The Fish-Bird Project was an art-science collaboration that resulted in an installation exploring the possibilities of creating a dialogue between two robot wheelchairs and human visitors using movement and written text.
There is a lot of information about the project available from the above link. The particular ideas behind this project that interest me are:
- Trust
- Intimacy
- Non-anthropomorphic representation
- Not cute
- Movement implying being and being alive
- Movement as communication
- Movement and text creating the “sense of a person” (aided by the absence implied by the wheelchairs)
- Movement indicating awareness, mood, intention
This looks like a great example for my thesis (thanks, Chantal :-), and if I can make it to Sydney I should be able to make arrangements to meet Fish and Bird, although I don’t know if I’ll be able to interact with them in the way shown in the video on the website.
