Anarchic Vandal Robots from the I.A.A.

I.A.A.'s robots don't shoot flames or blow up or tear other robots to pieces. Instead, they go about their business more quietly?their business being spray-painting graffiti on sidewalks and handing out incendiary literature. Those are just the first two robots designed by the technicians at I.A.A., who have bigger things in mind. They made a few surreptitious appearances in the city over the summer?and we should be seeing more of them in the future.

Founded two years ago, I.A.A. exists today as a small collective of scientists, roboticists, artists, designers, social critics and writers who've come together under the slogan, "Our Shit Works." "It's a deeply interdisciplinary group," one of their operatives told me.

I call him an "operative" because he would not divulge his name, nor the name of any other member. "The deal is," he explained, "we use the things we make, and they generally are illegal, so we tend to preserve our anonymity for our own protection." To further protect themselves, they keep no singular home base, spreading their operation over a variety of cities in the U.S. and Europe. When I asked how they were funded, he just laughed. "We're not. We secure resources from a variety of sources, but we're not funded by anybody, as you can probably imagine."

The basic operating principle behind everything I.A.A. does is something they call "Contestational Robotics." As their operative explained it to me, it's a response to a general trend in the history of technology.

"What you're looking at," he said, "is an ongoing relationship between traditional authoritarian power structures?military, government, industry?who have worked to develop certain kinds of technologies to meet their specific goals and needs. The upshot of most of these technologies has been to limit individual freedom and collective self-determination."

In other words, those in power design machines to keep themselves in power. To combat this, I.A.A. researchers have started designing machines to put into the hands of what they call "cultural insurgents"?dissidents, artists and juvenile delinquents. At present, I.A.A. has two "robotic objectors," which they are calling GraffitiWriter and Little Brother.

"There's a lot of techno-utopian discussion about using the Internet as a way of disseminating information," the operative told me. "The problem is that it comes with an off switch... Free speech remains a very real-world phenomenon. Both the Pamphleteer and the GraffitiWriter were developed as a way to allow free speech to occur in public, in real space, where an activist has the ability to get in someone's face, reach people who may not be sympathetic to their cause."

Plus, both robots are operated from a distance, thus keeping the activist out of harm's way.

The Pamphleteer, or Little Brother, looks like the robots we've come to know and love?silver and humanoid, with a cute round head and great big eyes. He's friendly, he's charming, and he hands out incendiary tracts.

As I.A.A.'s literature describes it, "Pamphleteer is designed to bypass the social conditioning that inhibits activists' ability to distribute propaganda by capitalizing on the aesthetics of cuteness." In fact, a research paper published on I.A.A.'s website reveals that Little Brother greatly outperformed human pamphleteers working the same stretch of sidewalk, stopping more people and distributing more literature.

The function of their other design, GraffitiWriter, is pretty straightforward. Streets and sidewalks, the operative explained, remain "one of the great overlooked canvasses for graffiti artists. There's so much opportunity there." GraffitiWriter looks like a small industrial machine?a tele-operated engine, wheels and an array of spraypaint cans, which can be programmed to paint any text on the sidewalk?sort of a combination skywriter and dot-matrix printer.

Although, most of the time, Little Brother and GraffitiWriter are put to political use, I.A.A. denies being a political group themselves.

"We see ourselves primarily as researchers," the operative said. "We are not political activists."

In fact, if not given something specific to write, GraffitiWriter's two default messages are "PIGFUCKER" and "Voting Is Futile."

I asked him if they would work with groups from across the political spectrum, or if they pick and choose.

"We do exercise a certain degree of personal choice," he admitted. "So we probably would not make our technology available to someone whose ideas were absolutely abhorrent to us. However, what we have done and will continue to do is make the information necessary to build these robots publicly available to anyone. So we may not give a neo-Nazi group the GraffitiWriter, but we will publish the plans to build one. If the neo-Nazi group decides they want to build one on their own, good for them. We're not going to try and control them."

Another facet of GraffitiWriter's program of democratic vandalism is something they call "Rogues Gallery"?in which I.A.A. members bring the robot to a public place?a park, a street, wherever?and invite passersby to compose and program their own messages, then instruct the robot to spraypaint these. By putting their technology in the hands of "innocent civilians," I.A.A. members have turned Girl Scouts, businessmen?even cops?into enthusiastic petty criminals.

"Studies have shown," another I.A.A. operative has said, "that in nearly 100 percent of the cases, a given agent of the public will willingly participate in high-profile acts of vandalism, given the opportunity to do so via mediated tele-robotic technology."

Their next project?which I'm told is about half complete at this point?is something called the StreetWriter. Essentially it's a GraffitiWriter than can be attached to the back of a truck, which carries a much larger arsenal of spray cans.

"It's 20 cans wide, which is roughly one lane of traffic. Essentially, we could use it to do a 3000-mile-long poem. It'll be visible from the tops of buildings and by low-flying aircraft."

After that, I.A.A. hopes to move away from robotics momentarily, in order to concentrate on combating surveillance technology.

"These are tools that would allow individuals to either avoid police or military surveillance systems?cameras installed in traffic lights or on the sides of buildings"?or in New York parks, where much of their testing will probably take place. "The second kind of inverted surveillance system will be more of a digital cop-watch. It'll be a system that would allow individuals to track the movement and activities of police officers remotely over time..."

Though the operative denies that I.A.A.'s ultimate goal involves creating an army of robot vandals that will run amok, wreaking widespread havoc, he does admit that they have some big plans.

"The ultimate goal is the dismantling of the military-industrial complex," he said. "The short-term goal would be to develop technologies?not simply robotic tools, but any sort of new technology?to assist in preserving individual liberties."

You can learn more about I.A.A. by visiting their website: [www.appliedautonomy.com./toc.html](http://www.appliedautonomy.com/toc.html)