighting to public spaces for accommodation
as well as for the purposes of lighting content that citizens may wish
to transmit to the Dark Invader via the cameras in those drones. In addition,
the Dark Invader can receive content from mobile devices for projection
on its screens.
Stimulation/Disruption:
The Dark Invader’s most public mission is to simultaneously deliver
information and artwork and to give voice to citizens within its near-field
radius. Information and imagery projected by its automated and adjustable
screens could be a range of curated artworks to live-streaming broadcasts
to peer-to-peer/peer-tocommunity communications from passers-by. The Dark
Invader may just provide non-commercial communications that seem to be
increasingly marginalized in Privately Owned Public Spaces and, for that
matter, many public spaces of borne of corporate globalization.
Mobility: The Dark Invader has three forms of mobility. The first is the
mobility of ideas that is fostered through communications and projected
content. The second is the mobility of the Dark Invader itself that is
made possible by its robotic quadrapedal base that allows it to arrive
and depart from properties in an independent and potentially nonconformist
way. The third and airborne form of mobility is the way in which its four
drones can circulate in short-term near-field patterns of flight to deliver
and receive content from citizen-users while providing them with wi-fi
and lighting.
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