Face Music, 2011

Ken Rinaldo - Columbus, USA

Interactive Robotics Installation

Face Music is a companion work to Paparazzi Bots. This group of robotic sculptures compose their own music with input from participants. Micro-video cameras mounted on the robots move toward people’s bodies and faces while capturing human snapshots. The facial images will be digitally processed, pixelated and transformed into a constantly evolving generative soundscape, where facial features are turned into sound melody and rhythm.  Every participant’s face becomes part of the artwork; each “face-song” joins with another to create a total sonic human/robot experience that fuses over the course of the evening. The viewer is manifested as participant, actor and conductor in this robotic orchestration. These works explore new morphologies of soft robotics, an emerging field, where natural and artificial materials celebrate our hybrid states of symbiotically joining with machines.

Ken Rinaldo who is an artist, theorist and author creates interactive multimedia installations that blur the boundaries between the organic and inorganic. Integration of the organic and electro-mechanical elements asserts a confluence and co-evolution between living and evolving technological cultures. His works have been commissioned and presented nationally and internationally. Rinaldo is an Associate Professor at The Ohio State University teaching robotics, 3D modeling and animation. He directs the Art & Technology Program.

Suitable for all ages