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.
New projects have kept regular updates and new posts at bay...
However, in the mean time, there is news from the Lost and Foundry Studios in Oakland California, home to two of our favorite artists, Nemo Gould and Jeremy Mayer. An open house and new exhibition entitled, Natural Selection will be held on May 12th with the opening reception the day before.
New works will be displayed as well as the studios of Jeremy Mayer and Jesse Small being open for exploring. (I wish I was going to be in California then) I'm sure it will be a fantastic show.
Working with metal and mechanical objects has been a passion of Gabriel Dishaw since his early teens. Eventually developing into an art practice and philosophy surrounding the up-cycling of discarded electronic and mechanical 'junk', Dishaw finds an outlet for his creative expression that, according to him "both helps me and the environment".
Sourcing found objects from abandoned typewriters, adding machines and old computers, Dishaw painstakingly assembles his creations, wrapping and stitching the items together using metal wire.
Fembot
Photo: Coleman Norris
According to his artist statement "I begin each sculpture with an idea of how can I take these found pieces of useless metal and insignificant objects and create something that everyone can understand and relate to. I find myself looking at ordinary mechanical items to see how I could turn that something, into something else not originally intended for that use."
PRECOG triggers Uncanny Valley type unease as the organic and inorganic world collide. We are forced to recognize something altogether familiar, yet eerily menacing, and cannot help but ponder if we are gazing at an ancestor of our future demise. A combination of custom fabricated and found object construction, PRECOG features an embedded Ipod Nano which projects subtle video (or visions) onto the lenses of each of the three eyes. The full color source video is mechanically broken down into the three additive primary colors. (RedGreenBlue)
'Scarlett' - 2011
Another sublime creation from Christopher Conte entitled Scarlett, was featured in the show "Conjoined", curated by Chet Zar, at Copro Gallery in Santa Monica, California. Christopher's work has a (literal) polish and finish that makes them look like fully functional production pieces that one might expect to see wandering around in search of some fresh oil... This may explain why he has sold every piece he has ever made.
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)
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.
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'
Guillaume Reymond, the French-Swiss award-winning artist, has stepped out of the traditional box for his art project series Transformers. Outside and up, in fact. Way, way, up. Requiring the use of a Zeppelin to fully realize, a collection of vehicles (from Garbage and Fire trucks to Buses and Ambulances) are carefully positioned, revealing massive, transformer-like, robots in parking lots and fields. So far there are three in the Transformers series. One and Two are featured below.
Transformers#3 is only available at the artist's website. (By the artists request, so as to leave you something to discover on your own.)
"The Robotic Chair" (Max Dean, Raffaello D'Andrea, Matt Donovan) in the short film Robotic Chair by Peter Lynch. The chair contains 14 motors, two gearboxes and various electronics. Sensors and algorithms aid the robot in re-uniting its missing parts.
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
Contact Us
You may contact us, to suggest submissions for review, comment or inquire, complain or even to compliment. Just please don't spam us.
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.
The following botShot resources are available for you to make use of including two brand NEWcustom Widgets ('Recent Posts with pictures' and a 'Slideshow' version) that you can add and feature botShots great content on your own blog or website.
Just click on 'Get Widget' underneath each Widget.
BotShots Blidget
Spread The Love
If you'd like to indicate your work is featured on botShots, or you just like the site and want to help us spread the word, you can link to us using the newly created botShot badge!
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?
