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Paparazzi Bot Is Your Biggest Fan, Follows You Until You Love It

by Leila Brillson on March 2, 2010 at 09:00 AM

Perhaps it's this type of automation that Lady Gaga is talking about when she sings of obsessive adoration. Ken Rinaldo, Ohio State University teacher and artist, has taken the persistence of a paparazzo and teamed it with the unflagging devotion of a robot, making a moving, wheeling, and turning cameraman. A few Paparazzi Bots appeared at the Winter Olympics as commissioned pieces of art by Rinaldo (a cultural Olympiad), and were filmed at Berlin's transmediale art and culture festival in early February.

As the video after the jump shows, the tripod-like automatons wheel around, find a subject, and decide whether or not to shoot it. (Apparently, it prefers smiles and gestures.) Then, the bot decides whether or not to upload the photo to the Web, presumably mimicking the type of instant, celluloid-fueled, online obsession with celebrity prevalent today. Both a comment on the role of robots and the inherent, egotistic pleasure of having your picture taken, the Paparazzi Bot momentarily makes its subject a star. The era of cameras persists, as gadget designers continue to create objects that both help, and hinder, the poor paparazzi. [From: OSU, via: Engadget]

Tags: Ohio State University, OhioStateUniversity, paparazzi, paparazzi bot, PaparazziBot, photography, robot, Robots, top

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