ArtFutura 1996
Robots & Knowbots
22 – 27 October / Cículo de Bellas Artes, Madrid
Chico MacMurtrie, Amorphic Robot Works, Laura Kikauka, Knowbotic Research, Bruce Blumberg, Libres para Siempre, Bill Vorn, Louis-Philippe Demers.
ArtFutura moved to Círculo de Bellas Artes in 1996. There, it was to present two editions considered to be classics. In the first, the festival overflowed the new space in an edition that included exhibitions, seminars, projections, parties and an extensive deployment of stands.
The theme was Robots & Knowbots, a play on words that intended to merge art associated with robotics and the “knowbots”, those digital robot-programs that you find on information networks. In the debates, the participants were Laura Kikauka, Knowbotic Research, Bruce Blumberg, Bill Vorn and Louis-Philippe Demers.
Perhaps the most outstanding aspect of this edition was the exhibition-performance by Chico MacMurtrie and Amorphic Robot Works. Two containers arrived in Madrid with sixty robots of all shapes and sizes that spread out in the Circle’s grand Ballroom and on the ground floor. They were all creations from ARW, from the “Rope Climber” that was incessantly going up and down the central staircase, to the “Super monkey dog” and the “Mountain Building Machine”. Every day, Chico and his collaborators offered a concert-performance that has stayed in the memory of those who attended. It was one of the most ambitious exhibitions ever presented by the artist.
The exhibitions were completed with robotic structures by Bill Vorn & Louis-Philippe Demers as well as installations by Libres para Siempre, ..dijo el monje, Juan Antonio Lleó, Eduardo Chapero-Jackson and Virtual Graphics.
The audiovisual section of the ArtFutura Show included works by Yugi Kyoshitsu, Pacific Data, Satoshi Kitahara and Blue Sky Productions. And in the Infography program in Spain, “One Night” by Jordi Moragues, prize-winner in Imagina, Montecarlo, stood out.
Also, in the Círculo de Bellas Artes, the party Estación Futura under the title “Two Nights to dream Awake” was presented. The party filled the entire building and included live music, late-night projections, installations and performances by Chico McMurtrie and Amorphic Robot Works
“The functioning of our society could be conferred to machines capable of directing industry, carrying out research work and taking care of production, which could inmediately be transferred to space in order to make use of the inmense resources from the solar system and, this way, leave human beings on an Earth transformed into a natural reserve“.
Hans Moravec
