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

Hysterical Machines - Bill Vorn

Bill Vorn is working in the field of Robotic Art since 1992. His installation projects involve robotics and motion control, sound, lighting, video and cybernetic processes. He pursues research on Artificial Life (and Death) and Agent Technologies through artistic work based on the Aesthetics of Artificial Behaviors.

Each 'Hysterical Machines' has a spherical body and eight arms made of aluminum tubing. It has a sensing system, a motor system and a control system that functions as an autonomous nervous system (entirely reactive). Some machines are suspended from the ceiling and their arms are actuated by pneumatic valves and cylinders. Pyroelectric sensors allow the robots to detect the presence of viewers in the nearby environment. They react to the viewers according to the amount of stimuli they receive. The perceived emergent behaviors of these machines engender a multiplicity of interpretations based on single dynamic pattern of events.

The aim of this project is to induce empathy of the viewer towards characters which are nothing more than articulated metal structures. The strength of the simulacra is emphasized by perverting the perception of the creatures, which are neither animals nor humans, carried through the inevitable instinct of anthropomorphism and projection of our internal sensations, a reflex triggered by any phenomenon that challenges our senses.

1 comment August 23rd, 2006

You Move Me - Lara Greene

A project currently in development by Lara Greene , the piece started during a residency at Amorphic Robot Works in New York. See Video of its development .

The figure is a fully articulated machine that moves via cables extending out from within the body to multifunctioning levers that can be pushed pulled and twisted to create various movements and affect it's position in space. A group of up to 6 people will be required to operate the piece, these being visiting members of the public. The figure has the capacity for elegance or awkwardness, dependent upon the level of people's control and ability or desire to co-operate with each other. People will struggle with or surmount this challenge, as she responds and embodies these conditions the character will come to life allowing people to empathise and respond in return. You move me is a tool for expression that draws people together in a web of interdependency provoking many forms of communication.

This work follows her project 'The Ape ' which was installed as part of a group exhibition entitled "Reactor", Aldaran Art Space, Nottingham.

The Ape is a large Puppet/Autonoma (See Video), trapped by his strings whilst also dependent on them to bring him to life… a sad but comical character. The controls are quite complex but built from basic and found materials: wood, scrap metal, bike and boating parts. They pivot from the beams, reaching out to four corners of the room: points at which a team of four people can push, pull or twist handles and turn wheels to control the head, arms and the back. Meeting him is far from the separated experience of many gallery exhibitions. Visitors are encouraged to share activating him with others. The resulting interactions were an exploration of control/dependency, power/intimidation, humour, mimicry, and group co-ordination/discord, challenging our notions of being an independent entity, that which the ape has never conceived of.

4 comments August 22nd, 2006

TouchMe - Blendid

I saw TouchMe by Dutch interaction design group Blendid on wmmna a few months ago but it was a recent video taken at STRP festival in Eindhoven shown on Culturetv that caught my attention showing the vertical screen appear like a human sized scanner recording the gestures of people who got up close to it. See Video

TouchMe is an interactive installation that allows its users to create and contribute a personal image to the otherwise impersonal public space. Images that are created by interacting with a plate of frosted glass, remain a part of the piece and are displayed when no interactions occur for a given time. TouchMe is intended for one of those typical modern public spaces that seem predominantly designed to withstand large flows of people without any impact. It is as if the users of these spaces are viewed only as pawns, which are to be efficiently routed through this domain on their way from point A to point B. All traces of these visitors will be erased when the next scheduled cleaning crew has removed the footprints from the granite wear-free floor.

This aspiration of efficiency contrasts with the need of the public to physically interact with- and leave marks in their environment. A house isn't a home until it is decorated with some pictures or other personal mementos. In the public arena this desire is expressed in different ways; be it by piling stones on top of each other, cutting names in trees or more contemporary, spraying graffiti and stickering in the urban setting. In addition to their expressive and communicative function as media, these marks seem to build a bond between the creator and place. 

Add comment August 21st, 2006

Glofab

Torbjorn Lundell's new light-emitting textile, GloFab launched at the 2006 Stockholm Furniture Fair uses light directed through fiber optic cables which are weaved together to create a range of effects.  Fiber optic cables can only be bent so much before light can no longer pass through them so the knots of GloFab are all kept large, giving the textile a beautiful gossamer look which perfectly suits its ethereal glowing quality

The light source can be anything from a lamp to the sun.

via mocoloco 

Add comment August 11th, 2006