Living Thing Research Lab (LTRL)
Dr. Laura Livingston, SEICA Living Thing Research Lab Lead
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Artificial Icon (AI) - 1 (#24-D, Immobile Digital Creature, Living Thing Research Lab)
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LTRL Multimedia Research
DNA Beaker (#40-D, Equipment Living Thing Research Lab)
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Dr. Laura Livingston's conference talk slides on the Living Thing Research Lab (LTRL)'s research paper, 2017
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Living Thing Research Lab (LTRL), Exploratory Case Study Research Paper, 2017
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A collaborative essay project by Dr. Laura Livingston (Living Thing Research Lab) and Laura TBD (Speculative Human
​Research Lab) inspired by Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto (1984), 20 pages (available upon request), 2018
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LTRL Research Overview
Dr. Laura Livingston, SEICA Living Thing Research Lab Lead
The Living Thing Research Lab (LTRL) attempts to answer the question: What is perceived a living thing?
From virtual pets to social robots that have naturalized into our technoculture within the past 20 years, our lab observes the growing and undeniable attraction towards these (non)living entities and analyzes their social psychological impact on human perception. As a means to contribute to the creative discourse in the modern fields of robotics and technocultural studies, our lab applies exploratory case study research as a method to examine human fixation on living-thing-like-qualities and provide an alternative perspective on approaching the complexities of this phenomena.
Whether we can biologically classify as living or not, given that we are building more electronic connections through technology every day, our research results are starting to show that without maintaining balance, we may have to resort to Sherry Turkle’s concern with the feeling of being alone together.
Borrowing author J.C. Herz’s observation from Surfing on the Internet: A Nethead's Adventures On-line (1995) that the online and offline world aren’t staying in their boxes like I thought they would, our research shows how it appears that we are now in a world where living and (non)living things aren’t contained in their bodies and are bleeding together.
Whether we can biologically classify as living or not, given that we are building more electronic connections through technology every day, our research results are starting to show that without maintaining balance, we may have to resort to Sherry Turkle’s concern with the feeling of being alone together.
Borrowing author J.C. Herz’s observation from Surfing on the Internet: A Nethead's Adventures On-line (1995) that the online and offline world aren’t staying in their boxes like I thought they would, our research shows how it appears that we are now in a world where living and (non)living things aren’t contained in their bodies and are bleeding together.
