Gallus gallus roboticus
A robot for the more humane treatment of chickens
Miranda Moss and Daniel Brownell
Kons Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art | Open Call Application
PROJECT OUTLINE
Struck by the fact that 7 billion day-old male chicks are killed worldwide per year as they are considered “uneconomical” by the poultry industry, the starting point for Gallus gallus roboticus is to develop an open source AI that can detect a chicken’s sex in ovo. Following from this, the project entails fabricating an autonomous walking robot that can tend to diverse facets of a chicken’s needs and wants. Wondering whether Gallus gallus domesticus could be considered – within the framework of the Anthropocene – the most or least successful bird from an evolutionary perspective, the project stems from a (morbid?) fascination with the current and historical relationship between chickens and humans and the intricacies and problematics of selective breeding, symbiosis, domestication, animal rights, farming practices, and food safety and security which riddle this narrative.
It has been shown that using autonomous machines in mass chicken farming has positive benefits for the welfare of chickens, such as decreasing stress experienced during collection for slaughter and increasing environmental cleanliness, which in turn leads to general improved health. However, in this non-human centred speculative design piece, the uncanny valley-inducing autonomous machine will affectionately care for the chickens, posing a question to the viewer whether machines are perhaps more capable of being humane than humans.
On a positive note for animal welfare, in September 2019 Switzerland legally banned the live shredding of male chicks, and, while there are several companies working on endocrinological and spectroscopical in ovo sex detection, these are expensive, high tech solutions, presumably only financially accessible to Agribusiness, and potentially contributing to a culture of Greenwashing.The cost also excludes many Majority World countries with a lack of food security and which depend on substandard chicken farming practices to feed low-income populations.
We imagine that the project will initially manifest as an installation within a gallery / museum, where a room has had basic infrastructure added that will allow for it to be a functional and homely chicken coop, through which viewers should be allowed to walk (however the robot will attempt to protect the chickens from the humans).
The combination of Daniel’s technical wizardry and Miranda’s ability to make audiences emotionally connect with non-human entities, compounded with our professional and social international network of mechatronic engineers, artists, computer scientists, makers, zoologists, neuroscientists, animal rights activists, biohackers, chemists, farmers, microbiologists, evolutionary biologists, etc. , we are confident that Gallus gallus roboticus will manifest as a successful installation within the parameters of The Kons Platform of Investigative Art, and has the possibility to be developed further, exploring numerous research avenues.
We aim to use the support of this grant to develop an art installation that is accessible and engaging to members of the public, scientists, children and adults, but also to use the possibilities and freedoms that come with extra-institutional research that is not driven by a cruelly economically-driven industry. While legitimately trying to provide a solution for the mass murder of male chicks in the poultry industry, the project also attempts to provide a platform for further research, and, perhaps most importantly, shift public perception and problematise our complex, and, one could argue, parasitic, relationship to many non-human entities.
Functions of the robot
- Robot supervises / monitors / paces around the room / exhibition space
- Robot capable of detecting freshly laid eggs
- Robot can delicately pick up the eggs.
- “scan” to determine sex
- (Attempt to do scanning process when hen is distracted)
- If female, surreptitiously return to nest
- If male, robot delivers eggs to the humans, in exchange for humans removing chicken faeces from enclosure. (?)
- Keep track of eggs that are not being sat on, place in incubator
- Provide warmth and lighting: Warmth and light activated when robot is charging; chickens and robots sleep (cuddle?) together.
- Feeding
- Physical and mental stimulation (exercise, entertainment and affection)
- Protect from humans (ref: Asimov’s 3 laws of robotics)
Problematics and ethical quandaries
- Seem to be discrepancies in ethical regulation between science and industry
- We will perform the project strictly under EU animal rights laws and consultation from animal rights activists.
- hens will be rescued from battery farms (pay same price as prepared chicken?) and rehomed after the installation.
- Work presents ethical quandary for viewer
- High probability chicks will imprint on robot (post-natural socialisation?)
- Still supporting chicken farming industry, but:
- Fewer chickens killed
- Presumes chicken industry can’t be stopped overnight and hopes to facilitate a more humane and sustainable way of chicken farming within capitalistic constraints.
- Free-range / organic / bio is expensive : more effort for industry, as well as commodification of “green” products = not sustainable.
QUESTIONS | Research
While the core concept and presentation of the work is relatively straightforward, there will be subtleties which add further layers of complexities (for us, research, viewers, machine/chicken symbiosis)
- Robot gait based on Basal bird (T-rex, genetic divergence etc)
- Will the robot interfere with or become part of the pecking order?
- Will the chicks imprint on the robot??
- Bird behaviour mapping
- Community engagement – ecosystemic
- Decentralisation of research access etc
- Questions around gender and sex in “genetically viable” populations
- No. of chickens in installation = no. of chickens eaten on average per person per year ?
- Robot form – in poetic juxtaposition to chickens’ fluffiness
Mood Board online:
Please see the webpage http://mirandamoss.com/gallus-gallus-roboticus for background research and references.
Biographies
Daniel Brownell and Miranda Moss met in March 2019 when she started working as a soldering monkey at Daniel’s hydroponic and automated plant systems business GrowOpz in Cape Town, South Africa. Since, they have started to develop bio / tech research-based art projects together. They were awarded a Pro Helvetia research residency scholarship in April 2019, where they worked on a variety of diverse interdisciplinary projects, and are currently in Vaasa, Finland, setting up an interactive, immersive installation at Platform’s Motherfucker X-mas Party, and running workshops with the public, specifically children, to teach the basics of electronic art in a playful way.
MIRANDA MOSS
Miranda Moss is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice toys with the representation of Nature as a pure and extra-cultural phenomenon. Largely preoccupied with tensions around artificial / natural, the land is used as a medium to explore how personal, political, economic and visual value structures are projected onto exterior environments. When not conducting “research”, she often employs a process that could be described as techno-alchemy; her works combining sublime, magical elements with everyday, banal ones by frequently incorporating found objects, recycled, accessible technologies, and ephemeral, natural processes.
Her practice has become increasingly interdisciplinary, and has seen her collaborate with scientists, engineers, designers and mechatronic artists in recent years. She has exhibited extensively in South Africa, as well as at La Gaite Lyrique in Paris, Kikk festival in Belgium, Cinekid Festival in Amsterdam, Woelab in Togo and la Companie in Marseille. In 2017 she was the recipient of the Pro Helvetia / Artists-in-Labs residency in Zurich, where she was stationed in a phytopathology laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow, Forest and Landscape. 2018 saw her first participation in the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA). In 2019, she was nominated for the PCS art prize, and was the recipient of The New Technological Art Awards’ (NTAA) Audience Choice Award, which was held at Zebrastraat in Ghent in November. She is currently studying a Masters degree Design+Change (sustainable design with a focus on ecological and social complexities) in Vaxjo, Sweden.
Her full exhibition CV can be found here: http://mirandamoss.com/about
DANIEL BROWNELL
One of Daniel Brownell’s goals is to simplify the latest advances from technical and academic works so that they can be implemented using common, off-the-shelf components. Finding cheap solutions, popularising insightful ideas, and raising awareness to increase adoption of new technology is key to improving public education and resiliency when faced with environmental crises.
Daniel runs an innovative hydroponics and horticultural lighting company in Cape Town, working on and testing various experimental designs that are improving the state of the art. He is working towards fabricating an open source PCB to enable low cost environmental and lighting control for food computing projects. His experiments involve using camera and sensor input and computer vision.
Daniel has a Bachelors of Computer Science with honours, from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where his senior thesis entailed the implementation of a distributed framework for genetic programming. He has used his skills to automate and architect solutions in the automotive, telecommunications, education, employee benefits, banking and healthcare industries. He is currently the lead developer for ICON, South Africa’s primary network of oncologists.
He has also dabbled in artistic endeavours, bringing the first LED matrix artwork, The Freakin Beacon, to the desert art festival Afrika Burn in 2013, and has since collaborated with the LSDome crew, the first to create a 2880-pixel Dome in 2016 and a 5760-pixel Dome 2.0 in 2017.
OTHER PROJECTS
For documentation of previous projects, please visit