This piece is part of the Imaginary Atlas, Amazônia project and combines traditional miriti wood sculpture with an electromechanical system that recreates the movement of the pirarucu, a fish with a vast body and slow undulation, symbolizing strength and grace. The installation proposes a different genealogy of robotics, one in which hyper-local material knowledge shapes emerging global technologies to create new imaginaries of movement and future worlds.
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Miriti is an ancestral material born along Amazonian riverbanks and deeply embedded in local craft traditions. Lightweight and porous, it carries the memory of those who have always lived with water, movement, and seasonal change. In this installation, miriti is not used symbolically, but structurally: its material properties, construction logic, and craft techniques determine form, balance, and motion, shaping how the robotic body behaves and moves
The electromechanical system translates the pirarucu’s movement into a choreography of tension and elasticity. Small motors act like muscles, pulling thread tendons and elastic elements that balance force and rest, allowing the structure to undulate slowly and continuously. Rather than imposing motion, the system responds to the miriti body, amplifying its material intelligence and producing a rhythm that echoes living matter shaped by water, gravity, and time.
Within the narrative of Imaginary Atlas, Amazônia, these kinetic sculptures represent Swarm Cities that emerge in the year 2125: floating urban communities that carry people, stories, and technologies across flooded territories. Sometimes anchored, sometimes adrift, they travel between the open sea and the islands of submerged rivers. Heirs to stilt-house settlements, these cities no longer symbolize scarcity or precarity, but freedom. Here, mobility is not escape, but choice, guided by the rhythm of the river, the wind, and time.
Develped in collaboration between MIT Media Lab, Quanta Novas Fronteiras, and DIMIRITI.