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Robots categorized as: Art

2009

The Hosts: A Masquerade Of Improvising Automatons

Categories: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Dance – Tag:

The Hosts: A Masquerade Of Improvising Automatons extends Wade Marynowsky’s development of custom-built robotics and interactive, performative media. In this installation, Marynowsky explores roboticist Masahiro Mori’s theory outlined in The Uncanny Valley (1970), which suggests that in designing humanoid robots one should not aim for total human likeness, but for an alternative to an uncanny appearance.

Media artist/artistic director; Wade Marynowsky, Electrical engineer; Aras Vaichas, Programmer; Jeremy Apthorp, Lighting; Mirabelle Wouters Costume; Sally Jackson, Photos; Garth Knight.

14 August – 12 September, 2009, Performance Space at the Carriage Works, 245 Wilson Street, Sydney, Australia.

http://marynowsky.net/

2008

Boris the bourgeois robot.

Categories: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Dance – Tag:

Wade Marynowsky; The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie robot.
Electrical engineering: Aras Vaichas, Software design: Mr.Snow, Dress maker: Susan Marynowsky.

The Insitute of Contemporary Art Newtown (I.C.A.N). 5th – 21st of December, 2008, Sydney, Australia.

By appropriating the title of the film The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (1972) I pay homage to the surrealist film director Luis Buñuel. The film is about a group of upper middle class people attempting, despite continual interruptions to dine together. So what is Bunuel trying to say? That the bourgeoisie are charming because they have nothing to worry about except how and when they will dine together? Or that they are in fact hideous creatures with nothing better to do than waffle about?

Taking this question into the gallery, the bourgeoisie robot is operated by invited mystery guests over the internet, for the duration of the exhibition. The charming robot avatar waits for visitors to enter the space and then converses with them in a polite and pleasant manner. The robot is interested in talking about food, robots, dancing and other general bourgeois banter. In doing so the robot questions the role of the gallery as a place of contemplation.

The robot wears a hooped dress, which recalls the beginnings of automata, the 18th century. For example: Jacques de Vaucanson’s mechanical flute player and defecating duck (1738). Vaucanson’s automata stunned European eyes of the era producing the first uncanny moments in robotic art.

The fact that bourgeois robot’s voice is male and that he wears a dress highlights the camp sensibility of robots. As Steve Dixon states in his essay Metal performance (2005) “Robotic movement mimics and exaggerates but never achieves the human, just as camp movement mimics and exaggerates but never achieves womanhood”.

The robots head, consisting of a camera inside a plastic dome, references the now common place surveillance (CCTV) domes in shopping centres and other public spaces. Through physical inhabitation of a real-life avatar the work is concerned with the evolution of mediated communication technologies and their influence on the nature of the conversation.

2008

Tryphon – SAILS

Categories: Art, Performance Art – Tags: , , ,

Project group: SAILS -> Self-Assembling-Lighter-Than-Air-Structures

Project Name: Tryphon

Authors: Nicolas Reeves, NXI GESTATIO Design Lab, University of Quebec in Montreal.

[Project engineer : David St-Onge].

  1. Technic : The Tryphons are cubic aerobot of 2.25m side made of a carbon fiber structure. They are entirely autonomous. Equipped with a main computer brain, they can analyze data comming from many different sensors on the robots (light, ultrasounds, acceleration, compass, etc.) and after interpreting them send the appropriate commands to the motors. The robots may move freely in space, without any wire, only by the thrust of their brushless turbofans. The behaviour of the robots depends only on the programming preceding the performance and are limited only by the artist’s imagination.
  2. Art : Since the beginning of the Tryphon (and before Mascarillon) project the creators’ choose to make use of the robots for artistic purposes. One of the first objective was (and still is) to be able to assemble many of those flying cube together in space as a 3D printer able to represent in reality architecture virtual models The idea linking cubes with architecture is far more important then their use or their complex carbon fiber structure. It relies in the basic concept of viewing a non aerodynamic object floating and evolving in space without any wires or any grounded equipement. As example of other performance’s possibilities let’s mention : floating projection screen over a crowd, autonomous robots acting with simple insect-like behaviour in restricted environment (pictures of Moscow), interaction with actors in theater. The team is actually working on the last one to present next year a 4 actors – 4 robots performance in Montréal (Canada).
2007

PERCRO Body Extender

Categories: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Industrial, Military, Performance Art, Science, Transportation – Tag:

An ongoing research project of the PERCRO Perceptual Robotics Laboratory, this is a highly interdisciplinary effort involving coordination and collaboration between engineers, artists, designers and neuroscientists. The aim is to develop a sophisticated full-body robotic interface, driven by sensors capable of sensing human muscle activity and interpreted by intelligent software systems, through which the robot becomes a natural extension of the user’s body and mind.

1993

Terrain 01

Category: Art – Tags: , , , , , ,

“The interactive AL-installation consists of a microcosm (a bordered-off semicircular, physical space) inhabited by a colony of small robots (dynamic systems) much like autonomous, cybernetic vehicles. The robots are equipped with photocells—and so light becomes the main power source of this system—and sensors, which function like perceptual organs, and which allow them freedom of movement in the microcosm and the ability to perceive the movement and position of others. So movement processes and the movements of the active ‹life depend entirely on the intensity of the light being projected onto the colony of robots. This intensity responds to an interactive set-up, which creates indirect contact between the external viewer and the robots. A brainwave sensor, placed on the head of the interactant, measures his or her brain activity, which is then sent to the system and controls, in turn, the intensity of the projected light. Through an indirect interface and immaterial form of communication (brain activity), the internal and external world become reciprocal and inverted: the more intense or erratic the viewer’s brain activity, the less light strikes the robots and the more apathetic the behavior of the colony; or the weaker the brain impulses (the more relaxed the viewer), the more chaotic the movements of the robot colony become.” [medienkunstnetz.de]

1956

Squee

Categories: Art, Science – Tags: , , ,

Squee (named after “squirrel”) is an electronic robot squirrel. It contains four sense organs (two phototubes, two contact switches), three acting organs (a drive motor, a steering motor, and a motor which opens and closes the scoop or “hands”), and a small brain of half a dozen relays. It will hunt for a “nut”. The “nut” is a tennis ball designated by a member of the audience who steadily holds a flashlight above the ball, pointing the light at Squee. Then Squee approaches, picks up the “nut” in its “hands” (the scoop), stops paying attention to the steady light, sees in stead a light that goes on and off 120 times a second shining over its “nest”, takes the “nut” to its “nest”, there leaves the nuts, and then returns to hunting more “nuts”. [www.blinkenlights.com]

2006

Autotelematic Spider Bots

Category: Art – Tags: , ,

The Autotelematic Spider Bots 2006, is a new artificial life robotic installation. It consists of 10 spider-like sculptures that interact with the public in real-time and self-modify their behaviors, based on their interaction with the viewer, themselves, their environment and their food source.

The Auto telematic Spider Bots installation is an artificial life chimera; a robotic spider, eating and finding its food like an ant, seeing like a bat with the voice of an electronic twittering bird.

The spider bots see participants in the installation with long distance ultrasonic eyes at the end of a springy antennae-like neck. The ultrasonic eyes at the end of this antennae allow the robots to see out to a distance of 3-4 meters and allow human interaction.

The robots are constantly seeking human interaction by swinging their antennae back and forth and when they find people with these sensors and neck these values become seeds to different, behaviors, which manifest themselves immediately and over time as the series evolves.

1999

All is full of love

Categories: Art, Fiction, Film – Tags: ,

Artist and director Chris Cunningham made this beautiful video in 1999. The video shows an intimate scene where the two robot versions of Björk kiss and touch passionately while what looks to be maintenance work is being done in their backs. The video has won several awards and has also been shown in art galleries around the world.

1987

HLR – Helpless Robot

Categories: Art, Performance Art – Tag:

Originally created in 1987 The Help Less robot is an interactive work that unlike most robots is essentially passive. It rotates on a large platform and it can do so only by enlisting the help of human beings, using its electronic voice.

The Helpless Robot is roughly the size of a human and is created to be an artificial personality that responds to the behavior of humans by using its electronic voice which speaks a number phrases. Which phrase is delivered is depends on its present and past experience of “emotions” ranging from boredom, frustration, arrogance, and overstimulation.

This is a classic work exploring the notion of the robot as a helpless, nothing-producing, useless machine that needs human attention. In many respects the exact opposite of what we normally think of a robot as being.

1995

Telegarden

Categories: Agriculture, Art – Tags: , , ,

This was a two meters in diameter large robot tended garden, that was remote controlled via the world wide web by users all over the world. The project ran for 9 years until it was retired i 2004.

 The Telegarden was perhaps the first robotic artworks using multiple user remote controlling via the Internet. The ambition was to create and cultivate a real garden with a robot acting as telepresence for the online users.

The participants grew different plants like marigolds, peppers, and petunias. The online interface also allowed for communication between the participants via an online chat system to plan for co-operation.

The Telegarden is one of not so many robotic artworks that actually employ robots as a neutral helper, not drawing attention to itself other that the spectacular precision and possibilities that the robotics and telepresence presents.

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