Classic Automata Film

top 12 videos of creepy automata
There is nothing more creepy than the charred remains of a moth eaten victorian doll with rolling eyes and moving limbs. That is the premise for the Oobject’s Halloween list, videos of the most creepy automata in action.

http://www.oobject.com/category/top-12-videos-of-creepy-automata/

Joueuse de Tympanon – automate

Karakuri ningyō

Karakuri ningyō (からくり人形?) are mechanized puppets or automata from Japan from the 18th century to 19th century. The word ‘karakuri’ means a “mechanical device to tease, trick, or take a person by surprise”. It implies hidden magic, or an element of mystery. In Japanese ningyō is written as two separate characters, meaning person and shape. It may be translated as puppet, but also by doll or effigy. The dolls’ gestures provided a form of entertainment.

Three main types of karakuri exist: Butai karakuri (舞台からくり stage karakuri?) were used in theatre. Zashiki karakuri (座敷からくり tatami room karakuri?) were small and were played with in rooms. Dashi karakuri (山車からくり festival car karakuri?) were used in religious festivals, where the puppets were used to perform reenactments of traditional myths and legends.

They influenced the Noh, Kabuki and Bunraku theatre.Karakuri ningyō (からくり人形?) are mechanized puppets or automata from Japan from the 18th century to 19th century. The word ‘karakuri’ means a “mechanical device to tease, trick, or take a person by surprise”. It implies hidden magic, or an element of mystery. In Japanese ningyō is written as two separate characters, meaning person and shape. It may be translated as puppet, but also by doll or effigy. The dolls’ gestures provided a form of entertainment.

Three main types of karakuri exist: Butai karakuri (舞台からくり stage karakuri) were used in theatre. Zashiki karakuri (座敷からくり tatami room karakuri) were small and were played with in rooms. Dashi karakuri (山車からくり festival car karakuri) were used in religious festivals, where the puppets were used to perform reenactments of traditional myths and legends. They influenced the Noh, Kabuki and Bunraku theatre.

Kirsty Boyle has a great site about her Karakuri research

http://www.karakuri.info/

Fellini’s Casanova- The Dancing Doll Automaton

After watching ‘Fellini’s Casanova’ (1976) again yesterday i thought i should post it as it left me with thoughts as to what the film actually means. Specifically the dancing doll automaton and the bird automation – What did they represent?; A reflection of Casanova’s empty and mechanical soul, devoid of real love. We told by Donald Sutherland in the special feature that Fellini detested Casanova’s moral frivolity and compared him to the re-surging ‘well-to do’ scene in Rome at the time. As with other works of Fellini we are left to fill in the pieces.

The doll has definite connections with Olympia from the novel ‘The Sandman’ by E.T.A Hoffman. 1816. Jentsch and Freud used ‘The Sandman’ as the key text in their attempts to define ‘the uncanny’.

(On the psycology of the uncanny, Jenstch 1906),(The Uncanny, Freud, 1919).

Plot: 18th Century Italy. Giacomo Casanova has a reputation as a great lover. He passes through many adventures in search of passion. He meets the aging Marquise d’Urfe who wants him to impregnate her so that she can reincarnate in her child’s body, is jailed as a black magician but escapes, and enters a love-making competition held by the Prince del Brando, along with many other adventures.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074291/

80-year-old Gakutensoku robot revived

New life has been breathed into Asia’s oldest “modern” robot, an 80-year-old golden-skinned humanoid from Osaka. Gakutensoku, a 3.2 meter (10 ft 6 in) tall automaton powered by compressed air, can tilt its head, move its eyes, smile, and puff up its cheeks and chest as instructed — just as it did 80 years ago — thanks to a 20-million-yen ($200,000) computer-controlled pneumatic servo system that replaces its original system of inflatable rubber tubes.

Built in 1928 by biologist Makoto Nishimura, Gakutensoku was first exhibited in Kyoto as part of the formal celebration of the Showa Emperor’s ascension to the throne. The robot traveled to a number of expos and wowed onlookers with its mad calligraphy skills before going missing in Germany. After a long disappearance, Gakutensoku was located and later repatriated to Osaka.

The reanimated Gakutensoku will star as the main attraction at the newly renovated Osaka Science Museum beginning July 18.

http://www.pinktentacle.com

ken feingold

where I can see my house from here so we are, 1993-95.

copied from :

http://www.kenfeingold.com/catalog_html

What is there to say?
Does it make a difference if you are not seen, but rather a projection that sees and speaks and hears in your place?
Is the ‘I’ saying ‘Me’ to ‘It-You’ (or its reflection)?
Is it that the one who stands in your place is not free to go where they wish, or that even as you move them “freely” in their mirrored infinity theater that there are borders?
Is it that they can see their wires but know not where they lead?
Is it that in the space of the art exhibition there is also a meeting of those who see but are not seen and those who learn to play the game with their projections?

I learned in 1991 that the Mbone had been invented, making it possible to transmit “real-time” video and audio over the Internet. A networked metaphor would seem to offer a new genre of complexity – were it not for the fact that “here” and “there”, “I” and “you” and “mine” and “yours” have always been bones in the skeleton of our sense-selves and in our ideologies. I found myself thinking: “Maybe creating a telematic videoconference among three ventriloquist dolls would be enough to ask the guest ventriloquists if having a voice, having a ‘body’ in this tele-space, could create new ground for discovering the metaphors of long-distance impersonation? …”

In one exhibition there is a constructed labyrinth. The walls are mirrored. Inside of this space, there are three robot-puppet ventriloquist dolls. In three other locations are darkened spaces, each with a place to sit, a small table upon which sits a special controller-interface (an attaché case containing a joystick and a microphone), and upon the facing wall a large projected video image showing their robot’s vision, effectively, computer controlled “video-telephones.”

Each robot has a video camera for “sight”, microphones for “hearing”. Each robot is connected, remotely, to one of the other spaces (anywhere on the Internet Mbone). In these other locations, a viewer may see (via the video projection) and hear what the robot sees and hears, can maneuver it with a joystick, while the voice of the remote viewer is transmitted back to the robot, that speaks (like the doll of a ventriloquist) the words of that person. It is then possible for three people to communicate with each other in the hall-of- mirrors via their respectively controlled robots. Viewers in the public/gallery space with the robots can see over the walls, allowing them to talk with people at the connected distant locations via the robots.

Participants are inevitably pressed to regard these questions:
“Which one is me?” “Am I talking to you or to myself?” “Am I moving towards or away from the mirror?” “What are the limits of this space?” “Am I having any effect on what is happening?”
-kf 1995

Nam June Paik «Robot K-456»

Nam June Paik here deploys his new ‘Robot K-456′, history’s first non-human action artist. About the robot, which he built in Japan, Paik wrote: ‘It was more difficult and more expensive than my Wuppertal show’, by which he meant ‘Exposition of Music – Electronic Television’, the exhibition likewise staged in the ‘Galerie Parnass’ in 1963. The robot was purpose-built for street actions, in which it was supposed to mingle – more or less inconspicuously – with bypassers, as Paik recounts: ‘I imagined it would meet people on the street and give them a split-second surprise. Like a sudden shower.’

more robot tagged works at Medien Kunst Netz

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/suche/?qt=robot

Retro Acoustic Location and Sound Mirrors by Douglas Self

Written by Douglas Self:

This remarkable picture may have been reproduced before, but I make no apology for showing it here. The impressive array of Japanese war-tubas belong to at least two acoustic locators mounted on 4-wheel carriages. It is a little difficult to work exactly what is connected to what, not least because the background appears to have been erased by some unsubtle retouching, but I think that the format is the same as the British model; there are two horns in a horizontal plane, and on one side of the mounting there are two more in a vertical plane.

To the right, one of the figures is the Japanese emperor Horohito. Behind him are the AA guns intended to be used in conjunction with the locators. The only Japanese gun that I have found documented as being used with a sound locator is the Type 88 dual-purpose AA/coast-defence 75mm; there is not enough visible detail to verify that these are the guns shown in the picture, but they look about the right size.

http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/ear/ear.htm#steer

Automated Caveman Gets a Rear-End Drive (Jan, 1964)

Interesting futuristic nostalgia from the blog http://blog.modernmechanix.com

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/category/robots/ 

Despite his wide-open situation, the caveman on the preceding page is feeling no pain.

Tesla – father of robotics etc etc etc

I have, once again became obsessed again with the life and inventions of Nikola Tesla. This was fueled by reading Empires of light : Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the race to electrify the world, JONNES, J. (2003) New York, Random House, i Also recently visited Niagara falls. Niagara, is the site of the first hydro – electric power plant. The system uses an Alternating Current polyphase induction motor invented by Tesla and implemented by George Westinghouse. The power station was the first of its kind because it travelled the distance of 28 miles to the town of Buffalo 1896, powering electric lighting and street cars etc. Tesla is called the father of robotics because of his invention of Remote control 1898. He also wished to create an automate of himself, harness free energy for everyone for free, hence his other title, father of free energy, or ‘the man who invented the twentieth century’.

http://peswiki.com/energy/PowerPedia:Nikola_Tesla

Also check out Secret of Nikola Tesla – The Movie (Tajna Nikole Tesle) (1980)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079985/