August 29, 2012

prostheticknowledge:

Fearful Symmetry by Ruairi Glynn 

‘Alien Art’ installation currently at Tate Modern - a glowing tetrahedron curious of the visitors. It is actually a computer-controlled puppet on a robotic arm, using Kinect sensors to detect people. BBC News has a short video (embedded below) about the piece, and is also a great ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at how a modern computer art installation is put together:

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Artist Ruairi Glynn has premiered a unique piece of installation art at Tate Modern in London, using a technique he calls “mechanical puppetry”.

His “delta robot”, normally found on factory production lines, has been redesigned to work as a piece of interactive, performance art.

Fitted on a 21-metre rail, it travels the length of the Tate Modern’s new basement Tanks space, which opened at the end of July.

Part automated, it measures people’s movements with Microsoft Kinect cameras, as found on the Xbox games console. When visitors come into its vicinity, the robot responds with a set of pre-programmed reactions, from playful movements, to dramatic withdrawal.

More at BBC News here