Robots as bright, innocent and generally shy creatures
In more robot news:
Robots Suffer for Art's SakeUnending Closure presents viewers with three robots enclosed in tall, narrow columns. Each column has a thin slit through which people can see the robots, and vice versa. When no one is nearby, the three robots appear to communicate with each other by emitting a series of calm, running-water-like sounds.
When people approach the robots, however, they react. If someone gets close, the robot that senses a person crossing its RF scan will respond with what seems like curiosity. But when viewers get too close, the robots are designed to do what could only be called freaking out.
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The installation is Orellana's commentary on how humans have come to live with so much fear since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"For me, it's a piece about paranoia," he said, "and specifically, the paranoia that's evolved in the last four years: People being stuck inside of their shells, and wanting to look around, and at the smallest bit of danger, they recoil."
Sounds adorable. More art/AI projects at
Vida 7.0. One I'd really like to play with is the Universal Whistling Machine:
The Universal Whistling Machine, a tone-based based interpreter of whistles. Using advanced signal-processing computation -- similar to the chips in mobile phones -- their system can extract whistles from other sounds, and can exchange passages with humans, each other, and even animals. Over time, it builds a database of every whistle it’s ever heard, increasing its vocabulary and range. What looks at first like a simple process becomes ever more interesting, a technical mocking bird that’s either mimicking or earnestly trying to communicate.
I wonder, how long before boredom or anger sets in?
* Ray, 12/22/2004 01:42:51 PM
