Robots and Avatars

Posts relating to all things that bring robots and avatars together. Also posts that relate to the overall project itself.

 

‘The rise of the robot’ on BBC Business Daily

‘The rise of the robot’ explored in BBC Business News / Business Daily on 31 Dec 2012.

“Justin Rowlatt meets Ghislaine Boddington, creative director of body>data>space, a company which specialises in how new technology can improve the way we communicate.”

Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/bizdaily/all

 

BBC Arabic 4 Tech reports on ‘Robots and Avatars’

From November to December 2012, BBC ARABIC technology programme, 4 Tech dedicated a series of 3 report on Robots and Avatars, covered by journalist Anees Al Qudaihi.
The reports explore the creative and technological process of 3 key works presented as part of Robots and Avatars:  Outreach‘ an architectural / kinetic conceptual work by Alex Haw (atmos) with Mauritius Seeger (dr. mo), Music for Flesh II‘ an interactive music performance for enhanced body by Marco Donnarumma, and Robots and Avatars Commission ‘Visions of our Communal Dreams‘, a new media art installation blending virtual, physical and networked environments by Michael Takeo Magruder with collaborators.
7 November 2012: Marco Donnarumma on ‘Music for Flesh II’ from 15:00 to 20:15. WATCH HERE.
1 December 2012: Ghislaine Boddington on ‘Robots and Avatars’ and ‘Visions of our Communal Dreams’ from 18:30 to the end. WATCH HERE
9 December 2012: Alex Haw / ATMOS on ‘Outreach’ from 16:00 to 20:40. WATCH HERE

 

‘America’s mindless killer robots must be stopped’ by Noel Sharkey

Read Robots and Avatars’ project champion Noel Sharkey‘s opinion column  on the mindless use of robots in war  in this week edition of the Guardian (3 December 2012).

‘The rational approach to the inhumanity of automating death by machines beyond the control of human handlers is to prohibit it

Are we losing our humanity by automating death?

Human Rights Watch (HRW) thinks so. In a new report, co-published with Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, they argue the “case against killer robots“. This is not the stuff of science fiction. The killer robots they refer to are not Terminator-style cyborgs hellbent on destroying the human race. There is not even a whiff of Skynet.

These are the mindless robots I first warned Guardian readers about in 2007 – robots programmed to independently select targets and kill them. Five years on from that call for legislation, there is still no international discussion among state actors, and the proliferation of precursor technologies continues unchecked.’

Read the article.

 

More international press coverage for Robots and Avatars

Robots and Avatars Artist Marco Donnarumma was interviewed about Music on Flesh II  on BBC ARABIC Technology programme, 4 Tech, in the framework of a 3 episodes coverage dedicated to Robots and Avatars by Anees Al Qudaihi.

Upcoming episodes will feature Ghislaine Boddington on ‘Visions of Our Communal Dreams‘ and Alex Haw on ‘Outreach‘.

You can access Marco’s interview here from 15:00 to 20:15.

 

Ghislaine Boddington presenting ‘Robots and Avatars’ at ‘European Audiences: 2020 and beyond’ Conference in Brussels

Organised by the EU Commission and Culture in Motion, the Conference ‘European Audiences: 2020 and beyond’ conference recognizes audience development as a crucial priority in the proposal for the Creative Europe Programme for the period 2014-2020.

Ghislaine Boddington will present body>data>space pioneer methodology in the creative engagement of the audience through digital and interactive tools, focusing especially on Robots and Avatars EU project.

Bringing together top level cultural practitioners and operators involved in EU collaborative projects and recognized as innovators in engaging the public, the Conference will focus on audience development as a strategic, dynamic and interactive process of making the arts widely accessible.

16-17 October 2012 at the EGG in Brussels.

Read more about Ghislaine’s presentation on this page.

More information and reports.

 

Robots and Avatars is going to KIBLA – Slovenia!

The exhibition presents a variety of immersive experiences – from unconventional approaches to social networks, re-defining and exploring their influences and dead ends, through virtual worlds rendered into pixels through the act of touch, collaborative landscapes stretching beyond the confines of popular gaming, to electro-acoustic biological extensions, wearable technologies and interactive robotic elements that affect and try to define us, to seemingly ordinary, human behavior imitating robots.

Alongside the presented artworks,the Exhibition will include a series of workshops run by Artists, events and debates.

Exhibiting artists and works:
Louis Philippe Demers/Processing Plant (CA, DE): The Blind Robot; Ruairi Glynn / Motive Colloquies (UK): Sociable Asymmetry; Michael Takeo Magruder, Drew Baker, Erik Fleming, David Steele (UK): Visions of Our Communal Dreams; Niki Passath (AT): ZOE; Mey Lean Kronemann (DE): lumiBots; Sašo Sedlaek (SI): Beggar 1.0; Andre Almeida, Gonçalo Lopes, Francisco Dias, Guilherme Martins (PT): NAVI; Marco Donnarumma (UK): Music for flesh II; Martin Bricelj Baraga, Slavko Glamoanin / MoTA (SI): Public avatar, Martin Bricelj Baraga (SI): RoboVox; Aymeric Mansoux, Dave Griffiths, Marloes de Valk (FR, UK, NL): Naked on Pluto; Salvatore Iaconesi, Oriana Persico / Art is Open Source (IT): The Electronic Man; Matthieu Cherubini (CH): rep.licants.org; Martin Hans Schmitt (DE): Robot world

Opening performance
Marco Donnarumma (UK): Music for flesh II
Read more here.

 

‘Robots and Avatars – UK Selection’ is coming to London!

Produced and curated by body>data>space, Robots and Avatars – UK Selection will showcase a series of innovative digital artworks, as some of the most cutting edge examples of digital creativy from the UK t oday, in the field of virtual environments, telepresence, robotics and body technologies. The presented artworks are in part from a selection linked to our current projects MADE and  Robots & Avatars.

The Showcase will present the commissions from  body>data>space recent work with: Joseph Hyde “me and my shadow”, Michael Takeo Magruder “Visions of our Communal Dreams” and Atmos “Outreach”, alongside other UK-based creators.

CHECK THE PICTURES FROM THE LAUNCH HERE.

Read more here

 

Next step for Robots & Avatars

The Robots & Avatars Exhibition came to a close at the end of May at FACT, Liverpool after 10 weeks, with nearly 20.000 people visiting the Exhibition and exciting international press and TV coverage. Have a look to the TV episode that BBC Click dedicated at the Exhibition here.

Did you have a chance to play and draw with ADA, share your thoughts with Robovox, create holographic hand-ballet movement in Base8 or show off with meyouandus? Please share your stories and pictures with us and follow us via Robots and Avatars Twitter and Facebook.

Robots and Avatars showcases the most exciting visions and innovations from international artists, designers and architects, exploring their impact on the future of work and play. The Exhibition will be presented in London, at Europe House from 19th to 28th September 2012, so get ready for more cutting edge interaction blurring the boundaries between physical and virtual worlds!

It will tour onwards to KIBLA (Slovenia) and AltArt, Cluj-Napoca (Romania) in 2012.

 

Are humans ready to become digital? BBC Click feature on Robots & Avatars

“Technology is bringing the virtual and real world closer together.

The Robots and Avatars exhibition explores how people will work and play with new representational forms of themselves and others in virtual and physical life in the next 10 to 15 years.

Spencer Kelly went to the exhibition to get a vision of the future.”

See the full programme on BBC CLICK website

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