Unlike the traditional zoo this is place where the animals remain by choice, a zoo without cages. Like a traditional zoo, it is a series of sites where animals and humans interact. However, the interactions at an OOZ site differ from that of a Zoo. Ooz is interactive in that it provides human a set of actions, the animals provide reactions and these couplets add to a collective pool of observations. The human/animal interface has two components: 1) an architecture of reciprocity, i.e. any action you can direct at the animal, they can direct at you and 2) an information architecture of collective observation and interpretation.
Initially, this project rests on the conceptual experiment: does our collective knowledge (in so far as it is recorded in academic journals) of these animals provide us with an understanding sufficient to design a place that the organisms experience it as an improved quality of life, and will choose to remain? What is quality of life for animals? What are their priorities when it comes to lifestyle choices? The animals will judge the designs. The design of each of the species city has and will engage species experts, and the expert literature on the social and organizational and habitat preferences of each species. Physical infrastructure for non-humans: The project is to promote and develop urban animal populations in Zeewolde and particularly within the Verbeelding trajectory. The physical structure is a series of structures that are designed to:
Most places in the world are thought of as places where populations of the animals are dwindling, at least threatened, the Zeewolde OOZ however will be a place in which population are increasing, through immigration and reproduction, and providing an greater quality of life. OOZing.
Everything is an experiment Everyone is an experimenter. OOZ is a place where we can see and interact with the animals but within which we are always and already observing our own relationship and understanding of the animals.
Can we design a place that will sustain a dense population of animals? What does that look like? Is it working or not, do the animals like it, or not?
These are questions that viewers will bring to OOZ. These are questions for which there canbe no definitive answers, the answers will be found in the physical structures and technologies that are designed and built will and in the animals? behavior within these structures. OOZ is an experiment using ?animal models? as they are called in medical research that address the ver y human understandings of progress and improving the quality of life?, an experiment that questions the logic of progress and technological development. interspecies communication "one can never not communicate" The animal human inter face design will include interspecies communication devices. Animals can learn to control the people/spectators by pressing the appropriately designed button or lever that communicates in human speech. For instance a button may trigger the recorded voice:
"Yo! If you are going to stare how 'bout inserting 25 cents and delivering a dose of that beaver biscuit?"
All control interfaces will be shared. For example the light switch in the preliminary badger home would be operatable by both the beavers and the humans, such that humans may turn the light on to better observe the beaver, however the beaver could turn it off again, or vice versa.
These interfaces resemble the experiments in operant conditioning, a technique that works equally well on humans as it does on animal models. In this reversed version of Pavlovian conditioning experiment, where dogs leaned to associate a bell with food, or the inversion of Skinner's famous experiments ?shaping? pigeon behavior rewarding with food each time a pigeon tapped a dot, at OOZ the humans are trained to repeat an action predictably. However in all cases it is a mutually achieved, the animal is learning as much about humans as humans were learning.
Zoos, a phenomenon that demonstrates the wide interest in the obser vation of animals. Triggered webcams that will use the live streams to produce cumulative videos that frame par ticular behaviors. The footage will capture human behavior and animal behavior and will be triggered by the animals allowing animals to shoot the video too. A version of this system of triggered webcams is functioning at bureauit.org/bangbang
The second component, the information architecture of OOZ, is an experiment in collective knowledge. This system will provide the capacity to record dif ferent calls, action and interactions. Participants can record an interaction they thought was interesting (for instance a particular call, and systems have buffers so that a person can choose to save the last 10 secs if it were of some interest), or animals can trigger a recording, by particular behaviors such that a systematic resource is accumulated. For example, a goose may trigger a recording by triggering an audio sensor, or a person might save that last call. This call will be compared to others in the database, and close matches to the original call will come up.
These comparison calls will be annotated by previous human users and will provide other interpretations and context. We can learn if people interpret similar calls dif ferently or if we can concur with another?s interpretation of similar interactions. In this way ongoing comparisons will potentially build some collective knowledge of the meaning of goose calls. Webcams, audio recording and a public readwritable database The panda-cam at the San Diego Zoo published estimates of their viewership size as upwards of a 100000/month. This panda cam is a video source that often does not have the Pandas in frame.