“Seek”, 1970 by Nicholas Negroponte with the Architecture Machine Group , 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 encased, computer-controlled environment full of small blocks and inhabited by gerbils, who continuously changed the position of the blocks. Following instructions programmed by the authors the robotic arm automatically rearranged the blocks in a specific pattern. Once the arrangement was disrupted, a computer-controlled robotic arm rebuilt the block configurations in a manner its programmers believed followed the gerbil’s objectives. The designers, however, did not successfully anticipate the reactions of the animals, who often outwitted the computer and created total disarray.
