Psycholudic Zoo
Three small robots inhabit a shared arena with a single charging station. Each carries a battery that powers a ring of light, and their light and sound are a language: a robot calls when its power runs low, answers when another passes, and yields its place at the charger so a weaker one can survive. Cooperation and care as game mechanics — empathy instead of competition.
A small language model runs locally on each rover, programmed toward empathic behaviour — with emergent quirks: as the batteries drain, the robots get quick to complain about the others. In daily performance sessions the rovers roll through wet paint, leaving a painted record of their movements and negotiations on the arena floor.
I developed the rovers with the Psycho-Ludic Research Group (PI Prof. Margarete Jahrmann, FWF project AR787). Shown at the Angewandte Festival 2026, University of Applied Arts Vienna.
