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| 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. |
