Making Faces (2007) by David Hanson
Master Mind Machine (2007) by Kal Spelletich and
Animal Cam, by Sam Easterson

November 9, 2007-December 31, 2008

Making Faces, by David Hanson

The Exploratorium’s new Mind exhibition, four years in the making, runs November 9, 2007-December 31, 2008, and includes the cutting-edge work of both artists and scientists. The artworks include:
Making Faces (2007)
By David Hanson
How does it feel to interact with a lifelike robot? The robot’s software helps it recognize and fixate on human faces. Each of its servomotors moves a rubbery “muscle,” and these movements are coordinated to mimic real human facial expressions. Notice the complexity of even simple expressions. How many parts of the face move in a happy grin? An angry scowl? And pay attention to your reactions. It’s obviously a machine, yet many respond emotionally to the robot’s changing expressions.

Master Mind Machine (2007)
By Kal Spelletich, Artist-in-Residence

We play the machines, and the machines play us.
Kraftwerk

Master Mind Machine (2007) is a mix of sculpture and storytelling, science and technology, play and fear and biofeedback. Visitors are given control of strong and unpredictable technologies into their own hands — enhancing and extending their own movements — by interacting with new kinds of beings.

Animal Cam
By Sam Easterson
Video artist Sam Easterson documents a world very different from the one we are used to. Animal Cam shows us the world as seen by a wide range of non-human creatures. Easterson mounts tiny cameras on animals in the wild to record both their activities and points of view on their surroundings. The footage he obtains makes human viewers deeply rethink their own places and roles in their environments. (Easterson’s cameras eventually detach themselves from their hosts.) Animal Cam shows the world from perspectives as diverse as those of an armadillo, alligator, a bison, a scorpion, and even a housefly. (He also records the world from plants’ vantage points.) He is a graduate of New York’s Cooper Union and the University of Minnesota.