Embodying robotic art: cybernetic cinematics

If cinema is one of the last machines to come out of the mechanical age, then its legacy of targeting "the mind through the senses" continues in a newer electronic and mechanical art form: gestural robotics. Gestural robotics harnesses microcontrollers and mechanical devices to create sculptural art. Like cinema, it uses a technical framework and repetition to embody ideas and emotions. Each form asks us to harness our ability to suspend disbelief, pointing to the primacy of our internal dialogues and imaginations. The similarities between these two art forms, although separated by leaps in technology, modes of presentation, and historical distance, signals our continued ability to connect with all the facets of our environment. Collectively, the two reinforce the increasingly wide range of creative expressions we've carved out for ourselves, negating anxieties about the isolation of our increasingly technological environment. We persist in developing both mechanical and technological items in ways that affect our society. However, we codify an art form by its basic parameters. In cinema, it was the finessing of stills to perfection in motion; in robotics, it is the microcontrollers that let a work of art exist autonomously, away from the computer. The art of gestural robotics takes a fresh look at the mechanical. It appreciates the technical in a way that goes beyond the information, analogous to the way film takes on a dimension beyond its 30 frames per second.