Ambient Robotany – Breeze

Breeze is an ambient robot inhabiting the body of a willow tree. Unlike us, Breeze can visually sense and react through 360 degrees, allowing her to reach out to you and others wherever you are near. Owing to a shape-memory alloy and hidden electronic wiring, its branches rise and positions themselves towards passersby in lightly undulating waves. Responding slowly or rapidly, the tree can have a brutal or gentle reaction. 

via wmmna  

Add comment August 24th, 2006

The Mechanized Eccentric Performance Series

Louis-Philippe Demers is a multidisciplinary artist using machines as media. He has worked on the conception and production of several large-scale interactive robotic installations, so far realizing more than 225 machines. 'In a more pronounced way than traditional theatre, mechanical theatre becomes a space for a collective consensus of the acceptation of simulacrum (even more surreal). The level of abstraction of the mechanical theatre enables a multiplicity of interpretation, it is an open ended work where each person sees a reflection of its own feelings.' (See Video)

The Mechanized Eccentric Series is a collection of several installations and performances united together in a large spectacle.

The Series regroups:

L'Assemblee, 48 robots layed out on an arena;

Colony 001, 8 robots and 1 central robots, a comment on nanotechnology;

Colony 002, 8 robots caught in cages;

The robotic characters of Armageddon (an operetta for robots) and a choir of 12 members;

and the two main robots of Le Proces.

Each robot is equipped with speaker(s), light(s) and motion(s) enabling the whole environment to become a vast surround soundscape. Namely, the performances include 6 voices of ambient sound plus a range (8 to 32) of independent robot sounds.

2 comments August 24th, 2006