Supplemental Material

Here are some links to extra information concerning the artists I brought up in the presentation.  Most of these works are best seen in a moving format, which would have eaten up all of my time.  Enjoy.

Ancient Discoveries - A History Channel documentary series specializing in the historic origins of contemporary technologies.  A little on the sensational side, but they do some interesting re-constructive work.  This episode is particularly relevant to the presentation, but many of them are worth checking out.

Lucky the Dinosaur - The first free-roaming animatronic character ever created, Lucky serves as something of a mascot for Disney theme parks worldwide.

Jean Tinguely - A short video of his Homage to New York.  The quality is rough, but footage of this piece is scarce at best, so any news is good news.

Chico MacMurtrie (Amorphic Robot Works) - A local man, at one time.  This website concerns his most recent organization, specializing in interactive installations of a robotic nature; and includes photo, video and writings.

RobotLab - The makers of Juke Bots.  If anyone speaks German, please come forward.  I would love to know what it says on their website.

Chris Thrash - An Alabama-based enthusiast of the Rock-a-Fire Explosion, who has taken to re-programming the figures to perform current popular songs.  I hear talk of a recent or upcoming DVD release.

Stelarc - This guy has been at it for some time.  He has plenty of material out there, but his youtube page gives a decent survey of some of his major works.

SRL - Another local group (the Bay Area seems to be a hot-spot for this type of activity).  I like this stuff more than Robot Wars.

Bezold . . .

Well, here it is.  This works fairly well in some places, and much more subtly in others (the brown hexagons were a success, but the green triangles and orange rectangles lose their impact the further they get from the boundary.  Overall, though, I have no complaints.

Presentation Outline

This serves as a basic outline of the presentation I plan to give concerning the use/treatment of robots and robotics in Digital and New Media Art.  I have the presentation divided into 3 basic sections, beginning with basic terms and definitions, then progressing to the condition/use of robotics through history and ending with its applications in contemporary societies (both artistic and otherwise).

Section I - Definitions

A brief overview of a few basic characteristics generally thought to define robothood, along with the difficulties involved in assigning any concrete definition:

 - Mechanical and/or electrical origin (a fabricated device)

 - Autonomy (the ability to function, at least to a degree, without direct control)

 - Programmability (possessing the capacity for its behavior to be set, adjusted and refined)

 - Sensory/mental/physical agency (the ability to sense, process and manipulate parts of the environment)

 - Anthropomorphism/zoomorphism (bearing resemblance - physical and/or behavioral - to a living being)

Section II - History

An outline of robotics (both conceptual and practical) throughout human history:

 - Classical Antiquity (mythological precursors,Chinese automata)

 - Late Antiquity (Heron of Alexandria, Ktesibios, Philon of Byzantion)

 - Middle Ages (al-Jazari, Su Song)

 - Renaissance (Da Vinci's mechanical knight)

 - 17th thru 19th centuries (mechanical figures imitating biological functions)

 - Early to Mid 20th century (Tesla, theoretical literature, industrial use)

Section III - Contemporary Presence 

A survey of common applications of robotics in contemporary society:

 - Industrial (assembly, factory work)

 - Scientific/Research (space and deep sea vehicles)

 - Military (unmanned vehicles, smart weapons)

 - Commercial/Service (Japan, software)

 - Entertainment (animatronics, robot toys)

 - Fine arts (Stellarc, SRL, Rock-a-Fire, Paul McCarthy)

Vectorrific

This was a fairly straightforward exercise.  The instructions were clear, and I started to get a feel for how the Pen Tool works.  I think the instructions may have skipped a few numbers, but aside from that it was very informative.  Made the summary file a little easier to understand, also.

Who you gonna call?

Get it?  The painter's name is Egon.  Did I just date myself?  At any rate; I ended up keeping this one fairly simple.  I wanted to add a little more depth than I was seeing in the original image, and also play around with what the viewer's perception of the space might be.  I followed the overall form of the figure pretty faithfully, while flattening it into 3 basic planes (skin on hands and head, undershirt and jacket), each of which was given its own color.  I noticed an interesting thing happening here: it struck me that the depths implied by what I had done did not entirely follow those given in the original image.  I suppose this was the effect I was going for, though, so mission accomplished.