Art & Artificial Life International Competition
| Home | Entry | Editions | References | Español |

Chico MacMurtrie
Skeletal Reflections
USA

 

 

 
Skeletal Reflections is an autonomous humanoid robot that mimics gestures using the purely basic structure of the human form, a skeleton. Intentionally without a skin, the machine represents the significant merger between the human body and the machine. The sculpture interprets the body as a machine by exposing the mechanical functions, which in turn acknowledges the importance of the mechanism as sculpture and integrates an anatomical aspect into the piece. The involvement of a human participant is paramount to the work and detrimental in determining the machine’s responsive physical posture. The participant’s gesture is analysed using motion capture technology, digitised into algorithmic information and used to summon a classical pose from art history, which is ultimately generated by the humanoid machine.

In "Skeletal Reflections," the machine interprets a human gesture taken from the audience into one of the well-known classical poses found in art history. The exhibition encompasses the elaborate anatomical and postural studies made by art masters and the precise poses they thought best demonstrate the beauty and form of the human body. A.R.W. has stripped the human body to its skeletal essence and added a muscular and venous layer of technology to create a three dimensional interactive sculpture. The skeletal model is capable of not only taking different positions, but of also communicating a survey of historically significant poses. The placement of our anatomical machine is traditional poses offers the viewer an engaging kinetic study in human gesture and movement.
The exhibition also manifests the ways in which technology and traditional art have evolved. The kinetic sculpture’s skeletal form and function acts as a symbolic representation of the potential merger between man and machine, also art and technology. It is our intention to continue the investigation into the studies of form and function, and mathematical composition, which has been one of the fundamental goals throughout art history. The extraordinary contrasts between the classical art history poses and the pneumatically driven machine that links them to the audiences’ gestures reveals both the differences and the similarities that art and technology share.

Technical Information on the Project

Closed loop control of the figure’s position and movements is performed by a MediaMation HRBOX servo controller computer equipped with analog input and outputs. Movements are designed and programmed using composition software on a variety of computers and software, and stored within HRBOX. Startup, safety, shutdown and performance procedures are implemented on the HRBOX in the proprietary Showflow language.

HRBOX interprets joint position commands from an incoming or prerecorded MIDI data stream, and generates electrical commands to drive a bank of festo electro-pneumatic servo valves. The valves deliver precise electrically controlled airflow to each of the sculpture’s pneumatic actuators, which mechanically drive each joint. Position information for each joint is provided by data Instruments linear potentiometers, which are connected back to the HRBOX analog inputs. HRBOX drives each joint with a corrected control signal, "closing the loop", 500 times per second.

The motion capture and interpretation system consits of up to two PCs running video analysis software. Up to two views of the participant are observed. Frames are capture at up to 30 per second and are compared to the images in a stored database of pose frames. If an image matches, a message consisting of a pose value an a confidence value will be sent to HRBOX. Showflow software chooses the image match information with the highest confidence value, and directs the sculpture to execute a smooth interpolated motion sequence to arrive at the desired pose.

Biography
Amorphic Robot Works was formed in 1992. ARW is a San Francisco based group of artists, engineers and technicians working together to create robotic performances and installations. ARW's Artistic Director Chico MacMurtrie, describes his vision, "The work is an ongoing endeavor to uncover the primacy of movement and sound. Each machine is inspired or influenced, both, by modern society, and what I physically experience and sense. The whole of this input informs my ideas and work."

Chico MacMurtrie was born in New Mexico in 1961, and currently resides in San Francisco. He received his B.F.A. from the University of Arizona and an M.F.A. in New Forms and Concepts from the University of California at Los Angeles. He has been awarded four grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for Interdisciplinary Artists. Three of those have been Individual grants; one in 1988, one in 1990 and the other in 1991. The fourth grant was a collaborative grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1993 for the premiere of Trigram : A Robotic Opera, which was staged at Theatre Artaud in San Francisco. TRIGRAM was a feature story on The Next Step program on the Discovery Channel. He was a Performing Artist in Residence at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1989, and in 1990 received the San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award.

In 1991, MacMurtrie completed a month long tour of Europe, funded by an Arts International grant. During that time he travelled and performed in Czechoslovakia and presented an award winning performance at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, which appeared on television in Munich, Berlin, and Dortmund, Germany. The tour ended with performances in Amsterdam and an interactive installation at the Kijkhuis, in Den Haag, Holland. In February 1994, he was a Teaching Artist in Residence at the Chicago Art Institute. MacMurtrie was recently featured in Mark Deary's book Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century as well as the BBC special: Pandemonium. He recently completed a residency at the Headland's Center for the Arts and has begun work on a permanent interactive outdoor sculpture for the Yerba Buena Children's Place.