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| In The Table: Childhood 1984-2001, a fully autonomous robotic table selects a viewer to attempt a relationship with that person. The table will not interact with everyone who comes into the room; it will choose only one viewer. As long as that visitor stays, he or she will be the object of the table’s attention. For dAPERTutto of 1999, I exhibited a robotic work, "As Yet Untitled", 1992-95. This intercative work sets up a situation in which visitors can intervene to stop the shredding of found family photographs. There is no "save" button and no "shred" button. The robotic arm shreds photos relentlessly unless a viewer stops the process. The viewer could simply watch, or walk away, allowing the photographs to be destroyed. The robot’s cycle of picking up, presenting and shredding photographs puts the viewer in a position of choice in the fate of family photos. Even doing nothing is a decision. Whatever one does is a public act. For the current exhibition, I am showing a work that reverses this process of choice. The Table switches the roles of viewer and object. The artwork and not the viewer is in the position of choice. My work has often addressed the museum –the choices of what is included, what is rejected and who chooses. In "As Yet Untitled", a selection process is inherent. One cannot save everything and choices must be made about what is looked at, what is ignored, what is kept and what is discarded. The viewer chooses whether or not to participate. In The Table I am empowering the object and giving it the responsibility for making selections of viewers. This focuses the attention of other viewers on one particular visitors, making that person the "object" of attention. My earlier work, "The Telephone Piece," (1982, rebuilt in 2000) also places attention on the viewer. "The Telephone Piece," a pavilion encircled by lines of audio tape, invites viewers to contact friends outside the museum. What is important is the relationship between participants. Like "The Table," the artwork falls away as an object, becoming transparent. Once viewers enter "The Telephone Piece" and choose to phone friends outside the museum, the dynamics of the conversations of people describing where they are and what they’re doing supersedes the sculptural context. "The Table" continues my interest in highlighting the behaviour of viewers. They soon become absorbed in their interaction with the table, anticipating what it might do and how to respond to its advances. Why has or hasn’t it moved? Why is one person picked and not another? If a selected viewer wishes, a conversation with this table is possible. While the table discovers the body language of the visitor, that person, in turn, can learn to interpret the table’s behaviour and have an engaging relationship with this machine, while others watch. "The Table: Childhood" is an early issue of a developing robot that will soon acquire increasingly complex capabilities. Regardless of its youth, it is fully autonomous and unpredictable, operating on its own, reacting to its environment, and to the behaviour of visitors who enter its space, responding with gestures of courtship. It will soon mature into adolescence, and with more experiences, to adulthood. The table is not only mobile, with an extensive catalogue of complex behaviours, but even at this early stage, its character is beginning to evolve, shaped by my collaborator, Raffaello D’ Andrea, a pioneer in the development of modern control systems. Raff has created the code for the table’s behaviours, and continues to develop its repertoire of abilities, enabling it to not only track objects of its affection and respond in various ways to the viewer’s movements, but also to accomplish this with masterful co-ordination, making its movements fluid and graceful, as if alive. The table has a vocabulary based loosely on the subtleties of how people meet. First it tries to catch the eye of the person it selected by drawing attention to itself, as if to say, "Excuse me? Hello? I’d like to meet you!" suggested by a wiggle, or slight motion from side to side. It attempts to show the selected viewer’s motions, speed of movements, responses to the table’s behaviour, and general conditions in the room, the table might try to get closer. Throughout the encounter, the table monitors the chosen visitor’s physical reactions. If that person is unresponsive, "The Table" tries harder: it might initiate an action enticing the viewer to copy it; it might dance by itself, turning on its axis with an elegant pirouette; it might decide to chase – or even to flee. Once some kind of relationship is established, depending on the actions of the viewer, the table determines how to handle the situation, whether lyrically or aggressively. If there is a crowd in the room, preventing it from interacting with any one single person, it may wander around as if at a cocktail party, searching for someone with whom to relate. Like people meeting for the first time, sometimes the table will connect and sometimes not. But once the table picks someone, it is loyal, making every attempt to stay with that person. Indeed, if there are people between the table and its choice, the table will try to circumvent them to get its chosen viewer. While the table has a range of performances, it is the selected person’s reactions to the courtship that is the focus of the audience. Leaving "As Yet Untitled" was troubling for some viewers, because it led to the loss of family photos. Similarly, the departure of the chosen visitor may leave the table struggling to follow. But it can’t. The sculpture is trapped in the museum, with a doorway too narrow for exit. One question which might occur to viewers is, "Does the table move when there is no one in the room?" (It doses.) Technical Specifications The computer equipment includes a Dell computer with dual Pentium III processors. It has a Matrox vision system board installed and is running with Windows 2000 Professional. There is also the complete custom software package that runs the table. There is a 17 inch monitor and a radio modem. The work uses a power conditioner when running. The vision System uses a Hitachi CCD camera with a Royal 4.5 mm lens. The room is illuminated with two photo/film space lights. Each fixture is capable of producing 6000 watts of light (running with 3000 watts or three lamps in each fixture is ideal). The exhibition space for the room should roughly conform to a 3 to 4 ratio. This represents the same ratio of the video camera image used by the vision system. |
