Robots Science and Artistic Revolutionary Practices workshop
An interactive workshop/demonstration of my robots that are about sound, science, absurd engineering, interactivity and poetically inspired tech.
I will talk a bit about my life as an artist and educator. Then demonstrate a number of my works while fielding questions. How to build low-cost robots and tech art for next to nothing. Hack Arduino sensors by not using and Arduino! Collaborate as often as possible, 3 people are a revolution and movement. Advice on showing your weird tech art. By making weird art, you probably can't make much money off of it. But then it probably wouldn't be art then. How do we find our reason for our lives? I used to think, what would I do if I had a million dollars? Then years ago I decided I would just do that. Do what I would do if I didn't care about making money.
Why Art!? Because we can and are changing the world with it. By finding your voice you become empowered and discover your reason for being on the planet! Once you do that, there is no stopping you.
Bio:
For almost 4 decades Kal Spelletich has built interactive machines and robots. Spelletich’s work enacts a liberated awareness and pushes his audience toward creative responses to technology in their lives. His work explores the interface of humans and science to put people in touch with philosophical interactive experiences. Sincerely with Hope!
Kal's Blog
Art Survival
“Let us not kid ourselves,” Professor Vladimir Nabokov reminds us. “Let us remember that literature is of no practical value whatsoever. … ” But practical value isn’t the only kind of value. Ours is a mixed economy, with the gift economy of the arts existing (if not exactly flourishing) within the inhospitable conditions of a market economy, like the fragile black market in human decency that keeps civilization going despite the pitiless dictates of self-interest.
ARTIFICIAL ORGANS!
ORGANS SOUND THE BODY
Theory:
Can I build sensors that sense the human soul? I aspire to go beyond utilitarian rationales of capitalist production into poetry, this is one of the most noble functions that biotechnological art can perform. I am reference science fiction and historic scientific experiments to champion science. These human organs are playful and a metaphor for survival, a meditation on our health care crisis, and a witness in the aging process. Building backup organs by someone who has never had health insurance brings a highly personal direction that is a new challenge. What is it like to make your own functioning prosthetic organs? To print something that speaks directly to the implications of 3-D printing? What does it mean to print backup organs? It is now possible to maintain life activity even after communicative life has stopped. It is possible to maintain a person alive but devoid of autonomy. The autonomy is granted by a machine. My proposal reverses this. Through audience interaction, human hearts, movement and breath feed the machines and grants them energy, and in a way, life. What is it like to make your own functioning prosthetic organs? To print something that speaks directly to the implications of 3-D printing? What does it mean to print backup organs? It is now possible to maintain life activity even after communicative life has stopped. It is possible to maintain a person alive but devoid of autonomy. The autonomy is granted by a machine. My proposal reverses this. Through audience interaction, human hearts, movement and breath feed the machines and grants them energy, and in a way, life.
Organs Sound The Body blog post
blog posts for Feb-2018
I want to thank the amazing Stochastic Labs for supporting me with the development of my artificial organs project. We are well on the way to creating a quintet of organs playing organs.
Stochastic Labs
AND of course the brilliant Jon Foote! Jon Foote's website
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My comrade Mitch Altman and I built 2 mind reading robots!
https://kaltek.wordpress.com/split-brain-robotics/
An interactive audience participatory performance installation with two large robots that can extend from 8-16 feet tall, each identical, each controlled by the left and right side brainwaves of an audience participant(s). The idea is for volunteers to use their brainwaves to make the two robots move, collaborate, interact with each other, bite and even kiss! (When they do “correctly” interact, symbolic and metaphoric events will happen, activating lights, fog, other robots, sounds, fire.
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I create experiences that explore the
human desire for transcendence because
ultimately humanity will prevail over technology.
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My work invites audiences to take an active role in order to complete each work.
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These experiences focus on the somatic and psychological aspects of being human.
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They are optimistic alternatives that subvert technology’s intended functional use and break the barrier of exclusive access that promote passive consumption.
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Seeking poetic juxtapositions found in the collision of hand-built machines, high-tech hardware and biological systems
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I operate from a distinct sense of activist engagement.
