CultureRobot

CultureRobot 4.0 was exhibited at Culture Center “104” during Artemov festival in Belo Horizonte between 11th and 14th November 2009. Workshops where local participants could expand their understanding on the urban space they live in and create audio and video materials collected during walks in the metropolitan area was part of Electronica festival, happening one week before Artemov at the same venue. Material aggregated and edited during this workshops was used to create materials presented on the map for CR 4.0 installation. CultureRobot creators Ricardo Palmieri and Kruno Jošt were joined by Paloma Oliveira and Mateus Knelsen in CR4.0.

CR 4.0 map

Selected between 60 applications, CR4.0 won Artemov’s locative media competition juried by Lucas Bambozzi and others. Artemov, a festival sponsored by mobile giant Vivo, is an event that for 4 years creates space for video artist and every two years presents new tendencies in the sphere of locative media artworks. It is consisted of videos produced on mobile phones, video installations, talks and presentations and weekend evening programs with audio visual performances.

From GentleJunk co. blog:

“As it is, as it goes, prizes are starting to come in for the work that insisted on taking representative form from participative processes developed beforehand. Its 4th reincarnation happened in slightly different context, most notably in its new terms of negotiating project in the newly formed team. Positions that prizes involve: question of value, ownership, possible marketing strategies, group dynamics according to personal needs and acceptance of needs of others have surfaced at metalevel. CultureRobot became something that could easily be put into broad cultural concept and disseminated in the form it is trough events and festivals.”

Culture Robot at ArteMov festival from GentleJunk on Vimeo.

Social Technologies Summit Futuresonic is international festival trying to answer questions of tomorrow: how will we interact with each other and nature around us in future. Futuresonic festivals fringe at Arcspace in St. Wilfrid’s Enterprise Center answered the question trough its grassroots movement created events that hosted, among many other events, CultureRobot installation.

Arcspace is situated in ex-church building that is turned into St. Wilfrid’s Enterprise Center since 1992 - a unique architecture where insides of the church are transformed into enterprise center for ethical businesses and NGOs. St. Wilfrid’s Enterprise Center is situated in Hulme, an area near to Manchester city center. Hulme was mapped not only as a territory but also as a specific part of the city with vibrant activist community and a history. ArcSpace was visited by people of different age and heterogeneous needs and activities, exchanging their beliefs, stories and producing new possibilities for exchange and collaboration in spirit of free culture.

Culture Robot installation was created by help of the community from the start to the end. Materials were collected or borrowed instead of purchased or rented, help with programing for interactive part of the installation was done by friends and volunteers, and installation debuted at Saturday on the open, community day, that hosted events inside and outside the Center.CR 3.0 installation created a new relationship between local community and this art piece. More than ever people were active in collecting material, discussing and managing to interconnect installation with other events during Futuresonic fringe.

CR 3.0 mapped more than just Hulme, it mapped its people, relationships, how they feel about city development, architecture, organizations working with art and culture in Manchester and how financing is a part of the culture and where does it lead culture to, it showed community strength and grassroots development. During the open days, all ethnic, age, academic and other walks of life were united and exchanged opinions, questions and ideas.

Guerrilla busking was happening in the city throughout the day, graffiti artists were spraying on the vans and trailers (an identifiable vehicle in the Redbrick’s area of the Hulme - where travelers and free people of all sorts live). People from recycled biodiesel group, local bcycle repair man, drummers, community artists, foreign guests, local volunteers and experts were united to make a truly social event, creating bridges between cultures, people and technology in universal feeling of unity.

Read “Report From FutureSonic 2009″ By Jonah Brucker on Rhizome.org

Photolog on Futuresonic Fringe at Arcspace >>

Series of 7 videos taken at different locations in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil. Material was used for installation CultureRobot 2.0 @ SESC Sao Jose dos Campos. It was recorded during mapping workshop by its participants and latter used as 7 clips trigged by CultureRobots on the CR 2.0 installation.

Overview of the move: 7 points were chosen in the center of Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil. Points have been collected from the previously done workshops where participants have created narrative maps. Chosen points represent the city and details that are very personal to the participants:

1. independent bookstore (only one in the city that offers unusual reading material);

2. nature that is directly incorporated into the city (because of the fresh air SJC has a history of nursing homes and asylums for upper class people);

3. bus station with its urban chaos - lower classes and public transportation;

4. playgrounds – kids and families;

5. omnipotent bars, man breaking the ice, people drink beer;

6. urban planing of the city with the “nerve system” made of streets with and life in the vehicle, asphalt and it’s dangers (the dangerous curve);

7. high education – recorded conversation with the lady on the help desk that didn’t gave us a permission to film inside university and shots from university magazine (mostly economy and technical classes with one class for art business).

Video can also be downloaded in ogg video and mpg4 here >>

CultureRobot 2.0 installation is open for viewers at SESC Sao Jose dos Campos during month of February. Installation depicts 7 points that have been represented by edited video and sound of this locations. Points have been chosen out of many that were depicted by workshop participants to present an overview of SJC urban, cultural and everyday social structure and landscape. Audio and video material was collected by participants, Ricardo Palmieri and Kruno Jost and final editing was done by Kruno Jost.

View Larger Map

SJC map with 7 chosen locations

CR 2.0 had updates in software and hardware applications in both interactivity and in creation of robots. WII controller was hacked for position tracking of the robots. PD patches were updated to incorporate audio visual representations of the locations and new design in robots was introduced to create less chance for them to entangle into each other.

WII controller and its positioning next to the projector on the ceiling of the installation space.

New bettleboot design with recycled material, upper and bottom side and from inside.

New map inhabitants were also robots made by young people attending robot making workshops. Both robots and maps were intriguing younger and older audience.

Installation needed calibrating and it went trough couple of stages of production to fit place and its surrounding in best possible way.

Final installation:

During the workshop days in SESC SJC participants showed a great interest in personal narrative while obtaining and creating material for impending CultureRobot installation. Appealing content was aggregated during the five days when they were making research based on presentation that displayed mapping process trough geographical mapping, mind mapping, time mapping and projects that map social, political and power relations.

Most prominent artistic working on the subject were presented, such as Josh On theyrule.net, Heath Bunting BorderXing , Warchalking project, Bureau d’Etudes and UniversitéTangente work, MapaEnquanto by Brazilian collective Descentro, i-SEE project by Institute of Applied Autonomy and An Atlas of Radical Cartography.

Participants created maps based on their own interests. An example is mapping the water and city relations. Urbanism, water flow, street flow, underground water reservoirs and approach to communal water, abandoned water towers, rivers and bridges were investigated. This part of workshop ended resulting in drown, video and photo documentation.

An interesting image was created by one of the workshop participants depictingthe way from her home to SESC workshop only by ussing colors and shapes.

Joined map was created by inserting each of the participant map into city map, where pins and threads were used to investigate participants movement within the city as well as relation of themselves trough this movement. Maps were than replicated in digital form using googlemaps technologies and collaborative map was created. Participants were also introduced to the GPS technology that was used to mark some of city points by its latitude and longitude.

During HAIP festival in Ljubljana Palmieri Ricardo and Kruno Jošt mounted CultureRobot installation at cybercafe and culture center Kiberpipa. Cultural points in Ljubljana have been marked on the map:

Robots movement was tracked by infrared camera on the map. They have mounted diodes on the top.

In the video development can be seen in new design protecting robots from entangling together. Also a tracking patch can be observed. Map with cultural centers were trigged to change color and size of circle as robot crossed it. People could control robot movements.

Here is photolog from HAIP festival >>

Culture exchange program has made it possible for Kruno Jošt and Ricardo Palmieri to present installation CultureRobot at festival HAIP 08.

CultureRobot is participatory interactive installation that raises awareness of social and political sphere that is affecting autonomous cultural sphere in Ljubljana.
“The HAIP Festival puts on display multimedia art forms resulting from creative use of open technologies and the freedom of artistic expressions in open-source media. It presents works of the young, promising artists and creative engineers on international level, who specialize in top-notch, open-standards-supported arts and multimedia art practices. The festival features individuals and groups with a critical approach towards the technologies that surround us and shape our everyday environment.” (from http://www.haip.cc/)

From 27th to 31th of October final preparations of the installation has been made. Steps were:

1. Making of the Robots (recycled material for small robots)
2. Tracking the Robots (Open CV with hacked webcam for infrared detection)
3. Filtering the Robots data (positioning in PD)
4. Image of the Map (interactive)
This are the tools and recycled material used to make a robot

First we had to test electronical circuit that will power electro motors.

This is how the elements are supposed to be glued on the body of the robot - the old DVD.

To help stabilizing the wheels we used old metal plates. We glued wheels on metal plates. Wheels are made with rubber material found in pipe repair store.


Everything was glued on the top of the CD and circuit was connected based on the scheme.

Robot antenas that will on contact shut down one of the motors thus making robot turn in one direction were glued (later soldered) to electronic switches.

We fitted caps made from plastic bottles trying to prevent robots to hook each other with antennas.

This is the movie of robot movement

To help us work we visited local TV and radio repair shop and collected old remote controls that were disassembled and led diodes were taken out.

Led diodes are glued on the top of each robot.

Old web cam was hacked by inserting found developed slide film. This will filter out all unwanted infrared light and show only led diode light on the back of our robots.


Pure Data (open source software for multimedia interactivity) patch for detecting robot movements looks like this.

Collaborative map was developed during past months with artist and cultural workers from Ljubljana. Map is representing cultural points in center of Ljubljana. This map will continue to aggregate data on suggestions of the HAIP festival visitors.

This is PD patch that calibrates specific location on the map with the coordinates of the robot. It will detect when robot is on the coordinate thus creating visuals on the projected screen.

Activities of the robots are seen on the map by changing colors.