Above and below: Replica of Gordon Pask’s 1968 “Colloquy of Mobiles” by TJ McLeish and Paul Pangaro at ZKM. Photo and video by TJ McLeish and Patricia Machado.
Today at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, a fully-animated Colloquy of Mobiles was displayed at the opening of their exhibition titled »BioMedia: The Age of Media with Life-like Behavior«. Our replica of Gordon Pask’s 1968 Colloquy is perfectly poised to respond to ZKM’s intentions as expressed on the exhibition’s web page: “Who or what defines what is alive and what is intelligent? … What does cooperation of human beings and artificial agents look like? … The exhibition »BioMedia« invites visitors to learn about and discuss possible forms of cohabitation between organic and artificial forms of life.”
When Pask conceived the Colloquy of Mobiles in 1968, those questions were hardly on everyone’s mind — though they certainly are today.
Conceived 50 years before artificial intelligence encroached on our everyday lives — not always for the better — Colloquy teases us to think differently about our living among machines. Can we understand what their intentions are? Can we be part of their conversations?
Today we celebrate Pask’s genius and express our deep gratitude to everyone who brought our 2018 full-scale, authentically-interactive replica of Colloquy to this exhibition and into the permanent collection of the ZKM. And above all we appreciate the herculean effort of TJ McLeish, master fabricator of the project, who designed, built, and programmed the replica (visual appearance, hardware, software, and mechatronics) and without whom today’s celebration would not have been possible. Thank you, TJ!
The story of the Colloquy of Mobiles will continue as we create new materials that explore its implications for the future of gallery experiences, interaction design, and society. There are rich opportunities for conversation about Colloquy as one alternative to the dominant digital paradigms of today’s human-machine interaction.
Pask, an avant-gardist and one of the earliest experimenters with conversational machines, has much more to tell us.
Click to read about Colloquy at Centre Pompidou in February 2020.
Click to read about the journey of the COLLOQUY 2018 Project.
