MetaFilter posts tagged with robotics and art

Choe U-Ram

homunculus — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:48:30 -0800

Opertus Lunula Umbra. Kinetic sculpture by Choe U-Ram. [Via]

You may ask yourself, how do I work this? David Byrne on robots

whir — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:50:55 -0800

David Byrne writes three thoughtful essays on robots, song, and the uncanny valley on the occasion of the creation of a robot which sings in his voice at a Madrid museum: Visiting the robot factory in Texas, regarding the uncanny valley, on machines and souls.

Get off my lawn photograph!

cashman — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:43:43 -0800

Kitchen Budapest is a collective that is aiming to render photographs on land through robotic grass cutting. The project is called Landprint. They've modded a lawn mower with mixers in the hopes of successfully producing lawn works visible from the air. The artist rendering of what they hope for is pretty neat. The "hello" they nearly got the landmower to cut, is not. [via]. They're also doing other cool projects.

"We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all."

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:25:09 -0800

Introduced to Western culture by the Beatles in their single Norwegian Wood, the sitar has featured prominently in North Indian classical music for centuries. Princeton-based computer scientist Ajay Kapur updates the instrument with his ESitar, an audio and video controller that uses gesture input (PDF) and machine learning algorithms to facilitate joining the computer with Ajay in his sitar performance. Undergraduate engineering students at the University of Pennsylvania work from the other direction, building RAVI-bot, an award-winning, self-playing robotic sitar (YouTube) programmed to generate music from classical Raga scales and melodies all on its own. For those in the Philadelphia area, be sure to check out a live performance of RAVI-bot at the local Klein Art Gallery.

Clockwork tiger.

loquacious — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 08:13:15 -0800

Clockwork steampunk rideable tiger. (via YouTube.) Flickr photos here. Artist's site here.

Getting the bugs out (and about.)

cenoxo — Mon, 22 May 2006 20:58:22 -0800

Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robots — Overview: an experimental mechanism that uses a living Madagascan hissing cockroach atop a modified trackball to control a three-wheeled robot. If the cockroach moves left, the robot moves left. Infrared sensors also provide navigation feedback to the cockroach, striving to create a pseudo-intelligent system with the cockroach as the CPU. Garnet Hertz, creator of Fly with Implanted Webserver and Cockroach with Wireless Video, has used Gromphadorhina portentosa on three generations of autonomous roachbots (YouTube video and Ars Electronica 2005 gallery).