[dorkbotpgh-announce] R250: "Double-Taker" and "Fruit Machine"

[jet]

[If anyone else has R250 related information to share, please forward it 
to me.  thx. --jet]


You might have notice that Golan hasn't been at a dorkbot pgh for the 
past few months, here's what he's been up to....


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Double-Taker (Snout)" and "Fruit Machine": Friday evening July 18 at the PCA

Premieres of new artworks and performances by Golan Levin / Hilary Harp 
+ Suzie Silver

This Friday evening, 7pm - 11pm at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts 
(6300 5th Avenue)

Double-Taker (Snout)
Golan Levin's new interactive robotic work "Double Taker (Snout)" will 
premiere this Friday at 7pm at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, in 
association with the Pittsburgh Biennial and Robot250, and will be 
exhibited there through early August. This large, outdoor interactive 
installation deals in a whimsical manner with the themes of human eye 
contact, gestural choreography, subjecthood, and autonomous 
surveillance. Double-Taker (Snout) consists of an eight-foot tall, 
repurposed industrial robot arm, covered in a flexible reinforced-fabric 
costume. This animated arm, which resembles an inchworm or elephant's 
trunk, is controlled by a real-time vision-based computer system. 
Double-Taker (Snout) orients itself towards passers-by, tracking them 
and appearing to follow their movements. The goal of the sculpture is to 
perform convincing "double-takes" at its visitors, in which it appears 
to be continually surprised by the presence of its own viewers — 
communicating, without words, that there is something uniquely 
surprising about each of us.
More information at http://www.flong.com/projects/snout/.

Levin's 7pm opening at the PCA will be followed by a robot-themed 
performance at 9pm by Hilary Harp and Suzie Silver:

"AV Lodge Presents: Fruit Machine"
Hilary Harp and Suzie Silver invite you to an evening-length media 
performance combining video, sound, sculpture and live actions in a 
series of humorous and erotic tableau.  A parade of characters includes 
a life-sized toy robot, a phalloi phaerie, and an androgynous bagpipe 
player. Paying homage to the celebratory Vaudevillian variety theater 
performance art of the 1980s, Fruit Machine uses strategies of camp 
aesthetics to challenge hetero-normative assumptions.  The overall 
performance is more mutant musical or concert than play, placing a 
similar emphasis on sound and image. Among the costumes and props are 
wireless devices, which control video and sound in custom computer 
programs created in Max/MSP/Jitter and Processing.  Special guest 
appearances by School of Art Professor Lowry Burgess, School of Art 
alumni Drew Pavelchack, Ben Rod, Ben Bigelow, Spencer Longo, and current 
student, Jack Meade .
             "Fruit Machine" was a name given to a Canadian device 
designed during the Cold War to ferret out homosexuals from the civil 
service and the military. The subjects were made to view pornography, 
and the device measured the pupils of the eyes, perspiration, and pulse 
for a supposed erotic response. The word "fruit" in the title refers to 
both a quirky, eccentric or queer individual and to the fecund, sex 
organs of plants. "Machine" references the rather technical engineering 
of the lurid and antic images.


	
-- 
--jet at allartburns.org