REFLECTION: Human + Art Science Museum

In the Human+ exhibition showcased many interesting projects by artiest, scientists, technologists and designers! One of my favourite piece was made by local student in Nanyang Polytechnic – School of Interactive and Digital Media named, TEASE.

My first reaction from the art piece was “Omg the body parts are so real” it was display with ears, feet and hand. It actually shock me until I felt a bit disgusted, still I took a step forward and touch it. The responds a vary such as laughing or angry depending on how we interact with their physical “body parts”. I really like how they invite interaction from the audience and the reaction from the installation was amusing.

The second part of the installation was presented at the back, capturing the emotions of the audience. I feel that was quite interesting where I spend a bit of time observing the different expression. From this installation reminds me that in real life we would tease each other similarly while the target now is a machine. The experience feel intriguing while if I were to tease a real person it feel more “shiok!” a sheer happiness. I guess is their body reaction and facial expression that cause the feeling in me. Whereas, teasing a machine feels less intimate and feel indifferent because it only react to you depend on your actions.

In conclusion, in future many jobs or even our daily life would involved robots however, I feel the relationship between human and technology was one way. We might really developed a relationship with robots but still they are coded to react to our behaviour. Yet, through installation like this can help us to explore our interpersonal relationship with the machine. I do feel intriguing and even happy to receive a laughing response. Aren’t this contradicting when your conscious tells you that its coded but still you have a emotional reaction.

 

REFLECTION: Human + Art Science Museum

Human+ exhibition are categories in to 4 category, Augmented Abilities, Encountering Others, Authoring Environments and Life at the Edges. The second category Encountering Others interest me more as most of them has the physical art piece there. Which aims to explore the changes of our social relationship towards the emerging technology. Many of the ideas will be helpful to our future or helps us to rethink the concept of robotic.


One of the project that caught my attention is this interactive Misbehaving machine act out by Heidi Kumao. The interactivity draws my attention to this and I was trying to find out how can I make it move. Most of the time when I was interacting with it, the left leg was jerking just like how human respond nervously shivering.

The anthropomorphism in this machines shown their characteristic through small gestural acts. Unlike the machines that we see in daily life were designed to fit our needs are “obedient” and productive. From this makes me reflected our relationship between the machine and us. The expectation that we have for machine has been increasing rapidly as compare to when I was a child.

However, this machine were portray differently with the added gesture that seems like an emotions to us. An identity was given to the machine as well, a six years old female performers and react differently through the gesture depending on to the zone of the viewer standing.

Another notable one was Nadine that was a realistic life-size robots. It was my first time seeing such a lifelike robot that look exactly like human. I was quite sad that I missed Nadine’s “working hours” as I feel it will be a quite an interesting experience.

Overall, Human+ exhibition has updated me on how technology has advance through the artist work. I am really amazed by the artwork such as Nadine are able to interact with us through various options like sending emails, communicate with us and also read us stories. While some artwork would makes me think and realise a different aspect like our expectation of robots are higher and higher. I am not sure if it’s a good thing but how robots are improving will definitely cause changes to us and our lives.