the unvieling of fontanaBot

6june2008: day 1020 of my graduate career and day 4 of Zer01 Festival 2008.

the public seemed delighted by the knife wielding robot known as fontanaBot. throngs of visitors crowded 1st street tonight and to my eye the numbers are here-to-fore unprecedented for the South Bay First Fridays. the event was ramped up for SubZero, an exposition of projects in honor of Zer01 2008. nearly 50 participants exhibited hacks, hardware, interactivity, and all-around art. here's a teaser video from us:



the hearing loss i am feeling this morning induced by the nieghboring project Drone Machines by Tristan Shone(which btw is an amazing project!) is a small price to pay for the downright success of fontanaBot's first public outing. the machinic artist executed dozens of works over 6 hours and evoked all the responses that one would expect from disbelief to amusement and back to disgust again, a little controversy is always good , no? read more at www.thomasasmuth.com

much to my amusement i learned that the other robotic art exhibition at SubZero was a project by my neighbor in Oakland three units down! the Boise Cascade has become a hotbed of hardware art.