1. Art and Mechatronics
Lecture 1
2011

2. Don Ritter
Visitors encounter the sounds of 4 or 8 lanes of car traffic rushing across a completely dark space while a dimly lit exit sign on the other side of the room instructs them to venture into the random moving traffic. If visitors encounter a car in the darkness, it comes to a loud screeching halt with its engine idling in front of the visitor. When a visitor steps away from a stopped car, it quickly accelerates past the visitor and across the room, then it slowly fades out into the darkness.

3. Don Ritter

4. Maurice Benayoun World Skin (1997), Virtual Reality Interactive Installation

5. Maurice Benayoun
Video, virtual reality, wireless technology, Internet.
The Tunnel under the Atlantic, This was a tele-virtual project linking the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal.

6. Norman White
During the mid- to late-1970s began making interactive machines whose internal logic expressed itself primarily through motion.
"The Helpless Robot" ( ), an electronically
synthesized voice asks for the physical assistance
of passers-by with a persuasive tone then slowly
changes to a more forceful, commanding tone,
complaining when the interaction is not being completed
properly.

7. Chico MacMurtrie
Totemobile is a robotic sculpture that initially appears as a life-sized representation a Citroën DS automobile. It is elaborated through various levels of abstraction until it reaches its final form: an organic 18-meter-tall totem pole.

8. Ken Rinaldo
His works are influenced by living systems theories, interspecies communication, artificial life research, and the idea of emergent properties.

9. Peter Flemming Electronic/Robotic Art – absolutely check the web site
Documentation of a few Miller
solar engine experiments done
during a 2004 summer residency
in Dawson, Yukon through KIAC
(Klondike Institue of Art and
Culture).
These experiments helped
contribute to the solar power
version of Canoe, shown 2
years later in Dawson.

10. Liu Dao
An international multidisciplinary art collective based in Shanghai, China.
Their work focuses on interactive art installations that explore the effects that “technologies have on our perception and modes of communication”
The majority of Liu Dao’s works involve LEDs. A simple movement is arranged by choreographers Wu Yandan and Li Lingxi or Chaim Gebber and coordinated by in-house art directors, which is then video recorded and turned into an LED representation.

11. Liu Dao

12. Maurizio Bolognini
Conceptual artist – generative art, space-time flows of technological communication, new forms of interactivity based upon structured communication techniques.
The Programmed Machines series, whose monitor
buses are closed with wax and whose graphic
outputs cannot be displayed) is considered one of
his most significant works.
Museophagia, website, merely purports to
consume via digitization objects (furniture, fixtures
etc.) that Maurizio Bolognini took from art galleries
of various cities,

13. David Rokeby
Electronic, video and installation art

14. There is a lot more … But the idea should be clear enough.
What do we need to know to construct new works using electricity and electronics, lights, sounds, and motors?
The computer can be a valuable tool, of course.

15. We need to know … How electricity works at a basic level.
What electronic devices do which things to electrical signals.
How sensors, devices that convert real work sensations into electricity, can be used. Especially how light and sound are manipulated.
How motors work and can be controlled.
How to move motion energy along a path or chain of devices.

16. Mechatronics
These things essentially comprise the field of mechatronics, the design and construction of computer controlled electromechanical systems.
It includes robotics and automation systems, neural prosthetics, micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), and many other leading-edge technologies. (Waterloo)

17. Mechatronics
Engineers generally claim this field, and naturally know a lot about electronics and/or mechanics.
Mechatronic art can be weak because artists don’t really know enough about how to implement their ideas, and can’t therefore imagine new ones that can be built.

18. Mechatronic Art
What ideas have we in this room today?

19. What will we do? Lab – Discuss and initial design of course project.
Lecture – basic electricity, measurements.

20. Next Weekly exercises – 40% Graded using a simple letter.
Class project – a mechatronic work. 50%
Writeup of your contribution %
Your peers will evaluate your contribution, and that will modulate your grade.