Paper Reading #7, "Robotany; Breeze"

http://introductionblogassignment.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-7-robotany-breeze.html
http://chi2010-cskach.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-7-ben-neill-and-bill.html

Robotany: Breeze
Jill Coffin, Georgia Tech
CHI Media Showcase Session 2, 10-15 April 2010, Atlanta, GA

Summary
This paper discusses the appearance of robotic trees at art exhibits in Fribourg, Switzerland and then San Jose. Discussed are the tree itself, briefly, the interaction with the passersby, and then the author philosophizes at length on possible meanings of the interactions.

Breeze itself was, in the first instance, a "roboticized" adult Japanese maple tree. I presume this to mean that the robotic components, an "eye" and audio sensors along with the branch moving mechanisms, were external and that it was not, in fact, a cyborg tree but rather a tree wearing some robotics. In San Jose a donated mountain laurel was used, which the presenter found less effective due to its size. Apparently it refocused attention on the robotic workmanship rather than the tree's actions.

Users interacted by touching, dancing with, singing at, and like responses at both events. The author notes that even a man who said "So the tree moves, so what?" was definitely dancing with it.

There are three narratives that are used to discuss the interactions of the tree with people. The first is in the context of cultural imagery, in which human cultural connotations of trees are discussed. They are familiar and non-threatening, but a moving one is still novel. The second is a phenomological approach, arguing that the tree is important because it represents possibilities. The third attempts to relate the tree to ancient Greek philosophy.

The author does not discuss how or if she intends to further the project.

Discussion
I ran across this tree before when commenting on some one else's paper earlier in the class - I don't know if I linked to it from my post, I had a couple that were over the two a week that I left "off the radar" - and I'm going to begin by restating my point from that comment: I think the main attraction here is the novelty, not the tree itself, inherently.

This paper was long and detailed, which is fine, although some of the phenomological and later stuff was a little more abstract than I am really comfortable with. Hearing about the man toasting the tree was amusing.

If I were running the project, the next step would be to test the novelty hypothesis by putting such a tree in, say, an office lobby to see how people interacted with it over a period of longer than a few minutes.

Obligatory nerd nitpick: Ents are trees, and clearly say so.

A Japanese maple tree, from Flickr via GIS.