Technology has finally reached its zenith, and now we can all pack up and go home. After all, where can you go after someone has created a robot that performs interpretative dance routines based upon your dreams? Yes, you read that right: Someone has created a robot that will recreate your sleep experiences in its own form of interpretative dance. How could you not want to find out what the hell that’s about?
Artist Fernando Orellana and Computer Science professor Brendan Burns have teamed up to create Sleep Waking, a project starring a robot using information recorded during patients’ sleep – including brainwave activity and eye movement – to chose from a number of pre-programmed “robot behaviors” and movements and create a gestural “playback” of sleep experiences. Orellana has high hopes for the project:
Sleep Waking is a metaphor for a reality that could be in our future… [R]obots are increasingly used to augment human experience. From robotic prosthetic devices, personalized web presences, and implanted RFID chips, technology is moving from being an externalized tool, to being a literal extension of who we are. By giving an example of and drawing attention to this process. We hope to give people the opportunity to think critically what personalized technology actually means.
If you’re in New York, you can see Sleep Waking for yourself as part of the current Brainwave: Common Senses exhibition at Exit Art, running until April 19th. The rest of us will just have to be happy with this video:
Sleep Waking [Fernando Orellana.com]
