WPG Home

About The Gallery

Exhibitions

Upcoming

Commissions and
Special Projects

Collections

Archives

Touring

Public Programs

Reel Time Film Series

Publications/Research

Media Releases

Work Study Opportunities

Curatorial Residencies

Banff International Curatorial Institute

Visual Arts

Partners/Sponsors

Contact

Subscribe to Email Updates

Hours and Location

Facility Details

Sentient Circuitry, an exhibition of robotic sculpture and objects from popular culture, explores both the technological and metaphorical impact of robots on Western culture. The exhibition probes several themes related to robotics such as artificial intelligence, the post-human landscape and science fiction. The artists – Ken Rinaldo, Reva Stone, Bill Vorn and Norman T. White – challenge conventional definitions of robots and explore alternative modes of agency that question the idea of sentience, personality, dysfunction and community. Their works reflect a burgeoning interest in the creation of interactive, evolving, and intelligent art that responds to contemporary representations of artificial intelligence in science and popular culture.

Reva Stone identifies her work Carnevale 3.0 as a motorized, life-size, double aluminum cutout of herself as a young girl. (Note: Carnevale 2.0, pictured, is the previous incarnation of this work.) The autonomous form roams the gallery space recording encounters with visitors and projecting "memories" of these interactions that fade over time, from a video projection unit. The work encapsulates several themes that have been a concern for Stone for the past several years. Her interests have focused on how we, particularly in Western society, increasingly interface with machines that are steadily weaving themselves into our lives to the point of near invisibility. The piece also addresses issues related to the body and potentials for the future regarding the mechanical versus organic body.

Hysterical Machine is the latest incarnation of a series of work by Bill Vorn, entitled La Cour des Miracles first begun as a collaboration with Louis-Phillipe Demers. Like the earlier series, the Hysterical Machine addresses the idea of diversity and deviant behaviour. By way of the creature’s sudden and often convulsive movements, clattering joints and damaged surfaces, Vorn creates an impression of dysfunction. The situational environment for his construction, replete with lights, sounds and spectacle transports us to another world. A future world perhaps, where agency is played out in a kind of freak-show of the unproductive and where mechanical life forms go when they no longer serve a functional purpose other than to entertain.

Like Vorn’s Hysterical Machine, Norman T. White’s Helpless Robot reveals an ever-present assumption that machines must serve a human need or function. A speaking machine, Helpless Robot can move only with human assistance. A parody of emotionally manipulative and co-dependent human behaviour, the machine senses human presence and begins pleading politely for help. Through this work, White attempts to shatter some of the clichés generally held about automata (that they lack personality for one) and expand commonly held preconceptions about artists and their relationship to their works.

Ken Rinaldo’s work is influenced by theories on living systems and artificial life. His investigations began over a decade ago with a series of reactive sculptures, titled Cyber Squeaks (1990-1995). The series of individual zoomorphic robotic works, singly and collectively mimic organisms like birds and insects demonstrating seemingly life-like behaviours. For his more recent work, Autopoiesis , Rinaldo calls into service a series of individual robotic works that, like the Cyber Squeaks before them, interact with and respond to each other and the public. The collective is able to communicate through a hardwired network and audible telephone tones seem to convey a sense of emotion. Rinaldo’s intention is that like a child, the behaviours of Autopoiesis will evolve as it experiences new exhibition environments and new contacts with visitors.

Unlike other forms of art, robotic artworks are not only objects to be perceived by the public but are themselves often capable of perceiving the public, responding according to the possibilities of their technical apparatuses. As artists continue to push the very limits of art, they introduce robotics as a new medium at the same time that they challenge our understanding of robots – questioning our premises in conceiving, building, and employing these electronic creatures. By expanding the traditionally narrow definition of robots held in science and industry, robotic art makes room for social criticism and commentary, and the free play of imagination.

Excerpted from Melanie Townsend’s essay "Sentient Circuitry: The Polemics of Artificial Life".

NOTE: The works included in Sentient Circuitry will be new incarnations of those pictured here, refined for the Walter Phillips Gallery's exhibit.

For more information on the artists in this exhibition:

Reva Stone
http://members.shaw.ca/revastone/

Bill Vorn
http://www.fondation-langlois.org/f/projets/623-5-2001/623-5-2001.html

Ken Rinaldo
http://accad.osu.edu/~rinaldo/
http://www.artnode.dk/contri/rinaldo/index.html

Norman T. White
http://www.normill.com/

Other Artists Making Robots:
Survival Research Labs:http://www.srl.org
Amorphic Robot Works: http://www.cronos.net/~bk/amorphic/
Ullanta Performance Robotics: http://www-robotics.usc.edu/~barry/ullanta/
Art and Robotics Group: http://www.interaccess.org/arg/
Marc Thorpe: http://www.marcthorpe.com/
Ken Goldberg: http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/art/

Robot History:
http://www.roboscience.com/

Working Robots:
http://mama.agr.okayama-u.ac.jp/lase/straw.html
http://www.friendlyrobotics.com
http://robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/tasks/rams/homepage.html
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~johannb/nurserob.htm

Robotic Competitions:
http://www.robotgames.com/
http://www.robotwars.com/
http://www.subcutaneous.org/robotics.html

Robot Societies:
San Francisco Robotics Society of America: http://www.robots.org/coolstuf.htm
The Robot Group: http://www.robotgroup.org/