botShots is an expanding and evolving resource for artists, students, educators and enthusiasts of both art and robots.
Featuring the 'Best-in-Show' of the Robot Art world in any media, we keep the editorializing to a minimum and strive to let the work speak for itself. Our statement on quality was made by it's inclusion in our collection.
Each image is linked to a larger version for more detailed examination and a link to the website of each artist featured is also provided.
Michael Mew was kind enough to send this Holiday greeting to BotShots so I thought I'd pass it on, along with our best wishes to all our readers in the new year. Stay tuned to see what we have in store for the coming year. Brand new shiny (and not so shiny) Robots... Yay!
Sorry for the lack of action here of late. I hope it has given everyone time to fully explore the blog and the artists featured. Now time for more, juicy, new content... Well, almost time. New posts are... on there way with some great new content and images. Hope you are all having a great summer so far. Check back for NEW stuff starting again this Fall...
The amazing Mr. Nemo Gould is at it again. Crafting stunning sculptures out of found objects and recovered materials and continuing to blaze a trail in the world of RecTech, kinetic sculpture, robot art, recycling and creative expression.
(If I am gushing it's because I really love his work - and he's a really nice guy too, which is always nice...)
His works inspire wonder and fascination from materials that, before he got his masterful mits on, were destined to crowd our growing landfills.
His well trained eye sees what the rest of us mistake as worthless trash and his brain instructs his hands to fashion his fantastic visions, elevating the previous scrap to powerful statements of beauty and value, where none existed before.
His art informs us that our aesthetic tastes are fooled by broken metal and a bit of rust. Once polished, joined and re-configured, it's aesthetic worth is unmistakable.
'The Boogeyman' - 2009 (Photo: Cameron Platt)
'The Boogeyman' detail - 2009 (Photos: Cameron Platt)
I have been less prolific with my posts of late... they will be starting up more regularly again soon...
Until then, some brain candy....
True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
(Possibly explains why good robot art makes me so emotional :) )
Award winning rock and roll poster artist Emek draws much of his inspiration from the culture, and of course counter-culture, of his parent's sixties. He himself missed that decade, although you'd never know it by looking at a lot of his art. With both his parents artists and sharing, not only their 'creative' and 'talent' genes but also, their music and other influences, he was uniquely suited or perhaps destined for the work he does now.
This helps explain the 'psychedelic' side but not exactly the 'industrial' and 'robo-mechanical' aspects to many of his works. This side of him seems more a mystery, as to it's origins, yet he makes no secret of his love of melding the mechanical with the organic, crafting surreal and fantastical images from his rich imagination and infusing them with his, often ironic, sometimes sardonic, sense of humor and social commentary.
'Evolution - Go Back'
'Coheed and Cambria' - Gig Poster
'SpeakerBot/SpeakerGirl' for Erica Badu
Original Artwork for Red Hot Chili Peppers
Original Artwork for Tool
Album cover for Les Rita Mitsouko
Album cover for Les Rita Mitsouko
'Last Picnic' by Emek
(Posted with Artist Permission)
Part 3 will follow (in a future feature) and contain additional works from Emek, including an animation and in-progress illustrations as well as a preview of an upcoming feature on Emek's father, also an artist interested in robots and machines in art.
This is in fact a quote from Paul Hoc's very own web page at Object Graphik. Paul Hoc is not a robot. I humbly beg to differ. Not because it sounds like it should be printed on a T-shirt or the rally-cry of the obsessed fans of the 'real' Paul Hoc, an American painter of the 1950's but because Paul Hoc is, most definitely, a robot.
Why do I make such a claim, when even his designers/creators say differently?
To quote pioneering roboticist Joseph Engelberger "I can't define a robot, but I know one when I see one." (which incidentally is why there is no definition of Robot supplied on BotShots).
Created and designed by POB Technology and the artists at Object Graphik, of France, for the 2008 Saint Etienne International design biennial, Paul Hoc physically traverses paper and canvas to create intricate, geometiric, illustrations born of digital code and mathematical algorithms.
While Californian artist Reuben Margolin does not exactly make 'robots', he is (forgive me) making waves that have implications and applications in both art and robotics.
His creative impulses include drawing, painting, furniture and even rolling-vehicle making, yet it is his mastery of kinetic sculpture, natural materials and motions, analogue controls (in a digital world) and theatrically dramatic presentations, often hypnotically captivating, that required his inclusion in this gallery.
'Magic Wave'
This is one of the biggest and most complex examples of kinetic art in the world. The 'Magic Wave' is an aluminum grid suspended by 256 cables and the overhead mechanics contain 3000 pulleys, 5 kilometers of steel cable, and 9 motors. In all more than 50000 parts. It was a collaboration with the staff at Technorama Swiss Science Center and displays wave characteristics of Wavelength, Amplitude and Frequency.
Video of 'Magic Wave' from the opening show at Technorama
'Round Wave'
Detail 'Round Wave'
Video of 'Round Wave' Video by: Michele Orlando
'Spiral Wave' by Reuben Margolin Video by Michele Orlando
(Posted with Artist Permission)
The following video for MAKE: TV is a fascinating profile of Reuben, his work and his process. I found it not only compelling but, more importantly, inspiring - as an artist and as a lover of art. It is included here in the hopes it has the same effect on others.
This robotic humanoid from Toyota can, arguably, play the violin. Now I want to see ten more of these paired with a few of the percussive pianos from LEMUR's 'gig' at the National Gallery of Art. Things are really starting to get interesting now...
Peter Pochylski likes his robots retro and made of wood. So that's exactly how he builds them. Large or small, these warm, wooden, constructs are infused with a charming humor and unique, age-worn, style.
Like characters from the earliest science-fiction films, many of Peter's pieces seem to tell a story or, at least, play their part in some larger, grander, drama.
Not surprising, perhaps, considering the clear influences from Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Alex Raymond and even The Jetsons, that seem to inform his work and direct his steampunk/retro-future style.
'The Seeker'
'Big Fish Walker'
'Quad Walker V2' and 'Blue Snipper Robotosaurus'
'GrannyBot w/ Fresh Cookies' and 'The Littlest Centurion'
Perhaps no other mechanical device has inspired artists to create, in every imaginable media, while also being so easily accepted as an art form by the art establishment and loved by the community at large.
It is not really an obvious pairing. Robots and art. Machines are not often thought of in that way. ________________________________
So what makes Robots so different?
The BabbleBot
Bot Clock - EST (GMT -5:00)
ArtBots - Robots in, and as, Art
The Robot has been a muse for Artists for over a century. From paintings, drawings and animations, films and videos, sculptures, music, furniture, design elements of architecture, clothing and even food.
The Robot - as inspiration and icon - is everywhere.
RecTech:A term I coined to describe - The fusion (or use) of Recycled or Reclaimed material(s) with Technology or into Technologically inspired, aesthetically pleasing, pieces/objects (functional or not), usually for the purposes of Art. (whew)
It is, in fact, a moral imperative, an aesthetic and a philosophy.
Can we justify the creation of 'new' art whilst we continue to over-consume, and therefor produce 'waste', beyond our capacity to reasonably and safely contain it?
Should we be sending tons of our 'instantly-obsolete' techno-gadets and aged computers to fashion third-world mountains of hazardous waste?
Is everything we throw away - garbage?
Is it all no longer useful?
Is it without potential to become, at least, aesthetically pleasing?
Clearly (and luckily) vision, creativity, talent and passion, say differently. It may just be what saves us.
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Android: a robot designed to look and act human.[1] The word derives from ανδρός, the genitive of the Greek ανήρ anēr, meaning "man", and the suffix -eides, used to mean "of the species; alike" (from eidos, "species"). Though the word derives from a gender-specific root, its usage in English is usually gender neutral; the female counterpart, gynoid, is generally used only when the female gender is a distinguishing trait of the robot. The term was first mentioned by St. Albertus Magnus in 1270[2] and was popularized by the French writer Villiers in his 1886 novel L'Ève future, although the term "android" appears in US patents as early as 1863 in reference to miniature humanlike toy automations.[3]
Cyborg: a cyberneticorganism (i.e., an organism that has both artificial and natural systems). The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space.[1] D. S. Halacy's Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman in 1965 featured an introduction by Manfred Clynes, who wrote of a "new frontier" that was "not merely space, but more profoundly the relationship between 'inner space' to 'outer space' -a bridge...between mind and matter."[2] The cyborg is often seen today merely as an organism that has enhanced abilities due to technology,[3] but this perhaps oversimplifies the category of feedback.
Steampunk: is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian eraEngland—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" of such technology as dirigibles or analog computers; these frequently are presented in an idealized light, or a presumption of functionality.
RetroFuture: Retro-futurism, retrofuturism, retro-future or retrofuture, terms combining "retro" and "futurism" or "future", can refer to two distinct concepts: A style of design or art or a sociopolitical ideology.
Retrofuturistic design is a return to, and an enthusiasm for, the depictions of the future produced in the past (most often the 1920s through 1960s), both in science fiction and in nonfiction futurism of the time, which often seem dated by modern standards.[1] The ideology combines retrograde sociopolitical views with techno-utopianism.
[3]
Why does California, and the San Francisco 'Bay Area' specifically, seem to be home to as many Robot Artists as Japan has 'actual' Robots and roboticists?
Is there just something in the water or air, like whatever is responsible for producing all of their blond women? Is it being so close to Silicon Valley or Hollywood? What is with that?
(If I am gushing it's because I really love his work - and he's a really nice guy too, which is always nice...)
Award winning rock and roll poster artist Emek draws much of his inspiration from the culture, and of course counter-culture, of his parent's sixties. He himself missed that decade, although you'd never know it by looking at a lot of his art. With both his parents artists and sharing, not only their 'creative' and 'talent' genes but also, their music and other influences, he was uniquely suited or perhaps destined for the work he does now.
"Paul Hoc is not a robot."
Peter Pochylski likes his robots retro and made of wood. So that's exactly how he builds them. Large or small, these warm, wooden, constructs are infused with a charming humor and unique, age-worn, style.
