LO: My inspiration

There is a project called ‘can’t help myself‘ by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. It is a large robotic arm that is programmed to clean up the mess of a blood-red liquid that surrounds itself in a given confined space. The thing that is so eye-catching is that this robot is programmed to do this continuous movement forever but its actions also is similar to those of a person’s emotions and actions that people have said it is like looking at a caged animal. The audience pities it but then also has this feeling of familiarity.

The robot was programmed using KUKA’s programming language, which is the company that the physical robot was made from. The Cognex visual recognition system script readings cause the KUKA controller unit to run custom scripts in so that robot performs to swipe the interact with the liquid.

Sun and Peng are the main artists that came up with the general movements for the robot to conduct but Harry and Han are the engineers/programmers with the entire project being overseen by Yu. Sun and Peng are famous for their controversial works, but this specifically focuses on the “pleasure and panic” of anticipating the future.