nixel-LookingOutwards04

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Mediated Encounters is a project by Ken Rinaldo. It's composed of two hanging robotic arms with a Siamese Fighting fish on each end. The arms move based on the swimming pattern of the fish. These fish are naturally aggressive towards each other, so these arms allow them to get close but never close enough to actually fight.

I think this is an interesting project, like many of Ken Rinaldo's projects which connect fish and other living organisms with robotics to give them 'mobility' because it is sold as giving them a way to navigate our world freely outside the limitations of fish bowls. I see this method as somewhat contradictory and hypocritical, as the fish could easily move about the world if only they weren't trapped in fish bowls to begin with.  This is kind of like an exercise in power; these fish would have no way to interact on land without human help. It's like playing god to give them something they might not want or need ?

This project is very similar to the project at CMU with the fish that drove a robotic platform. Rinaldo also has a project almost identical to it, with three moving robotic fish tanks, but made it more than a decade earlier.