:( (Colin) Bot is an experimental tangible artwork of a nervous robot made out of scrapped materials, exploring a playful, meta-performative embodiment of human personality and emotions in mechanical objects. This piece was created for an undergraduate class, RTA 965: Ants, Agents, Automatons, at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Artist Statement
:( (Colin) Bot is an experimental tangible work of a nervous robot whose personality affects how it interacts with its environment. The piece consists of a tall robot made out of various scrapped materials in constant motion, and who apologizes if it gets too close to someone or something before backing up and moving away. Its name derives from the text emotion equivalent of a sad face, but is affectionately referred to as "Colin" as a nickname.
As a tangible work, Colin is an agent with automaton elements that detects people and objects using a sensor attached to its front and will hesitantly move away when in range of others. Every time the robot stops from this, a speaker that serves as its “mouth” will emit the sound of a robotic male voice saying “sorry” using a speech library based on the Texas Instruments speech synthesis architecture from the late 1970s to early 1980s. It has two photocells adhered to its “head” which it uses to avoid light and find the darkest parts of the room to hide in. These functions together form its hybrid agent-automaton being, where, while it is based on predetermined sets of possible actions, there is some complexity in how it carries them out and can be affected by its environment in real time.
The concept of this robot plays around with the dichotomy of expressing human emotionality of social anxiety and the fear of being perceived in an industrial form. As a robot, it is big in size, yet small in character; taking up a lot of space while trying to make itself as small and invisible as possible. Colin is meant to be clearly un-human-like, yet gives the impression that it is attempting to parody one through its appearance and behaviour. The robot is formed out of random scrapped parts, using an IV drip stand as its frame for its body and various fabrication materials such as acrylic, PVC pipe, and unused 3D print parts to match human features that, in combination, look obviously mechanical. It "wears" a cardboard sign of a hand-drawn shirt and tie to further emulate its perceived human look, yet speaks only one word in an obviously robotic voice. Colin straddles the lines between uncanniness and emotional affinity, hoping to afflict empathy from the audience, not for being perfectly human, but for its creature-like and endearing sentience.
Special thanks to Professor Steve Daniels and the New Media Makerspace staff for helping bring Colin to life :)