Paula Gaetano Adi, Gustavo Crembil: TZ’IJK

Title:

TZ’IJK

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Creation Year:

2013-2014

Medium:

Autonomous Robotic Agent

Artist Statement:

Far from the utopias of smart, anthropomorphic and responsive machines, and inspired by the Maya’s creationist mythology, TZ’IJK is a blind, deaf, and speechless autonomous robotic agent made from mud. Drawn from the lessons of mestizaje, and motivated by Latin America’s anthropophagic, cannibalistic, and hybrid nature, TZ’IJK proposes an alternative and disruptive approach to the development of embodied artificial life forms and advocates for the integration of high and low technological materials, processes, and cultures. Consisting of a large mud-covered sphere with an internal robotic mechanism, TZ’IJK establishes a non-reactive and unpredictable bodily interaction with the viewers. This creates the emergence of a new kind of synthetic agent that allows contradictions and ambiguity, complicating the traditional dichotomies of craft/technology, western/indigenous, modern/ traditional, global/ local, and developed/undeveloped.