Artbots
Jul 13, 2003 greatThingsThatPeopleDoShare/Save
I went to see Artbots today with a couple of good friends. It’s an annual robot talent show at the Eyebeam Gallery in Chelsea, for art made of robots, and robots that make art. The “guidelines” are very broad: “No firm rules exist on the types of work that can participate; if you think it’s a robot and you think it’s making art, then it’s an art-making robot.”
The robots ranged from very functional to totally esoterically artistic. Some of my favorites were the Guitarbot, consisting of four strings rigged up to extremely sophisticated computer-controlled picking mechanisms that play beautifully, and Robots like H20: Photosynthesis Perpetual Motion Machine, a little cart with two plants on it at different distances from the incoming sunlight, whose movement was fueled either by the difference in the direction of their phototropism, or by their different weights due to difference in quality of photosynthesis. We couldn’t really figure out which one of those it was, but either way, like whoa.
Max/MSP was everywhere, making me miss the days when university resources let me use 500$ software for whatever dumb shit I wanted to put together. The perils of interactivity also reared their ugly heads – many of the robots involved some user input (noisemaking, petting, dancing, sending e-mails, choosing what kind of house you want, playing an organ, the shape of your face, etc.), but only the best ones made it clear exactly how that input was being transformed into the flashing lights, drawings, or turntable scratching coming out of the robot. That kind of complexity leading to confusion has the tendency to leave even a die-hard interface junkie like myself a little cold.
All in all, it’s always amazing to see people doing totally different kinds of work – just coming up with ideas and putting them together out of wood and circuitry. My love for this shit is undiminished by its failings – I’ve been thinking of applying for a one-day-a-week internship at Harvestworks to maybe get into something like it myself. Well, we’ll see.
July 13th, 2003 at 11:26 pm
Go, photosynthesis bot, go! (Give this bot your love, folks, it’s moving at the rate of plant growth.)
This exhibit was indeed well worth the walk to 11th Ave. — a cross between a Wallace and Grommit movie, a modern art exhibit, a science fair, and the zoo. My personal favorites were the abovementioned plant-bot and the robot that was slowly attaining an “awareness of self” by synthesizing information from its own attempts at movement. I got the most out of the ones that either contained organic elements, like plants or brain cells, or shed some light or commented on the human condition in some way, like the bot with self awareness, or a machine that charted the frequency of conflict in different parts of the world on a given day.
I must say that some of the works seemed without a sense of purpose or connection to anything. The machine that responded to your input by moving a strand of a dead father’s hair across a board of pins and 13-year-old dust? Hmmmmm. From my perspective, who cares? I just moved on to the next exhibit. But I wonder about the creator. Does he or she feel that their work contains great insight? I hope so, after spending however long it took (13 years?) to build it. If only the written explanation had brought some of that meaning into the light of day. The most interesting questions (what does this mean? and how does it work?) were mysteriously absent from many of the explanatory plaques.
But maybe applying any standard of use, purpose, or meaning to art is pretty futile and unhip. I’m so used to perceiving technology in terms of function (i.e. use to me) — it’s hard to imagine wanting to go to the trouble of constructing it just to have it do things (paint, draw, play the ukelele) that we already do, but this feeling is probably also futile and unhip and hopelessly reactionary. If we get to play the ukelele, why not them?! It is interesting, though, that we are so eager to mimic ourselves. It’s a relief to see that we are still a little limited by our own frames of reference.
It was nice to see the circuits out on their own, having some fun! I found myself becoming attached to some of them, like the photosynthesis bot (definitely the tortoise to every other moving creature’s hare), and attributing human motivations and characteristics to them, which perhaps speaks to the future of such creations. All in all, I’m glad our little complainer invited me.
July 14th, 2003 at 12:15 pm
While I also appreciate being invited to share in the orgy of gizmology, methinks you need to Draft before you Post. Typos abound in this entry; not up to your usual standards.
As for the photosynthesis bot, I’m voting for phototropism, ’cause the whole conservation of mass thing still bothers me, but it guess it could be both.