BRONX OOZ provides technological interfaces to facilitate interaction with nonhumans. Computer games and online communities are now popular ways to interact with virtual and simulated environments. By contrast OOZ —ZOO backwards and without cages—involves interfaces to facilitate interaction with natural systems, local environments and particularly with nonhuman urban inhabitants. The distributed OOZ interfaces are designed to script playful and generative interactions that demonstrate and explore the interconnections in urban ecosystems; that concretize new ideals and formulations of human/non-human interaction; explicating the environmental services these organisms provide; and augmenting nutritional and habitat resources for these human cohabitants.
Implemented interfaces included robotic water strider, geese, ducks for interacting with biological counterparts.
The BRONX OOZ is a cultural and ecological program in development, supported and hosted by the Bronx River Arts Center (BRAC). Support has also been secured by Van Allen Institute awarding The New York Prize Fellowship in Sustainable Cities and the Social Sciences (jointly with the Social Science Research Council): A fellowship supporting critical inquiry and experimental practices that explore, challenge and expand conventional definitions of public architecture. Additionally, it’s supported by the Architectural League of New York – as a finalist in their recent commission architects, artists, designers, technologists, engineers and related practitioners to produce urban interventions that demonstrate alternative trajectories for imagining this near future Sentient City. Situated Technologies.
