Biotic Game – First encounter – March 2024
A work by Dominique Peysson
A project supported by the LaSIPS Label of theParis-Saclay University and the laboratory LadHyX, and by the Arts & Sciences Chair of the École Polytechnique. It was produced with the help of the researcher Gabriel Amselem, thanks to him.
The development of the microrobot was carried out during a residency at the IS2M laboratory at the University of Haute Alsace, initiated by Olivier Soppera. Mobilized to help this research Olivier Soppera, Laurent Vonna and Djamel Mohammed BendimeradA residency organized thanks to Isabelle Lefevre, in charge of cultural activities at the UHA. Thanks to them.
I'm developing several "biotic games," which are similar to the early Arcade video games, but they involve living microorganisms and micro-robots. A whole little world inside microscopic cells, which the public can interact with, for better or for worse...
The micro-robot is driven by continuous movement. By manipulating the joystick, we control its movement within the cell. It then becomes possible to meet the microscopic living beings within it, through the micro-robot, which we move as we wish. The two entities: the micro-robot controlled by us and the microscopic being, can then interact...
In Biotic Game #1 (first encounter), I give the audience the opportunity to interact with daphnia, in order to create a relationship of empathy with them.
The imaginaries invoked relate to the incredible diversity of living beings and their ways of being in the world, at the smallest scales of size. In particular, the incredible anthology of metamorphic beings that we find around us, in different layers of the subsoil or even inside our own bodies. Infra-terrestrial beings, too small for us to know them. In this project, it becomes possible to interact with some of them by means of an intermediary: a micro-robot that we control with a joystick. It becomes possible for us to go and meet them, play with them, create an interaction.
Just as robots at our scale resemble humans or animals, micro-robots resemble microscopic beings. At these size scales, swimming modalities are different, and the flagellum allows for more efficient swimming. This is why our microrobots resemble tiny tadpoles or large sperm. Hence their name, sperm-bots.
In fact, laboratories are currently working on sperm-bots, either to distribute drugs into the human body or to compensate for the decline in male fertility...
This project also calls upon the imaginary worlds linked to biotechnologies, whether based on real advances in micro-robot research (fertilization of eggs by sperm-bots), or science fiction. Authors have already taken up these particularly worrying subjects in the era of the global pandemic and the micro-robots introduced into the body, as discussed in the latest James Bond film, constitute one of the most recent expressions.
It is clear that this project questions the ethics of manipulating living things on small scales. The term " game " is not taken at random: can we play without applying certain ethical rules? Play has always been a constituent of human culture and its interest goes far beyond that of simple entertainment. Rather than brandishing portmanteau words (injection of micro-robots into the body) likely to frighten and take the imagination too far from reality, which risks freezing the debate and citizen involvement, the idea is rather to integrate the public as closely as possible to living systems, bio-bots and micro-robots, so that they can understand a little better their functions, their operation and the issues they involve. A necessary approach to help them then make decisions more fairly.
More biotic games are coming, on the terms of the Pac Man and Space Invaders ...to be continued.