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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.
At the Lancaster County Super Fair, 4-H/FFA Static Exhibit categories for youth ages 8-18 include Foods & Nutrition; Clothing; Science, Engineering & Technology; Horticulture; Photography; Home Environment; and General Areas. 4-H Clover Kids are youth ages 5-7.
Photo a day #2.
Not sure if I like how this turned out, it seems kind of busy but I feel its a fine line between too busy and too simple, yet I want to find myself somewhere in the middle.
Lake detour from the forests.
I love the variety of landscapes Texas has to offer.
I need to take advantage of the weather before 100 degrees is the low temperature of the day.
I took pattern 4.2.3 from Jackson’s book “Cut and Fold Techniques for Pop-Up Designs” and repeated it twice more on the left, while on the right, I repeated the pattern five additional times with repeated shrinking of 75%,
Look at this!
This is an ancient horse chestnut tree in Headington Hill Park, Oxford, with amazing growth. The top of the trunk of the original tree has now gone. Three lower branches at some time dipped down to the ground and there's a mature tree formed at the end of each. [This view from the original trunk, looking towards two of the three offshoot trees.]
The helpful website Daily Info tells me that "at some point in the distant past it appears to have been struck by lightning. Not to be beaten, it re-rooted three branches which are now tall and sturdy trees in their own right, all still plugged in to the motherlode, as it were." here
Photo by Jason Ness for NAIT's www.nait.ca/techlife magazine.
See www.flickr.com/photos/randytroppmann/1927389370/in/set-72...
UPDATE: Congratulations got to Derek Lue and Jason Ness who won a Bronze Medal in the 27th Annual CASE District VIII Communications Awards for this photo.
Zihuatanejo
Alas, the wonderfully funky meters of Zihuatanejo are long gone, along with just about everything else that made the town interesting. The gentritouristification of the centro turistico turned Zihuatanejo into a generic gringo tourist ghetto, losing almost every shred of individuality and Mexico in the process, except for the name, which isn't really the name. The official name is Jose Azueto.
I think some bureaucrat's cousin must have had the contract for the awnings, and another for the signs, both of which make it look more fakey wild west than Mexico. So sad, but I'm sure the generic gringos love it now, and I wish I had taken a lot more photos back when.