Dave Young - Project Survey
SEEK, also known as BLOCKSWORLD - Nicolas Negroponte and the Architecture Machine Group
- "Seek" 1970 Nicholas Negroponte with Architecture Group Machine M.I.T. Originally shown at the "Software" exhibition, Curated by Jack Burnham for the Jewish Museum in New York 1970. This piece consisted of a Plexiglass environment full of small blocks and inhabited by gerbils, who continuously changed the position of the blocks. Following instructions programmed buy the authors the robotic arm automatically rearranged the blocks in a specific pattern.
source: http://norgacs1projectone.blogspot.nl/2009/02/seek.html
The piece creates a 'closed system' - an entropic environment that is dismantled through the movements of the gerbils who inhabit it. It is a feedback loop: the gerbils knock down the blocks, and the robotic arm repairs the structure to some ideal pre-programmed by the Architecture Machine Group.
The above source (although idiosyncratically translated from german to english) seems to state that the Architecture Machine Group at MIT were part of the "Laboratory of Urban Systems". I am curious to find out some other experiments made by this lab, I'll post them on this page if relevant.
Another source with some curious imagery of gerbils and cubes => http://www.cyberneticians.com/slideshow/seek1.html