SOFT CONTROL » Artworks Maribor

Louis-Philippe Demers

samo — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 13:58:06 +0000

Louis-Philip Demers’s project explores the phenomenon of unconscious bodily matter. Whether it makes up complex figures at stadiums and during military parades, or demonstrates cohesion in corporate labor – its programs are executed with the same mechanical precision. The precursor was the famous early 20th century dance troupe “Tiller Girls”, in which human performers are ‘called upon to exercise their technical skills but not their interpretive skills’.

Demers’s performance is a group of 12 small autonomous robots. These robots were developed in Artificial Intelligence for the study of gaits given minimal freedom of movements. The rationale behind the Tiller Girls is to explore the dichotomy of the man-machine. The robots can only balance their torsos and shoulders but they can yet achieve a large variety of expressions and behaviours.

Neurotica

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:03:37 +0000

Robots move vertically along various columns, leaving traces that are actually the representation of the firings of neurons cultivated in a glass dish located thousands of kilometers away. Parallel to this, sensors located around the installation capture the movements of the public, which stimulate back the neurons.

Neurotica is made up of artists Guy Ben-Ary and Philip Gamblen and Peter Gee, as well as Dr Steve Potter and Riley Zeller-Townson, neuroscientists from the laboratory of neuro-engineering at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, United States.

Silent Barrage is hosted in SymbioticA, The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia.

Stelarc

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:00:12 +0000

The Prosthetic Head is an embodied conversational agent – an automated, animated, informed and reasonably intelligent head that speaks to the person who interrogates it. The 3D model is a 3000 polygon mesh, skinned with the artist’s face. The eyeball, tongue and teeth are separate moving elements. It has a data-base and a conversational strategy that when coupled to a human head is capable of appropriate verbal exchanges. Facial expressions and emotions can be scripted. It can compose and recite its own poetry-like verse and song-like sounds, which are different each time it is asked.

Credits:

Original software: Karen Marcelo, Sam Trychin, Barrett Fox. New version: Martin Luerssen, Trent Lewis with Associate Professor David Powers, Flinders University. From Talking Heads to Thinking Heads: (ARC/NH&MRC Thinking Systems). Leader: Prof. Denis Burnham, MARCS Labs, University of Western Sydney.

Maja Smrekar

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:55:28 +0000

In this project the question is posed if there is a possibility, considering the consequences of potential global food deficit and drastic reduction of the value of material goods, that human molecular production capacity in the DNA, as one of the few uncolonized biotechnological materials, could become a trade tool (based on a system of genetic credit), which could become one of the next stages of evolution. By setting up the intersections of science, art and civil society, we therefore wonder who bears responsibility for our body? Are we the owners or just inhabitants of our bodies?

Credits: In collaboration with dr. Špela Petrič, Marko Žavbi. With special thanks to the Institute of Biochemistry, Medical Faculty, University of Ljubljana. Production: Kapelica Gallery – Zavod K6/4. The project has been executed within the financial support of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Republic of Slovenia and Culture Department of the Municipality of Ljubljana.

Credits: Domel Tehtnica d.o.o. and Laboratory Center of the University of Maribor.

Arthur Elsenaar and Remko Scha

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:14:55 +0000

Morphology / Face Shift presents a human face as it goes through a sequence of involuntary muscle contraction configurations, triggered by a digital computer. The first part of the piece shows continuous morphings between unrelated muscle contraction configurations. The second part shows regular patterns on both sides of the face, which become gradually out of sync and give rise to unusual anti-symmetric configurations.

Credits: Face-Interface technology, hardware design, display device: Arthur Elsenaar. Word processing, MIDI Software: Remko Scha. Generous support: The Institute of Artificial Art (Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

Stefan Doepner and Lars Vaupel

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:11:02 +0000

f18labs are conducting R&D on robots for practical use, in the quest for robots to support people and make their lives more convenient. Building on its past expertise in developing robots for personal-use applications, f18 went further to the next level by developing a robot that can co-exist with people and provide services in a variety of places such as offices, homes and public facilities. The robot is comprised of 4 drill-heads, moving in 3 dimensions, 7 pneumatic actuators for the movement, and a CPU that controls the entire robot.

Louis-Philippe Demers

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:07:59 +0000

The Tiller Girls is a group of 12 small autonomous robots. These robots were developed in Artificial Intelligence for the study of gaits given minimal freedom of movements. The robots can only balance their torsos and shoulders but they can yet achieve a large variety of expressions and behaviors. Performers in the traditional performing arts such as music, dance and theatre are generally thought to have both technical skills and interpretive skills, where the latter skills are regarded as specific human skills.

Robotics: Raja Dravid, Max Lungarella, Dynamic Devices (CH). In collaboration with AI Lab Zürich. Producers: Interaction and Etertainement Research Centre, Digital Realities StartUp Grant (NTU).

Joe Davis

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:04:05 +0000

“I grow magnetotactic bacteria. I can only work with laboratory strains in controlled environments, so I collect wild-type organisms that I can freely incorporate into apparatus outside the lab. By chance, I found that one wild strain produced hydrogen gas in anaerobic cultures with catalytic iron filings. These can be used to make fuel and electricity. They also happen to contain principal components of LC circuits ‘in vivo’.”

David Bowen

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:57:08 +0000

This installation consists of a series of autonomous helium-filled blimps whose movements are determined by small communities of houseflies. The flies are the brain of each of the devices, determining how they interact and respond to the space and the other devices. Up to 50 houseflies live within chambers attached to each blimp unit. These chambers contain food, water as well as sensors that detect the movements of the flies. In real-time this information is sent to motorized propellers that direct the devices within the space. The wandering blimps are separate but intersecting community vehicles. The flies exist in their own self-contained worlds creating an amplified expression of group behavior.

Credits: Akvarij-Terarij Maribor

David Bowen

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:54:08 +0000

Follow the flies in Maribor
https://twitter.com/flycolony

This installation will send twitter messages based on the activities of a large swarm of houseflies. The houseflies will live inside an acrylic sphere along with a computer keyboard. As the flies move and interact inside their acrylic sphere home they will fly over the keys on the keyboard. These movements will be collected in real-time via video. As a particular key is flown over by the flies the key’s corresponding character is entered into a twitter text box. When 140 characters are reached in the text box or the flies fly over the “enter” key the message containing the accumulated characters is tweeted. Thus twitter messages are sent in real-time based on the predilections of the flies.

Credits: Thanks to Andrew Spitz for the Max to Twitter tutorial, Christopher Baker for help with Java Script; and Akvarij-Terarij Maribor.