Chico MacMurtrie’s Inflatable Bodies

http://www.realtimearts.net/rt72/reid_inflatable.html

Chico MacMurtrie’s Inflatable Bodies is the latest in a series of works that explore the possibilities of robotics in art. For the Experiemental Art Foundation’s Adelaide Festival of Arts exhibition, MacMurtrie constructed a series of forms resembling birds in flight. Each ‘bird’ comprises 2 thin cones, symbolising wings, with a total span of about 4 metres, suspended near shoulder height from the gallery ceiling. The birds ‘flap’ slowly, suggesting a flock of pelicans moving in single file following a curving line that is intended, MacMurtie says, to evoke the meandering Murray River.

Chico MacMurtrie, Inflatable Bodie, photo: Duke Albada

Rebecca Horn

http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_66_3.html

Located in the nexus between body and machine, Rebecca Horn’s work transmogrifies the ordinary into the enigmatic. In a career that has spanned more than 30 years and traversed varied stylistic ground—from Performance [more] to sculptural installations and feature-length films—Horn has continually returned to the body, the source of her beginnings as an artist.
Blue Monday Strip, 1993. Typewriters, ink, metal, and motors, approximately 192 1/8 x 137 inches overall. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Gift of the artist. 93.4231. Rebecca Horn © 2003 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

fish-bird circle b-movement c

http://www.artspace.org.au/2005/10/velonaki.html

Fish-Bird Circle B-Movement C is an interactive installation that explores the dialogical possibilities between two autokinetic objects (two robotic wheelchairs) and their audience. Assisted by integrated writing arms, the chairs write intimate letters on the floor, impersonating two characters, Fish and Bird, who fall in love but can not be together due to ‘technical’ difficulties. In their shared isolation, Fish and Bird communicate intimately with one another via movement and text.

Ballet mécanique Washington March 12-May 7, 2006!

http://www.antheil.org/

The Ballet mécanique is Antheil's most famous—or notorious—piece. At its various premieres, it caused tremendous controversy, not to mention fistfights. Although it was very successful in Paris, it was a huge flop when it came to New York, and in fact Antheil's career as a "serious" composer never recovered from that debacle.

The re-created orchestra consisted of 16 MIDI-compatible grand player pianos, provided by the Gulbransen division of QRS Music, and three xylophones, four bass drums, a tam-tam, a siren, and three "airplane propellors," all controlled by MIDI, using robotics built by the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, under the direction of Eric Singer.

http://lemurbots.org/

crap CBS news doco here

http://www.antheil.org/audio/CBSSundayMorningWeb.mov

Shawn Decker

http://www.shawndecker.com/ 

A Small Migration, 2004

A Small Migration was a piece first presented as part of the show “Sonic Differences” which was a part of the Biennial of Electronic Art Perth, in 2004. This work is a direct extension of my previous “physical” installations, with this project extending both the scale and complexity of my previous installations, as well as the nature and complexity of my work with hybrid physical/computational systems.

Leonel Moura’s Robot action painter

http://www.leonelmoura.com/

RAP (Robotic Action Painter), designed by Leonel Moura (with IdMind) for Museum or long exhibition displays, is completely autonomous painting robot that need very little assistance and maintenance.

RAP creates its own paintings based on an artificial intelligence algorithm, decides when the work is ready and signs in the right bottom corner with its distinctive signature.

The algorithm combines initial randomness, positive feedback and a positive/negative increment of 'color as pheromone' mechanism based on a grid of nine RGB sensors.

online e-journals, papers, catalogues

Townsend, M (2002). Sentient Circuitry: The Polemics of Artificial Life, Essay for the exhibition at Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre.
http://www.banffcentre.ca/WPG/exhibits/2002/0610_sentient_circuitry/ 

Miranda, E. R. T., Vadim (2005). Musical Composition by Autonomous Robots: A Case Study with AIBO. Computer Music Research, Faculty of Technology, University of Plymouth, United Kingdom.

http://cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/publications/MirandaTikhanoff_robot_music.pdf

Kac, E. (1997). "Foundation and development of robotic art." Art Journal 56(3): 60.

Demers, L.-P. B., Vorn (1995). "Real Artificial Life as an Immersive Media."

http://www.hfg-karlsruhe.de/%7Eldemers/machines/alife/alife.pdf

Bollen, J. (2006). "Dance for the new century." RealTine + OnScreen 72(April / May). Reveiw of ADT;s Devolution with L.P Demers.

http://www.realtimearts.net/rt72/bollen_robotdance.html

Anne-Marie, D. (2006). Transmediale, festival for art and digital culture berlin, Exhibition; Smile machines.

http://www.transmediale.de/

Kapur, A. (2005). A history of robotic musical instruments. University of Victoria Music Intelligence and Sound Technology Interdisciplinary Centre (MISTIC).

http://www.mistic.ece.uvic.ca/publications/2005_icmc_robot.pdf

ISHIGURO, H. (2005). Android Science, Toward a new cross-interdisciplinary framework -. Department of Adaptive Machine Systems, Osaka University.

http://www.ed.ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp/research/Android/paper/AndroidScience5.pdf

Nicolas Anatol Baginsky

http://www.baginsky.de

Quasis

1988 - 2001
A Family of autonomous handicapped robots.

Also creator of the three sirens and lots of other interesting works. 

The Three Sirens; A self learning robotic rock band

http://the-three-sirens.info/

Originally, three robots formed the band The Three Sirens, those were Aglaopheme (slide guitar), Peisinoe (bass) und Thelxiepeia (drum). By now, a few other artificial intelligences have joined the group: Aciilyzer (Vocals), LynxArm (Percussion) and some “off the shelf” electronic instruments.
The Three Sirens are not conventional musical instruments but autonomous, self learning robot musicians. They are not controlled by humans. Artificial neural networks control every aspect of the robot’s activities. This means that the authorship for their music does not belong to any living being (no predefined material or musical knowledge is available to the system), all musical material is generated by self organizing learning processes in an improvising manner.