screengrab from Matthew's Vimeo stream.
Lovely robots for Friday: Matthew Gardiner shows us his beautiful oribotics from Ars Electronica 2010. The robots he’s created for the exhibit are completely site-specific, grown and printed on 3D printers and based upon biomechanical forms elsewhere in the exhibit. The piece is a complex ripple effect created by moving a hand closer to one of the blossoms, opening it. That, in turn opens the rest of the blossoms. The ultimate reaction includes over 50,000 individual movements. I love the expressions of nature and life Matthew’s created in a lab-like setting; and I love his explanation of smart materials—so easy to understand for the layperson. The piece works as a lovely expression of modern technology on the whole: very simple on the face of it, complex, labyrinthine and intricate under the surfaces.