2002 – Eight-bit Ant Farm – The Federal Reserve Building, Washington, DC

This interactive multimedia sculpture deals with issues of Complexity Theory. More specially, it explores self-referential semi-autonomous adaptive systems.

Eight-Bit Ant Farm is an equal three-way collaboration between Remo Campopiano, Guy Marsden and Jonathan Schull.

Created: 2002
Size: 28″ x 28″ x 6′
Weight: 150 lbs.
Special Requirements: at least 12 foot ceiling height with floor & ceiling receptacles.
Materials: one laptop computer running Windows XP and Python, 3 PIC microcontrollers programmed in BASIC, 128 ping-pong balls, green oasis material, 1000 live red ants, 64 solenoids, 128 LEDs, 2 – X10 video cameras, 4 mirrors, wood, clear plastic and assorted electronics.

How It Works: A camera in the ceiling and a camera in the ant cube samples the changes in the gallery and the ant colony. The activities of ants and the activities of people combine and interact to control the illumination of 64 ping pong balls, the bouncing of 64 more ping pong balls, and a computer display reflected and refracted in a hall of mirrors.

The computer processes and displays ever-changing images of people and ants, in a manner that highlights and explains how these two biological collectives (ants and people) control the larger system that is the artwork and its environment.

The larger system-the installation, the ants, and the people-thus constitute a single self-referential system in which the act of observation influences the phenomena being observed, including the observer’s own understanding of life at the intersection of bio-culture and techno-culture.

For the complete conceptual dialogue on semi-autonomous complex adaptive systems view this page.

Looking Glass Grass

Our fourth commission, a variation on the botanical theme.

Eden Prairie Grass

Our third public-art commission was installed July 31, 2023.

Cattails in Richfield

This is the second collaboration with Justin Hossle. You can see them from the Home Depot parking lot in Richfield, MN.

Urban Ties Installed

This is Justin Hossle & Remo Campopiano’s first collaborative venture in Public Art.

Truth Series

The first exhibition of the Truth Series was in the California Building during the 2018 Art-A-Whirl.

Self-balancing Artbots

The first successful performance of our two-wheel self-balancing artbots was at the Mini Maker Fair in 2017. Our second was at the Bloomington PlaceMaker Festival.

Time Machine

For the 2016 Body & Machine show I built and exhibited the “Time Machine.” This is part of a series of pieces that are premised on a lie, or at least mislead to get at a deeper truth.

Started XYZ Club

The club began in Brian Boldon’s studio as a way to share our experience in building the XYZ Machine. It later grew into a robotics art club.

Brian Bolden Studios

In January of 1914 I was invited to work in the Studio of Brain Boldon and Amy Baur where I helped bring the latest technology to their glass and ceramics studio.

Artbots Columbia

In the spring of 2004 I built 3 robotic cars that were driven by live mice. It was accepted into the Artbots competition sponsored by Columbia University in NYC. I do not seem to have images of this really fun show.

Providence Star

This was a proposal to the city of Providence, that never actually got proposed. It seems the mayor was in jail at the time. Providence Star is a large-scale public art project. It is designed to identify the capitol city of Rhode Island from the air at night. It is a series of 60 blue lights that simultaneously pulse every 10 seconds.

Eight-bit Ant Farm

Eight-Bit Ant Farm is a three-way collaboration between myself, Guy Marsden and Jonathan Schull. This interactive multimedia sculpture deals with issues of Complexity Theory. More specifically, it explores self-referential semi-autonomous adaptive systems.

Dorky Museum

2002 Panel Discussion, on Complexity, Dorky Museum

Convergence 2002

For the 2002 Convergence Arts Festival, the Robotics Art Club had a whole new robot to perform–a 50-foot pink serpent that we remote controlled up and down the providence river. It working quit well until someone ran it under the city. We had to ask for help to rescue it. After an hour and a half the serpent was found and brought back under our control.

Retrospective

In 2002 I was given a one-person show at the Bannister Gallery at Rhode Island College. Here I exhibited everything I was working on at the time: a portion of Under the Volcano was painted black, and re-purposed as Circuit City; an example of the Waterspiders; and a new installation entitled Video Studio for Insects was create specifically for this exhibition.

Circuit City

Here a portion of Under the Volcano is re-purposed and entitled Circuit City. Painted black and hung on a wall the cut-up circuit boards made an impressive installation on it’s own merits.

WaterSpiders in Cambridge

The WaterSpiders’ first performance was in Cambridge, MA at the Cambridge Galeria. This public art project is the first evolution of a troupe of performing art robots that interact with each other, the public and the environment.

Cement Tree Acquired

In 2002, the Seekonk Public Library acquired the Cement Tree and gave it a permanent home in their newly renovated Sculpture Park.

Convergence 2002

In the summer of 2002 the Robotics Art Club was asked to be part of the Convergence Arts Festival with Dance of the WaterSpiders. After learning a lot from the successful Boston Cyberarts Festival we really nailed it in Providence. We had a much better way to lower the bots into the water and the control mechanism worked much better.

Started Robotics Art Club

When I first ventured into the field of robotic art, friends (and their kids) started hanging around to help. So we formed a club for 10-12-year-olds and their dads. Little did I know this club would lasted for four years. We made some great art and I made some valued friends. Some of the kids still call me on father’s day.

Under the Volcano

This is one of my favorite installations. I used some of the ideas from my early installation work and merged them together with what I learned in the digital art movement. The results was “Under the Volcano.” This also marks the beginning of my interest in robotics, because the video cameras needed to be remote controlled by the visitors.

Sessions.edu

In early 2000 I was asked to develop online courses for a new startup call Sessions.edu, in Soho, NYC. I created courses in Java Script, Frontpage, and VRML.

Time Fountain

This simulation/proposal, entitled USA Time Fountain, was created specifically for the new CCRI campus for the Atrium Fountain site. Each disk rotates and represents one year of US history starting in 1900 to the present.

Rupture in Cyberspace

While building a video installation at the Attleboro Museum, something strange happened. The barrier between the real world and the virtual world is ruptured revealing an unstable glimpse into the structure of cyberspace.

Grandfather’s Trellis

As an art project and an investigation into my aesthetic heritage, I re-created the rose trellis my grandfather Michael Campopiano build in 1929.

Stone Sphere

These simulations are an attempt to integrate objects and plant life in a series of primitive forms like spheres, cones, cylinders and cubes. Someday I hope to actually built the Stone Sphere.

Convergence XI

My first CapitolArts Providence show was back in 1993 where I exhibited the “Six Figure” installation. Moving back to Rhode Island, I started working for them and was in at least 3 more Convergence Arts Sculpture Festivals. In this one I exhibited the Cement Tree.

Cement Chess Set

This is one of my early 3d Modeling & rendering simulations. This public art sculpture proposal consisted of 16 architectural forms to be built in steel-reinforced cast concrete.

Burnt Conversation

Burnt Conversation is a garden sculpture, the beginning of an idea that I have been working on in various forms, however, to date, unsuccessful. The idea is to have five object in a circle that are in conversation, whether metaphorically as you see here, or literally as robotic actors.

Cement Tree

This sculpture is an attempt to objectify natural processes through the mathematical interpretation of designs in nature.

CapitolArts Providence

After PORT I had enough of the NYC grind. I turned the storefront over to Robert Michael Smith and went home to Rhode Island to recuperate. Their I found that my services were in high demand and started work for CapitolArts Providence with Bob Rizzo, from 1997 – 1999.

PORT at MIT

We made history with this one. From January 25 – March 29, 1997 we took ARTNETWEB to the List Gallery at MIT in the form of PORT: an exhibition of networked digital worlds on the Internet. Scheduled, time-based Internet projects by individuals and groups were projected into the physical gallery space and accessible over the Internet.

Visualizing Cyberspace

In the Spring of 1985 we decided to use the storefront, which was a gallery when we took it over, to mount an art exhibition featuring the people associated with ARTNETWEB. We called it Visualizing Cyberspace. I created an early version of under the volcano with ants, which were turned into a GIF animation call LAND. We took the case off of my Macintosh IIci and nailed the component to the walls and plugged it in. It still worked and was used to stream images to the Web. Adrianne Worztel did her Egyptian thing and G.H. started Art Dirt.

HTML Classes

In the Summer of 1994, I started teaching “Intro to the Internet and HTML.” We taught many od the Soho artists there first HTML. It cost $45 for a two hour course. Back then all you needed to know is about 10 HTML tags.

Started Artnetweb

Early in 1994 I got a call from Jon Schull. He heard about our BBS and wanted us to join him on the world wide web in Downtown Anywhere. I was skeptical at first, but he came to New York the next day from Rochester just to show me how to write HTML. Robin Murphy was at this meeting where we had our first glance at the web. It was clear that the web would put our little BBS out of business. Within a couple weeks we started ARTNETWEB, the first arts website on the world wide web.

Test Drive The Future

ARTNET was invited to be in the “Art & Cyberspace” exhibition at an alternative space called HERE, NYC, where we installed my Macintosh IIci in the gallery and let people see ARTNET, a visual BBS for artists. This got me two invitations. One from the director of Modern Art Museum and the other from the director of the Guggenheim Museum to show then what all the fuss was about.

Virtual Real Estate, Inc.

On February 25, 1984 I started an S-Corp. I called it Virtual Real Estate, because I was certain I would be soon selling parcels of virtual real estate, known now as cyberspace. By this time my little band of misfits was growing. G.H. Hovagimyan and Adrianne Wortzel soon joined Rob Murphy and myself. We knew we were riding something big; and soon we would be pioneering a new frontier.

1st Attach on WTC

I remember vividly the first attach on the World Trade Center for several reasons. I was living on the 33 floor, facing the Twin Towers…just two blocks away. On TV that night, I saw the cab medallion with a picture of the bomber. I recognized him because I was in his cab just a few days earlier. I know it was him because, while in his cab, I noticed he looked very much like a person I knew well in the Twin Cities. Of course it wasn’t my friend, just looked like him.

Move to NYC

On January, 1, 1993 we, my wife Lida Bravo and daughter Sofia, moved to the Gateway Plaza in lower Manhattan. This was a big change for me, exciting but full of peril.

Sofia Born

On July 21, 1992 my daughter Sofia Amelia Campopiano was born. I spent the next two years being a house dad.

Prince’s Nightclub

Local artists were asked to help with the building of Glam Slam, Prince’s Nightclub in Minneapolis, MN. I had one interesting task: to embed a giant symbol of Prince in the dance floor of the nightclub. For the opening night of the club we were asked to exhibit art. I exhibited the Buddha Cage, sans rats.

Won NEA Fellowship

Won the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1990.

Matisse Dancing in Fire

In the early nineties a bought a Macintosh IIci with all the fixings. I started learning Photoshop and this lead to 3d-modeling, then to a modem and everything digital. My first explorations were ways to present art that did not yet exist. This is a good example of how you can put Matisse’s dances in fire, one of my favorite computer-manipulated photographs. This artwork only exists as a digital image.

Sugar City Residency

This installation portrays a culture obsessed with sensationalism, devouring everything new regardless of its ecological cost—a culture dazzling but ultimately decaying. It was the results of a residency at Northern State College.

Diverse Visions Grant

Won Diverse Visions Grant.

Forecast Grant

Received the Forecast Public Art Affairs: R&D Stipend. I used this grant to research and develop the Six Figures installation, which was installed later in Roger William Park in Providence.

Fishbreeder at CAF

Installed at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, this work explores the relationship between humanity, nature and science. By using human brain imagery superimposed over the cosmos, this piece reflects humanity’s need to dominate nature through knowledge.

State Arts Board Grant

Won the Minnesota State Arts Board grant.

Balance at List, MIT

Mind-Heart Balance was the result of a 3-month residency at MIT. Borrowing Medicine Wheel symbolism from Native-American culture, the installation became a personal investigation into spiritual and cultural matters.

Won McKnight Grant

The McKnight Fellowship help set me up for 1989 my breakout year.

Residency at Bethel

This exhibition was the results of a five week residency at Bethel College. The installation was in an eleven-student collaboration where the only rule was that each artwork had to touch another artwork in some way.

Won Bush Grant

Won he Bush Foundation Fellowship, which allowed me to spent one month in Italy, a trip I will never forget.

Bird City at MAEP

For the 10-year anniversary of the MAEP program I exhibited the prototype for Bird City. Six city blocks made of painted wood and enclosed with fine plastic mesh, became home to 10 pigeons.

First NYC Exhibit

As part of the Jerome Fellowship we were asked where we would like to have our exhibition. We asked for the New Museum and we got it. Here I created a site-specific installation for the window of the New Museum called Plato’s Cave. At night the neon sign, the preamble to the US Constitution, lite up two blocks of Broadway.

Developed FORUM

Developer of “Forum” a critical supplement in ARTPAPER, funded jointly by Jerome, Bush and Northwest Area Foundation. This program marked the beginning of serious critical dialogue in the Twin Cities’ art community.

Won Jerome Grant

In 1984 I won my first grant for my artwork, the Jerome Foundation Emerging Artists’ Fellowship.

Journeys at MAEP

In 1983 with the journeys exhibit at MAEP, I created the “Time Room,” in collaboration with Georgianna Kettler, who painted the walls.

Criticism & Art Market

Developed “Criticism & the Art Market,” a series of ten monthly articles designed to pull together a historical context for local criticism and a budding art market. These articles lead to a largely-expanded critical dialogue and the blossoming of the Minneapolis Warehouse Arts District.

1’x1’x1′ Show

This was the last of my overtly political artwork; after which, I came to the conclusion that art works best when subtle…when you hit people over the head with a hammer they tend to tune out.

Wax Globe

During the Fall of 1981 I meet Aldo Moroni, Jr. We decided to build a 6-foot diameter globe out of tar paper and wax. The collaboration marked the beginning of a life-long friendship that I cherish to this day.

Life Support System

With this installation I was finally on the right track. These were ideas I would return to again and again in further attempts to make sense of my artistic vision.

First ARTPAPER

As co-founder and development director, I was responsible for all the income – foundation, corporate, earned and in-kind. In the first 3 years Lynn Ball and I established ARTPAPER as an integral part of the Twin Cities’ visual-arts community.

Pedimental Sculpture

Pedimental Sculpture was the first piece I created after graduate school. Far from my best work it did get me started.

Performance: Rapids

As part of my “Confronting Fears” series of performances I encountered a set of rapids in Northern Maine that nearly ended the life of my bother and me. It did mark the near destruction of my canoe, which I ended up rebuilding all the wooden parts. I had to do this more than once.

Detroit Artists’ Market

I remember doing this piece with only a few days notice. It was a proposal to create a cement map of the USA that you could use as shelter in a public park. The only problem was there were seven columns under the structure each topped with a one-foot cube of lead containing nuclear waste.

Midwest Exchange

Cranbrook Academy of Art and Ohio State University in Columbus, OH exchanged shows of their graduate department. I presented a highly political piece dealing with nuclear waste being stored in public art in a park setting.

Performance: Falling

In the spring of 1979 I decided to jump out of an airplane to confront the fear of falling. It took a full day of training, three seconds of pure terror, three minutes of heavenly floating and three weeks of pain. I did not land well and sprained my ankle.

Performance: The Fool

This is part of the confronting fears series of performances, the fear of making a fool of myself. I was asked to be the court jester for the Cranbrook Guy Fawkes Ball. I created the costume and borrow my best friends mandolin and proceeded to make a complete fool of myself. It was a glorious night.

Started Grad School

From 1978 – 1980 I attended and graduated from Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Bloomfield Hills MI. Click the title of this item to read a short story about my graduate school experience.

Solo Exhibition

Exhibition: Sculpture & Photography, New Bedford, MA

Mechanics VI

Undergraduate work.

Mechanics V

Undergraduate work.

Mechanics IV

Undergraduate work.

Mechanics III

Undergraduate work.

Mechanics II

Undergraduate work.

Mechanics I

Undergraduate work.

Performance: Crucifixion

This is part of my confronting fears series of performance, this time I’m confronting the fear of god. As part of a photography project I staged two photo shoots around midnight behind the glass studio on the Teeter estate. For the first I used myself as Christ and Gerry Vinci helped work the kinks out of this performance/photo-shoot. The following week, with George Wilkie as Christ, I invited a few people to the event. That night 50 people attend this unusual event.

Started SMU

I started under graduate work at Southeastern Massachusetts University in North Dartmouth, MA. I majored in in Sculpture, minored in Photography and dabbled in Film.