“It's going to be a lot of fun! You will see robots that light up based on your movement, and through data visualization, on the screen, you will understand how the robots see you. And maybe for the first time ever, you will hear what the magnetic field around them sounds like," says the curator Jiří Zemánek. "At first glance, the installation is very playful, but at the same time, we wanted to show people that robots will be around us more often and can be our partners, not competitors. In popular culture, they are often portrayed negatively," adds Zemánek with reference to sci-fi films, which according to him can sometimes cause unnecessary fear of new technologies.
Not being afraid of the unknown is the message of the installation, according to Petr Vacek, who is behind the design of the interactive elements. "People perceive the machines with their own senses and try to see if their actions provoke a response. This natural human ability to explore everything new with the help of an experiment leads to understanding, acceptance and banishing the fear of the unknown," explains Vacek. When creating luminous exoskeletons, he was inspired by the anatomy of animals, just like the manufacturers of robotic dogs and spiders. "The organs attached to the robots resemble the brightly colored shells of beetles or butterfly wings. Using them, machines reflect their own interpretation of human movement in their vicinity," he describes the mechanism.
