Embedding robotics in civic monuments for an information world

Abstract

The monument is our first computer: a complex, physical entity that stores and brings to consciousness facts, ideas and aspirations - information. In this paper, we introduce transdisciplinary research aiming to overcome, in the Information World, the static, petrified character of monuments which has longpresented collective memories about human events in immutable spatial forms. Our concept is, instead, the monument-as-robot. Embedded with sensing and actuating technologies, our concept affords multiconfigurations representing the multivalent character of collective" memory more so than the single conventional monuments. We reflect on the crisis of the monument today, describe our three novel prototypes responding to this crisis, and discuss the import for HCI.