RSS 2021: Robotics x Arts Workshop
Dr. Dylan Cawthorne (dylancawthorne@protonmail.com)
Homage to Technology is an ephemeral kinetic sculpture that calls into question our potentially catastrophic obsession with technology. The title references the 1960 artwork Homage to New York by Jean Tinguely, an expansive, complex, noisy, and ultimately self-destructive sculpture. Homage to Technology utilizes the jet engine, electric power, lithium polymer batteries, and wireless communication, along with steel tubing and industrial ball-bearings to tell its story. Initially calm and motionless, a few synthetic beeps and the system slowly spins to life. The high-pitched engine whines, and the arms begin to rotate, slowly picking up speed. It spins in a circle, consuming electricity, generating noise, but making no forward progress. And as it gains speed, the work tells a story of increasing violence and impending disaster - a system out of control.
The sculpture put on one performance during which it destroyed itself; the audience kept small pieces of the work as a memorial of its existance.
All info credited to the artists listed above.