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Robots categorized as: Art

1983

Electronic Garden #2

Categories: Agriculture, Art – Tags: ,

James Seawright has been creating artworks incorporating robotics since the mid 60’ties. This work consists of five robot flowers that interact with their surroundings according to parameters in the environment such as temperature and humidity. The artificial flowers were controlled by custom built microprocessors. The work also featured a push-buttons interface the allowed people interact directly with the flowers.

This is an early example of robotic art imitating not human or animal characteristics, but plants. The ambition of creating ‘artificial life’ is intact, but in this case it is plant life that is created. The works perhaps suggest a peaceful integration of plant and machine.

1981

Third Hand

Categories: Art, Performance Art – Tags: ,

The artificial hand, attached to the right arm of the user as an addition rather than as a prosthetic replacement, is capable of independent motion, being activated by the EMG signals of the abdominal and leg muscles.

Stelarc works in a performance art context, and the Third Hand was one of his earliest robotic artworks. In the first performance with the Third Hand Stelarc used the hand to write the phrase “The Third Hand” simultaneously with his right hand and the third hand.

Since 1981 Stelarc has been creating amplified body performances in which he expands the power and reach of the human body by wiring it to electronic devices and telecommunications systems. In these performances he has combined the Third Hand with many other technological components, including sensing devices conventionally used in medicine.

1970

The Senster

Category: Art – Tags: , ,

This large robot sculpture was equipped with directional sound sensors and radar and could respond by hydraulically moving its head towards the moving of sounding objects. With its neck fully extended it reached almost 5 meter in height.

The Senster is a key work in the history of robotic art. It was the first robot to use ‘hearing’ and ‘vision’ to interact with its visitors. It is also important in because of its animated appearance. Standing on its two legs the Sensters movements and its responses to its surroundings is strongly reminiscent of a large animal.

The Senster is one of the first in long line of animated robots, which use approximated human senses in the aim to create the feeling of standing in front of at thinking and feeling creature.

1966

Squat

Category: Art – Tags: ,

Squat was a large robotic sculpture that used a living plant as a human/robot interface. The sculpture was activated when a visitor touched the living plant that was electronically connected to the sculpture. The change in electrical charge in the plant when touched triggered the robot. When switched on the sculpture made sound. It had rollers at the end of its legs that allowed it to move up and down while waving its two arms, when it was switched on. It returned to rest when the plant was touched again.

Using an organic switch brings the mechanical robot a step closer to cyborg. The mixing of organic and mechanical brings about a blurring of the distinction between living and not-living, which features prominently in robotic art.

The work was part of the very central exhibition ”The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age,” at MOMA in New York in 1968. 

1964

Robot K-456

Categories: Art, Performance Art – Tags: , ,

A remote-controlled robot built to walk in the street with and playback music or recorded speech. It could also excrete beans as feces and liquid as urine.

Nam June Paik’s robot is named after a Mozart piano concerto and has the overall shape of a man, it is remote controlled and equipped with speakers allowing it to playback sound. It was built by Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe as a collaboration.

The robot was built to walk on the street and mingle with other pedestrians. In one performance Paik guided it through the streets of New York while K-456 played a recording of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address and excreted beans at the same time.

1960

Homage to New York

Categories: Art, Performance Art – Tags: ,

This was Tinguely’s first large scale self-destructing machine. It was built in the garden of the MoMA in New York with the help of engineers and other artists; among others Robert Rauschenberg. The machine performed its self-destruction program with noise and smoke for 27 minutes after which its parts lay scattered in the garden.
The thought of a machine performing such a fundamentally irrational and unproductive task as destroying itself makes a strong statement about the nature of machines and our way of linking machines and robots to rationality and productivity. This theme of the unproductive machine or robot has become a very common strategy for the artistic use of mechanics and robotics.

1958

Meta-matic no. 8

Categories: Art, Performance Art – Tags: ,

French sculptor Jean Tinguely created several of these robotlike drawing machines that preceded his infamous self-destructing machines. The Meta-matics produced drawings on paper through repeated circular motions. An element of chance was added with the inaccuracies of the machine.

The Meta-matic no. 8 takes on the role of artist and thereby can be thought of as a sarcastic statement about the role of artists.

Unlike Akira Kanayama’s Remote-control painting machine, the Meta-matic no. 8 works on its own, mindlessly creating the repetitive motions that generates the artworks.

1956

CYSP 1 – Cybernetic Spatiodynamic Sculpture

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

CYSP 1, from 1956, is often considered the first cybernetic sculpture in art history and also an important early example of interactive art.

The sculpture is made up by a series of colored plates and disks that move in response to external stimuli. Inside the base of the sculpture is an ‘electronic brain’ – a computer – developed by Philips.

Photo-cells and a microphone are built into the sculpture allowing it register variations in the fields of color, light intensity and sound intensity thus allowing the robot to interact with people in its near surroundings.

1955

Remote-control painting machine

Category: Art – Tags: ,

Akira Kanayama’s painting machine from 1955 was a four-wheeled device that Kanayama could remote-control to create paintings approximately 180 by 280 cm. The canvas lay on the floor and the machine dripped and poured paint on the picture pane.

The painting machine is an early example of the machine/robot in the role of artist. Kanayama’s remote-controlled painting machine mimics Jackson Pollock’s drips painting –a technique he developed in the 1940’ties.

 At the same time the machine follows Pollock’s ideas of automation and physical detachment between artist and painting, bringing it to a new level, but at the same time it makes fun of role of the artist – no longer an inspired and gesturing artist, but a homemade machine spilling paint.

1930

Bauhaus Light-Space Modulator

Category: Art – Tags: , , ,

A mobile construction of steel wood and plastic created to perform a “light play” by moving its part in front of colored light bulbs.

Moholy-Nagy worked on the Light-Space Modulator over the course of 9 years with the help of an engineer and a technician. Moholy-Nagy has described the kinetic sculpture as a “Gesamtkunstwerk composed of color, light, and movement”.

The Light-Space Modulator was supposed to perform a ‘light play’ on stage on its own and create a form of mechanical theater.

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