robotlab
“Profiler” – Interactive installation with an industrial robot
robotlab: Profiler, 2004
In addition to the exhibition “My Own Private Reality. Generation Internet comes of age”, the Edith Russ House for Media Art is offering an interactive installation as an additional program for International Museum Day on Sunday, 20 May 2007 (extended opening hours from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.).
The German artist group robotlab works with industrial robots in public spaces and explores human-machine relationships in experimental stations, performances and installations.
The robot in the Profiler installation creates portraits of visitors in the form of outline drawings and arranges them in compositional contexts. Once an exhibition visitor has entered the stage in front of a brightly lit background wall, the robot recognizes this, moves into recording position and captures the human figure with its video camera. The computer processes the recorded image, transforms it into lines and the robot then executes the drawing on the enameled, large-format drawing board with just a few strokes.
The drawings are arranged by profilers according to a special composition principle. The robot has a workspace limited by its anatomy, which is represented in a kidney shape in the panel plane. This accessible area was segmented into 16 fixed rectangles that overlap. One by one, 13 outline drawings of visitors are randomly distributed in different rectangles. Three rectangles always remain empty. Within a rectangle, the drawing can take one of five possible positions, also determined by chance: in one of the four corners or in the center. The combination of systematics, chance and omission creates unpredictable arrangements on the panel with separations, groupings and overlaps.
When setting up the installation
So far, robots have hardly been encountered in public or private spaces, but only in industrial complexes. As a result, humans have neither dealt with these machines, nor do they have any experience of how robots behave or how to behave towards robots. There are still no socially developed patterns of behavior for such human-machine interactions, only ideas stimulated by literature and film.
This is where the activities of robotlab come in: The group of artists provides an experimental forum in which the public can examine their relationship to robots. robotlab was founded in 2000 by Matthias Gommel, Martina Haitz and Jan Zappe. The independent artist group has been awarded the Institute for Visual Media at the ZKM – Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.
Further information and pictures at: www.robotlab.de
Admission is free.