Robotic art

This week I found a couple of links to some art that perked my ears. The first is an artwork built to celebrate and market a video game. The game is Halo: Reach which is about a sort of Sci-Fi Pearl Harbor event where the players are space marines attempting to defend a world that is under an overwhelming surprise attack. The art piece is a light sculpture made as a monument to those who fought and died during this event. A robotic arm places points of light in 3D space until the sculpture is complete. Fans of the game log into a website and place a point of light into the sculpture like someone who might light a candle to honor the memory of a loved one. Fans of the game can visit the sight to watch the sculpture grow and take place and even visit their point of light and the points that their friends have added.

Here is a link to a video about the technology behind the piece.


Here is a link to the website that fans go to in order to add to the sculpture:
http://www.rememberreach.com

The promotion is over now so you can't add to the piece any longer. But here is a vide documentation of the piece.



The last link I want to share is a profile page for some artists invovled in integrating robotics into art. Chico MacMurtrie I found particularly interesting, mostly because he was an artist in residency at the Exploratorium museum right here in San Francisco. I didn't even realize that was a job! I would love that job. Here's the link.

http://www.thetech.org/robotics/robotart/index.html

Body augmentation artist

The 01 biannial

The very best thing I saw at the festival was an outrun arcade cabinet. Not only did they turn the cabinet into a working vehicle which in unto itself is a childhood fantasy of mine, but they took it to a new and incredible level. They integrated GPS navigation into the game. The artists created an interaction between the game and the real world. Like any GPS navigation system the cabinet takes the drivers destination information and provides turn by turn directions via in-game direction. So the Player navigates in game and in the real world simultaneously in real time. As our world and our bodies continue to be integrated into a new and fabricated digital world this piece may be less a piece of art but a foretelling of a reality that could come about. Here is the link:
http://01sj.org/2010/artworks/outrun/

Persona project

Last week we had a guest instructor for class. We were assigned a persona project where we created an online persona. We created a detailed history and personality for our persona to explore the digital culture outside the boundaries of our personal reality.  Here is a link to Zzeek Johnson's facebook profile.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001597200854