them are not truly engaging and have a very acting with a goose is much better than playing
limited ability to teach us anything about the inside a closed system, such as a video game.
world we live in.” Her idea is to “release” these Another project allows people and fish to
domestic robots into the wild where, in the case of communicate. A board is placed in water with a
the Feral Robotics Project, hacked toy-dog robots hole above the waterline and a hole below the
can interact with each other and with humans as waterline. When a hand reaches inside the top
they sniff out contaminants in a landfill. hole, say to feed fish, the light goes on, telling fish
An Australian trained as an engineer, Jeremijenko that a human is there to feed them. When a fish
recalls that her mother had the first microwave in passes through the lower hole, the light also goes
Australia. “She believed that machines would one on, letting a human that there is a fish wishing to
day do everything for us,” says Jeremijenko, and be fed. “This shows you how technologies can be
immediately adds, “She was wrong.” Jeremijenko used to create an architecture of reciprocity,”
taught in the Mechanical Engineering depart- Jeremijenko remarks. The fish project was de-
ment at Yale, where she first began experiment- signed for a demonstration in Dublin, and she’d
ing with robotic dogs. like to see it deployed in the Hudson River, the
Recently, Jeremijenko accepted a new mention of which sends her on a riff.
appointment in the Visual Arts department at the

University of California at San Diego (UCSD), where she is now teaching art students just “We are forming an online enough electronics and programming to distributed community undertake her pet projects. These days, she sees _{herself moving between the worlds of engineering which is interested in the} and art, just as she finds herself moving back and low-cost adaptation of forth between New York and San Diego. robotic dogs into activist

“I work on examining the cultural opportunities _{that technological innovations provide,}” _{she instruments for exploring}
explains. She is particularly interested in the the local environment.”
emerging field of social robotics. “I want to
explore what’s been left out of social robotics,
which is more than having a handful of robots in “We’ve designed an edible lure for fish. They
a room. What does it mean to think of social can eat it and so can humans. Instead of hooks,
robots, not just in terms of the robots, but in the lure contains PCB-chelating agents, so
terms of the people too?” we can do something good for the fish.” She
seems to take off in a different direction herself

Taunting Waterfowl and Talking with Fish midstream. “Do you know where all the drugs With the OOZ project, which is zoo spelled we take end up? All the anti-depressants? They backwards and got its start in the Netherlands, end up in the river. Can you imagine what’s in the Jeremijenko experimented with a robotic goose Hudson River? That’s what we’re doing to the that can “play with, chase, and terrorize” other fish and the frogs.” geese. In addition, the robotic goose can make Jeremijenko’s projects have more in common goose sounds, and it will record and play back with performance art than with traditional sci-sounds made by other geese. It is possible to ence experiments. They are purposely designed build a database of goose sounds, and humans to engage an audience and evoke a response. can learn to communicate with geese through She invites the press to what she calls a “ media-these interactions. genic” event so that she can reach this audience.

“Can we rescript our interactions with nature?” Jeremijenko is only part wizard; the other part she asks. Instead of hunting geese, we can ap- is pure Oz. ^{proach and talk to them (and likely annoy them). She says that this project is an example of using} the open structure of participation, and that inter- >>