The Revolution Will Be Televised by Cute Robots

By Eileen Cheong, Staff Writer

Last Wednesday night, a representative from the Institute of Applied Autonomy spoke at the art lecture series about what exactly a group of five twenty-something people from diverse backgrounds are doing with technology developed by the government. A collective that doesn't take individual credit and thus, remains anonymous, the IAA's mission is to communicate with people who do not necessarily agree with them and get to those who despise what they believe in.

To solve the problem of publicly expressing unpopular ideas that is difficult and often dangerous, the IAA built a robot called "Little Brother" to pamphlet subversive political literature at a busy traffic corner. To successfully open democratic discourse and sort of do a spin off the "town crier," they endowed the 4.5-foot tin with all the aesthetics of cuteness: a large head, big eyes, stout body and equally big hands and feet.

"Handing out pamphlets on a street corner is time consuming and fails to research the intended audience," was displayed on the overview screen as John Doe spoke about IAA's propaganda robot for cultural resistance. Whenever someone would approach him, "Little Brother" would turn to greet them and after taking a pamphlet, people young and old, would often pet the robot on the head as he said, "Thanks for stopping by" in a high pitched Pokemon-like voice. "Children and senior citizens would take literature from this robot because it's cute, clean and non-threatening," Doe added.

The group has a support structure of many professionals depending on what skills and knowledge are needed for a particular project, some of the group members work for DARPA, the Defensive Advanced Research Projects Agency which has an annual federal budget of a $2 billion or the Robotics Institute also federally funded.

In order to remain active, it is preferable by the group that one person happens to be unemployed to work full time on an IAA project while being fed and sheltered by the other four who work day jobs in various industries. Occasionally, the IAA will receive grants from art foundations although they do not call their work "art," preferring to be seen as radical engineers whose mission to invert the traditional relationships between robots and authoritarian structure receives the greatest attention.

"It doesn't help us to define ourselves as artists, or our work as art projects because it would ultimately discredit the political meaning."

When asked about how people can get involved with IAA, Doe replied, "I don't think so much that people should join us but that people should look around them and realize that it only takes two or three people with the same beliefs and interests to work together in exposing a set of social problems that they see as being really prevalent."

Other IAA projects included, "Graffiti Writer," a tactical platform for remote control deployment or a miniature tank with four cans of spray paint facing down at the rear and programmed by remote control.

After dropping off the robot in front of the Capital House in Washington, they were pulled over by a police officer as they circumvented the capital for the retrieval of "Street Writer." When asked what the contraption was, they replied, "It's a robot we made," to which the police officer did not know how to respond to. "We told him we're shooting a movie and he just told us to get out of here. That's when we realized as long as we have the robot, we were immune."

They took "Graffiti Writer" to public parks during lunchtime to get businessman, club scouts, municipal workers and other people who normally wouldn't commit this subversive act and probably champion putting away in jail those who do graffiti, to use the robot and thus extend human ability for non-conformist political action.

IAA also created a highly popular website called "ISEE" where the user could plot out the path with least surveillance through Manhattan between destinations. In New York City alone, 2,400 cameras were found in mostly non-high crime areas and affluent districts. Volunteers in Europe are currently mapping their cities for "ISEE."

In his ending remarks, IAA operative, John Doe said, "Nobody wants to go to a boring revolution in the U.S. It has to be fun. In other countries people starve and come out of desperation. The way we export all of our wars, people are only motivated by fun." To learn more about IAA, visit their Web site at www.appliedautonomy.com.