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running lights but were not the crucial feature of the Colloquy; much more
complicated signaling was involved in the latter.
Each male sought to “satisfy” its drives, first by locating a female while
spinning on its axis (an equivalent of the tortoise's scanning mechanism) via
an intermittent directional visual signal which indicated both its identity and
its desire (
O
or
P
). If a female picked this up and was interested in
O
or
P
satis-
faction herself, she would respond with an identifying sound synchronized to
the male light. The male receiving this would then lock onto the female (just
as the tortoise locked onto a light source) and emit an intense orange or puce
light from its central part (
D
in fig. 7.18). If this fell upon the reflector of the
female (
b
) she would reciprocally lock onto the male and commence a scan-
ning motion of the reflector, up and down. The object of this was to reflect the
beam back onto the appropriate part of the male,
D
or
C
in figure 7.18, depend-
ing whether the drive in question was
O
or
P
. If the female was successful in
doing this, the male drive would be satisfied (temporarily, until the charge
on the capacitor built up again); the male would also emit a “reinforcement”
sound signal, which would discharge the female's drive. The overall behavior
of the setup was controlled by purpose-built electronics, which received and
instigated sensory inputs and outputs from each robot and switched the mo-
tion of the robot from one basic pattern to another in accordance with flow-
charts such as that shown in figure 7.19.
42
Thus the basic arrangement of the Colloquy of Mobiles and the principles
of their mating, but we can note some further complications. First, the males
hung from a common bar (fig. 7.18), which meant that they competed for fe-
males: a male in search mode could disturb the other which had locked onto
a female. This made for a more lively performance and added another dimen-
sion of interest for the viewer. Second, the males could differ in which recep-
tor (
C
or
D
) was the target for satisfaction of
O
or
P
drives, and the females
could adapt to this by remembering which direction of scanning (upward or
downward) was successful for which drive for each male. And third, the Col-
loquy was open to human intervention. As Pask wrote before the exhibition
(1971, 91),
The really interesting issue is what happens if some human beings are provided
with the wherewithal to produce signs in the mobile language and are intro-
duced into the environment. It is quite likely that they will communicate with
the mobiles. . . . The mobiles produce a complex auditory and visual effect by
dint of their interaction. They cannot, of course, interpret these sound and light
