Robots-in-Residence: Give the robots a voice

(2004)

an installation by Mark Polishook
at the Main Library in Aarhus, Denmark
from 15 June to 1 July (2004)

ROBOTS-IN-RESIDENCE (http://robots.daimi.au.dk) is a hybrid installation in a physical location and on the www. The core materials of Robots-in-Residence are its Lego robots, with which the audience communicates through the medium of email, the network web cam that watches over the installation and its visitors in the Main Library, and the modified Eliza chatterbot that create the dialogues that are spoken by the voices of a speech synthesizer.

The dialogues are source material that the installation uses to compose episodes of robotic melodrama and an ongoing soundscape. The dialogues also determine when the robots gyrate and dance. Internet visitors can listen to streaming audio, see streaming video, both of which are broadcast from the installation site, and, of course send email to give the robots a voice.

Transcripts of the dialogues are posted on the main page of the installation and they're also returned to audience members who send mail.

From: the_posthumans@daimi.au.dk
Subject: Greetings from Robots-in-Residence
Date: March 2, 2004 1:25:06 PM CET
To: polishoo@daimi.au.dk

posthuman -> what's the point of this installation?
robot -> Are such questions much on your mind?
posthuman -> what can it do?
robot -> Speak. I am interested in how your thoughts separate from your body.
posthuman -> can it make bread?
robot -> Why have you even bothered to communicate?

Robots-in-Residence, an internet-enabled installation that watches its audience through the posthuman "I" of a web cam, raises questions about what occurs when autonomous individuals become parts of a distributed network. What distinguishes, for example, the personal email of audience members who communicate with the Robots-in-Residence system from the data captured by networked surveillance systems? Do audience members participate in Robots-in-Residence? Or are they symbolically detained and telematically surveilled through the automated collection of email and transmission of video to the www?

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The Main Library in Aarhus is open from 10am (CET) to 7pm, Monday through Friday and 10am to 2pm on Saturdays. The webcam and streaming audio broadcast 24 hrs. a day.

Robots-in-Residence will shown in the 12th International Audio Art Festival in Crakow, Poland on 12 November.

Robots-in-Residence home page
http://robots.daimi.au.dk

for further information
polishoo@daimi.au,dk