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The Paparazzi Bots is a series of five autonomous robots each standing at the height of the average human. Comprised of multiple microprocessors, cameras, sensors, code and robotic actuators on a custom-built rolling platform, they move at the speed of a walking human, avoiding walls and obstacles while using sensors to move toward humans. They seek one thing, which is to capture photos of people and to make these images available to the press and the world wide web as a statement of culture's obsession with the “celebrity image” and especially our own images. The flash autonomously goes off, capturing people’s photos and elevating them to “celebrity” in a kind of momentary anointing by the robots. The robots also become celebrities through their association to the “famous people” at the exhibition that are captured by the Paparazzi Bots.
Each autonomous robot can make the decision to take the photos of particular people, while ignoring other humans in the exhibition, based on things such as, whether or not the viewers are smiling or the shape of their smile. When the robots identify a person or group they will automatically adjust their focus and use a series of bright flashes to record that moment.
Surveillance technologies straddle a delicate balance that we have in contemporary culture, where we are all photographed without our knowledge by cell phones, hidden cameras and sometimes “celebritized”. This is a kind of modern baptism with the camera flash and the spectacle of being the focus of the camera becoming a kind of techno anointing.
This work explores ideas surrounding the shifting territories of self and machine and how machines can manipulate the other (us) in a grand co-evolutionary dance of emerging robot-human relations.
The recent emergence of social networks and their ability to connect people through software prompts via the world wide web is a prime example of the co-evolution of humans and their intelligent machines. The fact that the software prompts exploit our social needs for connectivity and social space is so easily exploited in this new critical juncture in our emerging machine human relations.
This camera can track your head and be set to take a photo if you smile mildly, medium-smile or pull-a-muscle smile. When set to smile mode, they do seem to prefer even smiles rather than crooked smiles so here the machine is making determinations about issues of "beauty". I have considered holding a robot beauty contest as an addition to this work.
By Ken Rinaldo.
Special Thanks to Shirley Madill curator who invited these works to Toronto for Nuit Blanche
Special Thanks to Amy Youngs the midwife to the birth of these robots.
Thanks to the Dynasty Foundation, Russia and Dmitry Bulatov Curator, for funding this robot Commission.
Thanks to Malcolm Levy who invited the production of three more Paparazzi Bots for the Vancouver Olympics in 2010
Thanks to the College of Arts and Humanities for further funding of this project.
All my photos are available for multiple purposes, specially for publishing, so if you are interested in to get copies and use permissions, don't hesitate in to contact me (e-mail: visiontorres@gmail.com). The payment of royalties is necessary, but the fees are pretty cheap. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Esta y otras fotografías están disponibles para su venta en formato digital en alta resolución y en versiones impresas de alta calidad en edición limitada (previa solicitud). Se pueden adquirir los derechos de uso con fines comerciales, educativos o académicos. Para establecer contacto: E-mail: visiontorres@gmail.com
Again, I had my chems entirely too cold. Also, I'm pretty sure I was using a paper that didn't want to lith. I finally just got fed up waiting for something to happen, so I flipped the print upside down in the tray and just left the darkroom. The diagonal lines on the pic come from the lines on the bottom of the tray.
Anyway, I'll know better for next time.