Thursday, October 20, 2011
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
The human body is a machine which winds its own springs.
It is the living image of perpetual movement.
It is the living image of perpetual movement.
-Julien Offroy de La Mettrie, Man a Machine
Vaucanson
Vaucanson
Vaucanson’s duck
When first presented to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1928, the automaton was of unknown origin. Once restored to working order, the automaton itself provided the answer when it penned the words "written by the automaton of Maillardet". – Wikipedia
The Turk – not an automaton but a hoax: a man hidden inside played chess
Babbage’s Difference Engine was not constructed during his lifetimebut replicas were later made.
It's also the subject of a collaborative novel by
the cyberpunk pioneers William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.
Ada Lovelace, “the first programmer”
Alan Turing, who proposed the “Turing test”for artificial intelligence, and the man behind the Enigma machine,
which is said to have won World War II.
The first robot? A scene from the original production of Karel Capek’s R.U.R.
R.U.R.
The Golem
Mickey Mouse: Mickey’s Mechanical ManThe Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz
Elektro and his robot dog Sparko
Pinocchio’s now a boy
Who wants to turn back into a toy . . .
-Rufus Wainwright
-Rufus Wainwright
Talos, the living bronze statue of Greek mythology,
as imagined by Ray Harryhausen in his 1953 film,
Jason and the Argonauts
Forbidden Planet: Robby the Robot with his creator Morbius
The Day the Earth Stood Still: Gort, the robot from outer space,
sent to enforce worldwide peace with the threat of
total annihilation
Audio-animatronic Abraham Lincoln at Disneylandsent to enforce worldwide peace with the threat of
total annihilation
Star Wars: C3PO and R2-D2
Blade Runner: Rachael, a replicant
RoboCop
RoboCop: The ED-209
The Terminator: A human face
The Terminator: The machine beneath the skin
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Data, a fully functional android with a positronic brain
Real Robots
Genghis
Cog is not quite sure what to think of you
Naveed Ahmad, “The Humanoid Robot Cog”
Cog has its own homepage
Cog on YouTube
Cog tries out for a garage band
Cog has its own homepage
Cog on YouTube
Cog tries out for a garage band
ASIMO wants to say hi
AIBO the Robot Dog
Say Hello to QRIO! (the “next generation” after ASIMO—both now discontinued
Robonova Ballet
Charting the Uncanny Valley: Part 1 of 7
Karl F. McDorman presents a lecture on the Uncanny Valley – Part 1 of 7
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Arnost Lustig
Arnost Lustig has passed away in Prague at the age of 84. He had cancer for several years. He became a family friend not long after his arrival in Washington DC in the early '70s. He grew up in Prague and was sent to concentration camps in his teen years; he escaped for a while when American planes mistakenly bombed a train on which he was being transported to Dachau. Much of his work as a writer and filmmaker for decades returned to those experiences, in books like "Diamonds of the Night" and "A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova." In the '60s he was a prominent artist, working with most of the great Czech filmmakers of the time like Milos Forman and Jan Nemec, but finally resigned the Communist Party in 1967, and left the country during the Prague Spring of 1968. In the years since the Velvet Revolution, Vaclav Havel provided him with an apartment in the Prague Castle, where he spent much of his time. He was something of a national hero; I remember the family saying that he never seemed to pay for a meal or a cab ride; everyone wanted to talk to him. There's a documentary called "Fighter" about his long friendship with another Czech writer; their careers are contrasted, as Jan Wiener opposed the Communist regime early on and thought of Arnost as a collaborator.
I remember Arnost wearing an ascot and calling people "darling" until he realized that American film insiders didn't really do that; and calling me (and most other people) "you beast!); and telling me about getting drunk with Chou En-lai; and getting up from the table at our Passover seder, picking up the phone and saying, "Mr. President, we are eating matzo ball soup!"; and writing in my copy of "A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova," "For Bernard--the poet almost the best!"
I remember Arnost wearing an ascot and calling people "darling" until he realized that American film insiders didn't really do that; and calling me (and most other people) "you beast!); and telling me about getting drunk with Chou En-lai; and getting up from the table at our Passover seder, picking up the phone and saying, "Mr. President, we are eating matzo ball soup!"; and writing in my copy of "A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova," "For Bernard--the poet almost the best!"
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Poem
All of a sudden I’m feeling that traffic-
light yellow is really a beautiful color. Is it
the tint, do you think, or the luminosity, with all its
terrible and endearing associations--“the force that through the green
fuse drives the flower”? Quotation is just plagiarism with a human face.
I began by thinking I might actually have an idea there, but I wrote something instead.
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