You know how exasperating it feels to call a company and get stuck in an automated voice program instead of being connected to a human being? Soon, you’ll be able to experience that same level of irritation at malls across this great land, when Pepper the humanoid robot glides up beside you for a little digital customer service.
Kidding, of course. Hopefully.
People in Britain who had settled in for a nice viewing of Prometheus this weekend were distressed, to say the least, when a realistic 30-second spot aired—completely unexplained—that advertised synthetic human housekeepers for sale.
“Meet Sally. The help you’ve always wanted,” the freakishly soothing voiceover began, as a lovely though dead-eyed cyborg is seen folding sheets, organizing the kitchen and putting the kids to bed. “She is faster, stronger, more capable than ever before.”
The ad then pitched a company called Persona Synthetics, which claims to make androids that are “closer to humans than ever before.”
By Tuesday, there had been 100,000 searches for the brand on Google, and the website was nearing half a million visits. It was all a hoax, of course—a campaign from Channel 4 for Humans, a Black Mirror-esque futuristic drama.
Along with the TV spot, there are print ads, a fake store on Regent Street, social accounts and a mock auction on eBay inviting visitors to bid on a robot (sadly, no one met the £20,000 minimum bid). At the Regent Street store, two screens used Microsoft Kinect technology to show giant robot models reacted to their movements of the people watching.
It’s freaky indeed, and we’ll only be seeing more of this kind of stuff going forward. The ads are also beautifully made by in-house agency 4Creative, whose prior work included the stunning “Meet the Superhumans” ad for the 2012 Paralympic Games.
Letter carriers should be afraid. Very afraid.
Meet Spot, a 160-pound, four-legged, dog-like robot developed by Google-owned defense contractor Boston Dynamics.
The mechanical mutt stars in the cool, hypnotic, kind of horrifying two-minute video below, which has fetched more than 4 million YouTube views in three days. Spot navigates steps and hilly terrain and, rather amazingly, stays upright and in motion after absorbing some pretty fierce kicks from Boston Dynamics staffers who emerge from their cubicles and attack. (Bad humans—bad!)
In the not-so-distant future, high-tech hounds like Spot will bury bones, all right—the bones of all humankind! Kidding, of course. Boston Dynamics manufactures cutting-edge canines large and small, and I’m sure they’ll make the world a better place. Or something. Their bark is probable worse than their byte.
At the very least, these power-driven pups will be best friends for the automatons like Baxter that will inherit the Earth. Feline fanatics, meanwhile, can check out the same company’s Cheetah bot, which runs 28.3 miles purr hour.
The Symbiotic Machine uses the energy collected from micro organisms to move around in search for more photosynthetic organisms which it then collects and processes again continue
A inquietude criativa do genial Damon Albarn não para de render bons frutos para o bom pop do nosso tempo. Depois do Blur, Gorillaz, The Good The Bad The Queen, Rocket Juice & The Moon e alguns outros projetos e trilhas que pouca gente conhece por aqui mas que também revelam a diversidade do músico britânico, agora chega a vez de Everyday Robots, seu primeiro disco solo oficial.
No mês passado, Damon divoulgou o primeiro single do álbum. A música-título do disco é um pouco desconcertante e provoca o ouvinte com a mesma escuridão dos tempos de Essex Dogs (do Blur), e sua dificuldade se transforma em recompensa após algumas audições.
Lonely Press Play é o novo single, e seu clima soturno confirma a definição que o próprio Damon deu para seu disco: “pessoal, contemplativo, uma reflexão sobre o homem versus a máquina”.
A música é linda e também é daquelas que vai se descortinar por inteiro só depois de alguns repeats, revelando todas as suas nuances.
Agora só nos resta esperar até abril, quando o álbum será lançado oficialmente, para descobrir os outros devaneios de um artista que já passeou por tantos caminhos musicais que hoje pode se dar ao luxo de fazer exatamente o que quer.
Que venha abril. Até lá, “if you’re lonely press play”.
Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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Focus sur 2veinte, un studio de conception graphique et de motion situé à Buenos Aires, qui a présenté cette vidéo d’animation « Looking for a Fight ». Inspiré par les codes de films de type Kaiju Eiga et les dessins animés japonais, cette vidéo colorée nous invite à découvrir un grand combat entre deux robots.
So, San Pellegrino will let folks remotely control robots on the ground and in the air over Italy … but NOT for the purpose of Dalek-like mass destruction? Where's the fun in that? To help bring the sparkling water's "Three Minutes in Italy" promotion to life, Ogilvy & Mather in New York partnered with Deeplocal to create five robots that Facebook users can control romotely to take in the sights of Italy. Four ground-gliding units and one skybot perched on a 40-foot pole allow users to take virtual tours of Taormina, a picturesque village in Sicily. San Pellegrino's Facebook fans can sign up to drive the ground-bots for 180 seconds, viewing the town in real time. The robots are equipped with tablets displaying users' Facebook profile pics, and a translation program allows participants to talk with local residents. Brand ambassadors are on the ground to facilitate engagement, or thwart any attempts to use the robots for evil ends, whichever comes first. Actually, the bots don't look very threatening, especially equipped with umbrellas to protect their components from the sun. (After the jump, watch one robotic romeo chat up an unsuspecting passerby named Christin; That's amore!) The campaign runs through Aug. 17, with virtual tours from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern. It's a novel approach, and it seems only fitting that as robots take more of our jobs, they get to replace us on vacation, too. Via PSFK.
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This ad for golf's European Tour pits Northern Irish phenom Rory McIlroy against a wise-cracking golf-ball-hitting robot named Jeff in a contest to see who can chip the most balls into washing machines on a driving range. (As a kid, McIlroy practiced this way for some reason. Perhaps he was raised in a laundromat.) "Losing to a robot is a bit like losing to Martin Kaymer," Jeff quips. Golf humor—as lame as the game itself. When a washer lights up and sounds like a pinball machine, the bot asks, "Is that the same noise you heard when you signed your sportswear contract?" Yeah, paying Rory $100 million to wear the Swoosh and battle better-known cyborgs is much better than feeding starving people around the world. Thanks, Nike! The video has gone viral with almost 2 million views in four days. The washing-machine imagery is goofily memorable, but the video's four-minute running time feels like 40 minutes to me. McIlroy giggles incessantly. I kept hoping the robot would chip the guy into one of the washers, or maybe tear off his arms and use them as clubs. I guess we'll have to wait until Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia are paired up again to see something like that on a golf course.
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En mélangeant habilement des images tournée à l’aide d’un Canon 50D et les incrustations d’un robot en 3D, « A Story about Robots » est une création très réussie de Paramotion Films. Une animation narrant l’histoire d’un petit robot captivé par une œuvre de Gustav Klimt. A découvrir en vidéo dans la suite.
Les étudiants du Southern California Institute of Architecture ont imaginé ce projet impressionnant “Eye, Robot” combinant cinématographie et robotique. Guidés par leurs professeurs Brandon Kruysman et Jonathan Proto, les étudiants nous proposent cette vidéo passionnante à découvrir dans la suite.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
