Orbweaver
Biodesign - HRI - Speculative



Fear, robots, and the motion of aerial spiders

Orbweaver began as a series of personal experiments using creative work to augment a longstanding fear of spiders into curiosity and inspiration. The work grew to investigate how organic motion effects our perceptions of mobile robots. 

The project started as coursework in Autumn 2022 under Prof. Jiabao Li at UT Austin, exhibited in Austin at Tyrell Gallery (The ODIN) as part of 2023 Fusebox Festival, and received runner up at the 2023 Biodesign Challenge (10 min presentation below) in NY hosted at Parsons & MoMA. You can find a fuller project writeup on my notion.





Imitation
One of the eerier motions I observed involved the spider shrouding a captured fly in silk. Instead of flinching away from the bizarre dining habit, I chose to 'zoom in' on my observation and replicate the ritual, substituting margarita mix for the fly, cotton cloth and rope for the silk, and an apple crate for the spider's abdomen.

Gestalt Analysis
A playful account of an internal debate I had around the pros and cons of the spider's presence. I play both parts - representing one side of the conversation as an anthropomorphized spider and the other as my frustrated self in a blazer. The approach is inspired by gestalt dream analysis practices.

Co-creation, tracings & sumi
I used projection to safely and comfortable zoom in on the spider's web weaving motion and try different strategies for documenting it with pen and sumi ink.

Co-creation, iRobot Create 3
I took position data from footage of the spider's weaving pattern and programmed an iRobot Create 3 to duplicate the path, then exhibited the robot as it traced it's own trail in pen. This was inspired by Kate Darling’s analogies between robots and animals & Lex’s playful roomba experiments.