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Robots Tagged: useless

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.

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.