'PROTOTIPOAK... and the things we do'

About

The exhibition brings together a selection of major and influential contemporary artworks from within the fields of social robotics, bio electronics and artificial intelligence, that will together inhabit Azkuna Zentroa’s gallery, to create an evolving ecology of interactive and adaptably performative machines. With the artists who have worked with us over the past year to realise this collective of works, we have focused on how these strangely familiar yet extraordinary robots – through their behaviours, and their endeavours to adapt and function within their environment – might both reflect and respond to our own choices and experiences. Perhaps our meetings with them might open new perspectives onto the things we ourselves choose to do and not do, to make and not make happen, as together we navigate and shape the shared spaces we live in.

 ‘…and the things we do’ shows avant-garde social robotics projects, multimedia art and design of the man-machine interface through the proposals of Petra Gemeinboeck & Rob Saunders (Austria and UK), Mari Velonaki (Australia), Robotlab (Germany), David Bowen (USA), Carolin Liebl & Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler (Germany), and Paul Granjon (France). The Australian Embassy and Goethe Foundation have collaborated with this exhibition.

The working process of a project has always been as important as its public presentation.  For two separate periods during the exhibition ‘… and the things we do’ the working space within the lobby of the gallery will be taken over by local artists Vanessa Lorenzo y Miryam Rzm, who will be working in residency. They will be developing aspects of their own art projects in relation to the wider context of the exhibition, and opening their practices to the public – so that both creative processes and finished art works can be brought together and experienced within the gallery. When the artists are present the working space will be opened, and visitors are welcome to enter.

The exhibition includes a series of workshops events led by artists Paul Granjon and Jonathan García (Tunipanea) that invite participants to further explore the workings, possibilities and impact of unwanted machines through a playful process of breaking them down and repurposing their parts into something new.