As you might know by now, I’m a really big fan of robots. So I’m going to do a Looking Outwards on more cool robots:

Sepios by ETH Zurich, 2015

Sepios isn’t really an art project in the traditional sense, and is more of an exploration of underwater robotic actuation. But it looks and moves in a really cool unconventional way, so I’m going to call it art. Basically, it emulates the motion of a cuttlefish, and has 4 fins that wave around smoothly to create omnidirectional movement underwater. And when I say omnidirectional, the robot truly is omnidirectional: it can move around in 6 different directions and can rotate on 3 different axes, giving it unsurpassed maneuverability. The way it moves its fins is by actually using 36 servomotors, 9 for each fin, and then swiveling them in coordination to create propulsion. While the robot is still experimental and in development, I don’t think it will be that practical, especially when compared to underwater robots that use simple rotors. But then again, its moves in a really fluid, expressive way. Note that this is a student project at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) at Zurich.

BeachBot by Disney Research, 2015

BeachBot is a robot that is actually designed to make art.  Basically, what it does is draw very large pictures on the sand.  Somewhat reminiscent of turtles trudging through beaches during mating season, this robot rolls around on balloon wheels to leave no trace on the sand except where intended with a large precision rake that is dragged around on its rear.  The rake, when applied to the sand, leaves a dark mark, and BeachBot uses its location and angle sensors to get accurate coordinates of the lines and curves it etches on the beach.  It’s a simple, but brilliant concept, and it is executed very well by the Disney Researchers.  I think this project might be improved by allowing “shades” in between lines for a gradient effect.  One way of doing this would be to have a tank of water and spray areas with varying concentrations of water to darken the sand.  But that’s just an idea, and I would love to see one of these in action while strolling around in a beach.

I focused on projects made with Max MSP for this looking outwards. I had a hard time finding projects that used Max MSP in ways that appealed to me. A lot of projects seemed to be reducible to “audio frequency histogram in, weird wavy visuals out.” I did though find a few that I thought broke the mold and did some interesting stuff.

Rotterdam Model / Richti-Areal Model

These are two separate project that use multiple projectors to provide an overlay of light to a 3d architectural model. I like the two together because the Rotterdam project uses this overlay for educational purposes. It’s situated in a museum telling about the history of the city. the Richti-Areal Model appears more aesthetic. The creators are trying to see how much liveliness and personality they can add to their model using just layers of light. I’m reminded of many tangible user interface projects by Hirosi Ishii when I see these projects.

Metal Mirror / Drawn Music

These are two projects that use Max MSP in relation to music, but they turn the standard relationship of sound in images out on its head. In both projects, Max MSP is used to translate unexpected movements and gestures into sound. In Metal Mirror, ambient industrial music is produced using magnets and sheet of metal. The sound of the metal and the magnets is complimented by computer generated noise. It’s a variation on the theremin, but I like it. Drawn Music takes colored drawings and translates them into music in real time. The results aren’t spectacular, but I like the mashup quality of the project. Again, it’s nice to see unconstrained gestures being used as input for an artistic system

For this Lookingoutwards assignment I have taken a look at the possibilities of mas MSP in combination with light. Artworks making using of lights and lasers have always been an interested to me and therefore I decided to look around in this area.

“Created by UVA, Vanishing Point employs perspective as both tool and visual outcome to reshape, redefine and represent a pristine space. Inspired by sketches of Great Masters like Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo DaVinci or Albrecht Dürer, UVA sends lines into space from an arbitrary vanishing point, creating different volumes, divisions and rooms to be explored by the audience.”

In short VanishingPoint makes room and walls by using a laser from a vanishing point. Due to this they can created the illusion of being confined. I like also that they have sound that is not pre-recorded but is generated by the lasers ‘drawing’ those walls.

Created by COCOLAB from Mexico and commissioned by ARCA, Cycles is an audio visual installation comprised of a series of laser projectors to visualise short cycle audio compositions by a collection of A/V artists including Julian Placencia – Disco Ruido (MX), Shiro Schwarz (MX), Eduardo Jiménez (MX), Tijs Ham (NL) and Sebastian Frisch (DE).

I just like the looks of this piece of art. It is a 6.5m diameter circle with 17 laserbeamers. I think it is beautiful how they react to the music and form nice shapes together and on their own. Though I still miss a bit of coherency it the design I really like what they tried to achieve.

SWEATSHOPPE created augmented reality video paintings on walls. I can see cool things being produced from this, but their documentation does not appeal to me. It gives off the impression that they are trying to be edgy, with people sucking popsicles in their videos and low framerates showing them running in the dark. I want more variations that shows off the different range of emotions this project is truly capable of evoking in people, and I want this to be more available to the masses for all kinds of people to interact with it. It reminded me of Camille Utterback’s Falling Words project, which also involves projections being affected by physical interactions. Her documentations are closer to what I want SWEATSHOPPE’s to be more like.

Saba Khalilnaji used supervised machine learning to teach a bot to play foosball. He documented his theory here. For the hardware, he used a PS3 Eye for the camera, and and Arduino for the moving parts. The complexity and ambition of the project amazes me. I am also interested in artificially behaving creatures, so watching the table play against the human really makes me happy. By having this, it is almost as if you have a friend to play foosball with :( There are of course technical limitations of the project, as he explained in his documentation, and the way the bot moves is too sporadic and random at times to tell if it is actually intelligent. It reminded me of the Street Fighter AIs that people wrote that learn from human players and can beat them. Nintendo’s Amiibos are also similar, learning from player’s play style and adapting it as their own.

Interactive Robotic Painting Machine

This robot is painting depending on what sound it hears. Depending the sound, the robot has to take a decision on what / how to paint. We can wee a very good combination of AI and the arts with this video because the robot is making decisions just as humans are in relation to what to draw. Sometimes when we draw, we take decision on what we see, experience etc; well this robot is doing the same by making them by what it hears. I think this is very interesting and worth exploring more to see how many other inputs you can give to the robot for it to have a bigger decision space.
It was done by Benjamin Grosser:
bengrosser.com
bengrosser.com/projects/interactive-robotic-painting-machine/

Simple Audio Reactive Se

I had never really looks for Max/MSP/jitter art, so I found this looking outward very educational.  I found “Simple Audio Reactive Set” very interesting because during the entire song, it introduced various geometric shapes. I really liked how it changed from abstract cubes, to lines , to spheres, to shapes etc. I would have liked it much more if it didn’t change SOO fast between shapes. I felt like I just got a glimpse of the new visualization, and then it was gone. I really could fully  appreciate it. I would have left each new visualization for a longer period of time. This way the transitions wouldn’t feel so drastic and sporadic. I also liked the use of color. I basically realized that the shapes were changing because the color would change as well. I really liked that extra pump it gave it. Everything was moving very fast, my eyes were a little overwhelmed. I didn’t quite feel it went with the music, so I was a little thrown off of why everything was changing so fast! And I think the main problem was the transitions, they were to drastic,m there was no smoothing between shapes, it was more like, boom, here you go a new thing!