The word ‘robot’ was invented by the Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). A story about artificial humans made for forced labour, it struck a big fat chord with the Japanese when it was first performed in Tokyo in 1924. A country with no luddite history, technology has always been eagerly embraced in Japan as a way to help people (with manufacturing, domestic tasks, sex, friendship, etc), and the Japanese remain the world leaders in humanoid, android and animal robotic technology.
But Japan is not only producing machines that are increasingly like humans; we’re also seeing humans becoming more like machines. Continuing the man-as-machine notions posed by the german gynaecologist and illustrator Fritz Kahn, Daito Manabe believes there is no difference between machines and people, and has been inching himself ever closer to cyborgism over the last few years.
The programmer / coder / hacker / light designer / composer / DJ / VJ / video artist / researcher was a headline guest for the Big In Japan! event in Australia last December, and this week we’re bringing him back for live face hacking and DJ sets in Melbourne (30th April, Loop, 23 Meyers Place, free) and Sydney (1st May, Beach Road Hotel, 71 Beach Road Hotel, Bondi, $10 with free Kirin). Go. Or, at the very least, check out his latest work for Nike …
Man that shit with the shoes is off the hook, can’t believe I missed this guy.
Comment by Erwin — July 14, 2010 @ 12:38 am