Technarte 2009: Robotics and Augmented Reality offer infinite artistic possibilities

[Liz Tapp]

Art and Technology merge for the fourth year during a unique conference in Europe: Technarte. Artist, experts from technology research centres and professionals of the world of art in all of its forms, will meet in Bilbao, Spain, on 23 and 24 April to share their ideas and experiences about the new disciplines that generates the fusion between art and technology. The Programme of Technarte includes artistic disciplines as Augmented Reality and Robotics, explained below.

Barbara VOS (NL) will present Augmented Reality, an advanced technology system, in which you can observe the real world augmented with information and images from the computer and that allows making an extraordinary connection of spaces. Miss Vos was part of a project in the Escher Museum, in The Hague, where the visitor equipped with an augmented reality headset and armed with a wiimote, can throw a virtual object towards the wall. This makes a hole appear, through which one can look down into the staircase, which really exist somewhere in the building. Barbara Vos chose this museum to play with the perspective and to connect spaces which could not be connected in reality, like M.C. Escher did with his impossible constructions.

Leonel Moura (PT) will present at Technarte his project based on the BEAM robotics (Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, Mechanics). Moura has created exhibition of over 100 small autonomous robots with different morphologies and characteristics. A large installation shows 50 cricket-like small robots imprisoned in droplet glass shapes creating a kind of jungle sound environment. Other robots look like small trees or move around like insects.

Robotarium X is also an art work of a new kind of art that realizes a critical questioning of knowledge and culture. Notions like nature, life, the artificial, machine, art, culture and science, are challenged by this display.

Interactive & innovative concepts are essential at Technarte; where the relationship between art and technology will be reflected as new and surprising disciplines. If you want more information, you will find it at the official website of the Conference: www.technarte.org