Human beings have been developing machines for thousands of years. But what drives us on to do so? Christl Baur, Head of Ars Electronica Festival and Maaya Makino, Garden Manager, Ars Electronica dedicate the seventh edition of “Inside Festival” to the topic of “Robotinity” and present a total of four projects that addresses this topic.
Moritz Simon Geist created the robotic instrument ”Vibrations” to play soothing, minimal music in a futuristic way – with robots! The installation is based on the instrument ‘Vibraphone’, deconstructing the sound and the physical shape of the classic jazz instrument. The sound of the robot is generated by tuned aluminum bars, controlled by a complex, distributed robotic actuator system.
Garden Tokyo, hosted by Japan Media Arts Festival is presenting the project “Avatar Robot Café” in this edition of “Inside Festival”. It is a social implementation project to develop “OriHime,” an avatar robot that can be operated by people who have limited mobility and supporting people with disabilities to have jobs.
As a highlight of this year’s performance program, renowned artist Maki Namekawa performs several pieces by György Ligeti and Hania Rani. These works and their visualizations are the result of a long-time artistic collaboration between the pianist and Cori O’Lan, that you can enjoy in Deep Space as well as in Kepler’s Gardens at the JKU.
The Sock-o-Mat 3000 relieves sleepy schoolchildren of the most tedious task in the morning: putting on socks. The joint work of the brothers Rocco (6 years old) and Cosmo (9 years old) is an idea of what a sock-donning machine could look like in the future. They have built a prototype that uses electrical and magnetic gadgets to illustrate how convenient it will be to put socks on feet in the future. They filmed their idea with a tablet, edited it and set it to music.