Month: June 2010

Synchronized Dancing Robots

Just look at those amazing dancing robots! Dancing to Ravel’s Bolero no less.

<mini-rant> Is this the future of “live” performance? At first it’s amazing to watch all of these robots move in a synchronized fashion and I’m sure the effect is multiplied the more robots you would add, can you imagine a sea of thousands of them?

But after a while it becomes tedious to watch a machine go through the motions. They never tire, there is no discipline or hours of training and practice involved. As a performance I think it’s an interesting novelty but it lacks precisely the exact elements that make watching a live person perform so fascinating. I’m not saying robots have no future in performance but I don’t think this is it.</mini-rant>

Quote

If you are going to have less things they have to be great things.

— John Maeda

Art is Research

In this video from the 2010 PSFK conference, Zach Lieberman talks about how art is a type of creative research, in his case the tech oriented interactive art is like a glimpse into our tech infused future. Zach does amazing things with technology and I agree with him that art, all art, is an exploration and in fact research into new possibilities.

This is not a sculpture…

This is actually a street performer in Los Angeles, the mysterious Mirror Man. I think this is a fantastic idea. I think as a static sculpture it would be an arresting image and bring up metaphysical contemplation, but the added layer of it being a live performer really brings it up another level. Would love to experience this in person.

Unfortunately I can’t find any more info about this artist/performer, but you can check out a lot more images of this scene at SiLver sKY’s flickr photostream where I found this.