AWORM is an installation inhabited by robotic creatures that search for a quiet place to be still. Rather than performing tasks for people, these robots attend to their own need to maintain and calibrate their sensors. Visitors enter their environment and encounter machines with priorities of their own.

AWORM grew out of my master's thesis, Iterative Creatures, and recently received the InterAccess Media Arts Prize. I am now developing it for an exhibition at InterAccess in Toronto, opening on January 13, 2027.

At what point does an artificial object stop being perceived simply as an object? AWORM is developed through an iterative process: I observe its behaviours and use those observations to inform the next iteration, allowing the robot to participate in shaping its own development.

With their internal states hidden under opaque shells, AWORMs search for places they perceive as quiet enough to remain still and recalibrate their accelerometers. Visitors are invited to observe their unfolding behaviours and form their own interpretations. Through the robots' apparent independence, purposefulness, and spontaneity, the exhibition asks how we might relate to artificial beings beyond their usefulness to us.

This grant would cover the materials and components for 10 of the 30 AWORMs planned for the exhibition.