Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Robots Suffer for Art’s Sake
In Hollywood these days, post-modern technologies—and in particular, robots—are often portrayed as a threat to humanity. In films like Metropolis, I Robot, The Matrix and Minority Report, the audience faces endless scenes where people must fight or be scared of technology.
But Fernando Orellana thinks such fear is overblown, and in fact is worth turning on its head. An artist whose métier involves building interactive electronic and high-tech installations, Orellana recently won an honorable-mention prize at the Spanish art show, Vida 7.0, for his piece, Unending Closure, an installation aimed at showing that sometimes, common perceptions are far off base.
Unending 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.