May 18, 2009

Large Robotics Art in the wild

Last month, I went to two art events.
One was Theo Jansen Exhibition, another was the parade by La Machine.
Theo Jansen is an artist, who builds Air-powered large animal robots.
He aim to make Keep-alive animals without any of his help at nature location.
And his animals have some functions to gather the wind and walking by the power.
His concept is so Ecological, but his
animals can’t move only natural wind yet.
Gathered the wind by a car, used compressed air and many of his animals was
woven plastic tubes. That’s depend on fossil fuel.
But I think, the gap between the concept and the reality is one of the attraction. And his animal’s moving give us a good opportunity to feel the wonder for real animals and the environment.

La Machine is a street theatre company.
They performed at Japanese public street in Yokohama port area.
They was based Royal de Luxe, giant marionette performing company.
They use very large mechanical animals for their performances.

I feel so strange to the large spider’s walking in the familiar sight in Yokohama,
but I could feel deja-vu,too.
The sight was just in the PATLABOR Robot Comic’s world I dreamed
when I was highschool student!
Google : Theo jansen
http://images.google.com/images?&q=theo+jansen
La Machine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Machine_(production_company)
Royal de Luxe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_de_Luxe
PATLABOR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patlabor