December 2, 2011, to February 19, 2012, the FRAC Centre presents Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello d’Andrea, Flight Assembled Architecture, the first installation to be built by flying machines.

In 2011, Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello D’Andrea started to develop a pioneering approach on dynamic material formation and machine behaviour.

Belonging to the generation of young architects aiming at using the full potential of digital design and fabrication, Gramazio & Kohler joined with Raffaello D’Andrea whose work addresses ground-breaking autonomous systems design and algorithms. Continue reading

Antidatamining VIII: Trading Robot Performance by RYBN — a panoptic installation in The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds After 1989 @ ZKM :: September 17, 2011 - February 5, 2012.

Engaging finance in its most recent and complex developments, RYBN has undertaken the construction of its own amateur trading bot, designed to invest and speculate on the financial markets. Its decisions are taken with the help of an internal algorithmic intelligence system, and can be influenced by a wide range of external arbitrary parameters. The whole decision system allows the program to foresee the next moves in the markets, while it tries to identify and anticipate the relevant and effective patterns within the financial chaotic oscillations. The performance stops when the robot reaches bankruptcy. Continue reading

RAM | Rethinking Art and Machine with Jim Campbell, Alan Rath, Daniel Rozin, Peter Vogel, George Legrady, David Rokeby :: September 15, 2011 - January 22, 2012 :: THEMUSEUM, 10 King Street West, Kitchener, ON N2G 1A3, Canada. Continue reading

Spiral Drawing Sunrise, a device for the site specific recording of sunrises by Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum :: September 14-20, 2011; times here :: part of ISEA2011.

Spiral Drawing Sunrise’s main component is a “phototropic car”, a small robotic rover that runs on solar energy, not unlike the carts used by NASA to explore the environments of distant planets. Except that this cart is designed to make observations of a distant body, the sun, in familiar settings, like a public square. It functions as a kind of sun-powered, mobile hour glass: the cart, tight to a pole with a longinsh rope, moves when its panels have collected a given amount of sunlight. And as it continuously deposits sand, the cart leaves behind a patterned spiral trail. Continue reading

The Interception series of actions consists of the illegal interception of CCTV cameras monitoring urban areas. Continue reading

Robots and Avatars :: Call for Proposals — Deadline: September 7, 2011.

Robots and Avatars is an intercultural, intergenerational and interdisciplinary exploration of a near future world consisting of collaborations between robots, avatars, virtual worlds, telepresence and real time presence within creative places, work spaces, cultural environments, interactive entertainment and play space.

Robots and Avatars will present two Development Commissions and additionally a minimum of six existing works as an Exhibition in 2012. Lead producer and concept developer of this EU Culture project is body>data>space and the partner for the commissions is National Theatre in London. Continue reading

Käthe-Kollwitz-Prize 2011: Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller — Award Ceremony and opening of Pariser Platz :: June 28, 2011; 7:00 pm :: Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, Plenarsaal, Berlin.

The Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2011 has been awarded jointly to Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. On this occasion the artist duo from Canada will be showing four works in the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts). The exhibition at Pariser Platz will focus on the construction and deconstruction of acoustic perception and illusionist spaces. The real occurrences in Cardiff’s and Miller’s stories only reveal themselves when people enter the space and engage their visual and tactile senses. Continue reading

Federico Díaz: outside itself at the Veniice Biennale :: June 4 - September 30, 2011 :: Opening: June 4; 6:00 pm :: Nappa 90, Arsenale Novissimo, Venice.

Federico Díaz, acclaimed Prague-based artist, is creating a self-replicating, site-specific sculptural installation shaped by viewer-inspired data that gives new meaning to the term “going viral.” Imagine thousands of black spheres morphing according to changes in ambient light generated by the fluid interactivity of viewers. A mathematical program enables two robots to build, and together, arrange about 2,000 5-centimeter-diameter balls every 12 hours. Continue reading

DATAPOLIS @ Enter, 5th International Art | Science | Technology Biennale :: April 15-17, 2011 (Limited version of the exhibition will run until Sunday, April 24, 2011) :: Opening: April 14; 6:00 pm :: National Technical Library (NTK), Technická 6,160 80 Praha 6 - Dejvice.

DATAPOLIS is one evening and three days of full-size experiment in art and technology. The exhibition addresses interactions of media technologies, novel visualization practices and urban realities. Exhibiting artists from all over the world discover moods and rhythms of our cities, bodies and planet. They innovatively mash both visible and invisible data that re-present individual and collective lives and actions. Continue reading

Afflator — by Nick Knouf — breathes upon the conditions of today’s robotic creatures that are pulled into the muck of mimesis. To have a robot that is spoken to in natural language, that walks in a bipedal fashion, is the research that is valorised. Afflator deforms these conditions to suggest that the robotic form does not need to resemble anything we have seen before, that the means of engagement with a robot can be something other than traditional language and movement. Draping from the gallery ceiling and extending along the floor in a wave of fabric, Afflator unfolds onto contemporary robotics research to suggest other ethico-political options for engagement with the robotic other.

Extending from Afflator is a tube with an attached mask, worn by the gallery visitor to create a machinic assemblage of human and creature. Continue reading