Tag Archives: CultureRobot

Vivo ArteMov bringing CR to SESC in Curitiba

Ongoing collaboration between Brazilian artist Ricardo Palmieri and Croat Kruno Jošt will be presented in cultural centre SESC in Curitiba, Brazil.

CultureRobot is invited for participation in the Circuito Vivo arte.mov 2012 between 07 to 12 May 2012 in Curitiba, Parana, Brazil. Typical micro-festival is occupying the spaces of the SESC Palace of Freedom (SESC Paço da Liberdade). Program ranges from a set of audiovisual shows, forum involving researchers and artists to workshops on mapping and geo-location and participative installation. The idea of the festival is to expand access to  discussions and critical use of technologies, such as mobile media, the microcinemas, the mediation technologies, network policies and art in public space.

Circuit arte.mov Live is a project that has existed since the first edition of the festival (started in 2006). Created initially as a mechanism for dissemination of the activities, Circuit today has become a standalone event, a special edition that has a priority to establish prospective artists and researchers in the localities where it occurs. In 2012 Circuit Live arte.mov is taking place in five Brazilian cities: Rio de Janeiro, Recife, Goiania, Curitiba and Sao Paulo.

Collaboration of Brazilian and Croatian artists on particpative isntallation CultureRobot has started in 2008 and since has been presented on HAIP festival in Ljubljana, SESC San Jose dos Campos, Brazil, Futuresonic Fringe, Manchester and arte.mov Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Lucas Bamozzi on ArteMov festival

Lucas Bambozzi is a multimedia artist based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. His works are constituted by pieces dealing with media in a wide variety of formats, such as installations, single channel videos, short films and interactive projects.

In this interview Lucas explains intentions behind ArteMov festival, about locative media, usage of open systems as alternative, sharing and dissemination of knowledge and about  commission winning CultureRobot project at 2009 festival.

Lucas Bambozzi interview from GentleJunk on Vimeo.

CultureRobot 4.0 won Artemov 1st prize for locative media competition

CultureRobot 4.0 was exhibited at Culture Center “104� during Artemov festival in Belo Horizonte between 11th and 14th November. 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 in 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 installation

CR 4.0 installation

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.

CultureRobot as artwork

CultureRobot is an artwork that has as much focus on the process of creation as it has on the final representation with interactive and participative action/installation. CR process starts with workshops that are open to everyone who wants to participate in collaborative mapping, examining, wondering, experiencing, researching and trying to understand cities, parks, beck- alleys, countries, borders, cultures, people… CR is open to any way of tracing and tracking that might be involved, from most simple drawing to complicated graph representing social interconnections. CR is social act of establishing an understanding.

Workshops and participative map making with visual and sound material gathering that will be used as information in given map is truly collaborative experience, where wide range of techniques (drawing, photography, video, language, topography, etc) can be explored in participative effort. During workshops teacher to student relation is substituted to multitude principle of collaborative sharing and learning about insights and personal narratives that are discussed and researched. To leave simple naming of the places on a flat, two dimensional map and engage examining relation in the maps is what CR is all about.

Dwellers and wanderers are represented in final installation by simple robots that move arbitrarily. Visitors can direct their movements by making obstacles in front of them in the same way someone creates obstacles (or makes paths) to our own movement, giving us a chance, or blocking us to see and experience more. At the same time, producing robots has the same purpose as map production: everyone can learn simplicity of mapping circuits and recycling material to produce a map traveler – everyone can learn simple usage of electronics by opening parts and looking inside closed “borders” of packaged electronic goods.

The whole process, from mapping, robot creation, video, pictures and drawing gathering is documented. Process also has an open end: installation is never finished and can always be modified/customized to event or space where it takes part. An open end (opportunity to build upon) and open source (opportunity to modify) are making CR a public good that any given community can use to produce their own way of seeing, tracing or tracking, establishing an understanding.

More on:

http://culturerobot.gentlejunk.net/

7 pontos – 7 historias

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 systemâ€? 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 >>

CR 2.0 at SESC SJC

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:

Preparation for CR in SESC SJC

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.

CultureRobot at SESC in Sao Jose dos Campos

Participative installation CultureRobot created trough collaboration work by Ricardo Palmieri (BR) and Kruno Jošt (HR) will stage its second appearance at culture center SESC in Sao Jose dos Campos. SESC custos Juliano Bomeisel and Sergio Seabra invited CultureRobot to happen as a process of opening of this center in SJC.

SJC will be mapped with GPS systems during the workshops from 20th to 24th January ’09. Positions like clubs, social centers, gas stations, museums, factories and parking lots will be mapped and data from those places gathered. Participants will demonstrate personal narration about interdependencies between cultural and social conditions of urban territory they live in.

CultureRobot on HAIP

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 >>

CultureRobot preparations

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
robot parts
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.