"->forside

Modern life is defined by humanity's love/hate relationship with its technological creations. It's in our nature to see life, personality and intention where none exists. I curse my computer when its software crashes, and thump my radio as it drifts off tune. These devices are not sorry for what they've done, they feel no pain. Yet I can't help feeling that they do. RoboThespian exploits the human desire to see life everywhere, it is an anthropomorphic machine, a dot on the graph that starts with automata, and will end when we are no longer able to distinguish the living from the mechanised.

RoboThespian demonstrates that utility is not a prerequisite for existence, a concept familiar to the artist but alien to the engineer. 'Necessity is the mother of invention', a received wisdom, but necessity is not the mother of this invention, I doubt they are even related at all.

In this sense RoboThespian is a medium like theatre, but more akin to cinema and television. It automates and removes actual human interaction and replaces it with a mechanical analogue of humanity. Being fully interactive, multilingual, and user friendly, it can communicate and entertain in a way that few people have experienced before.

Is RoboThespian a glimpse of a forthcoming technological utopia, or a dire warning of what may come to be? It is trivial, yet it touches on some profound questions that confront us all. At the very least it's hugely entertaining.

Link:
Engineered Arts Ltd.

[image source: Engineered Arts]
[source: Vive Les Robots!]