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'Octopus' Made From Factory Robots Slated for London Design Festival

by Matthew Zuras on May 15, 2010 at 09:00 AM

Octopus of Factory Robots
We're super excited for New York Design Week, but we'd be even more excited if the city were getting its very own robot "octopus" to mark the occasion. That's what London will get for its London Design Festival in September, when design outfit Kram/Weisshaar will install a six-armed robot called 'Outrace,' borrowed from the Audi production line, in Trafalgar Square. (And yes, we're aware that octopi sport eight arms, but the designers liken their machine to the regal cephalopod, so who are we to argue?)

Members of the public will be able to feed the Outrace machine with text, which will then be translated into movement by one of the six arms. The mechanical appendages will then trace a sort of light painting in the air according to the inputs, thus creating a robot light ballet of users' wishes and hopes, or even their bad poetry. (This reminds us of one of our favorite tech artists, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and his 2008 "Pulse Park" installation at Madison Square Park, in which 200 people's heartbeats were transformed into a similar dance of light.) Why can't New York get the same kind of robot love, hmmm? [From: Dezeen]

Tags: art, audi, car, design, kramweisshaar, LightArt, london, LondonDesignFestival, NewYorkDesignWeek, outrace, robot, robots, top

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