glitterBot installation

GlitterBot is a digital art installation is formed by several robots positioned so that the visitor inevitably interact with them. When a person approaches a robot, it is activated, and moves up down the wires using its engines until it finds the user’s face. At that point, a fan starts blowing glitter on the user’s face and not the floor. The glitter on the ground is shaken by the steps of the visitors. The conclusion is a visual space with robots floating over an area full of glitter drawn by the paths that visitors walking arrant de installation.

The aim of the work of Julio Lucio is to mimic human or natural behavior through technology. With Glitterbot, the user feels the robots as alive beings who have their ways, their movements and their goals and this creates an interaction between them.

—

Curatorial text from Select magazine 

(Free Translation)

Glitterbot

Lucio Julio presents a new techno installation consisting of a set of robots whose function is to blow golden glitter on the visitor’s face. In general Julio’s robots are not designed with the goal of performing human tasks considered important to the functional everyday life, however the function of his machines appears to be indispensable for life .

His work moves out the scope of survival into the realm of experience. Thus his robots provide a life experience. At first a robot would be the ultimate expression of a society that puts its faith in science and technology and, in a certain sense it should be be so. Despite that, Julio Lucio’s GlitterBot reverses this direction and articulates the same pattern science + technology to reanimate human action with doings considered superfluous and non-essential.

His techno installation transforms the space into a field sensitized by the sensors of the robots which are triggered by human presence. The space as much as the visitor – participant get covered by the golden glitter dust. In this case it is the color metal, not the color pigment. Finally, gold gives a glow that disintegrates the space rather than integrating it.

Julio Lucio has been developing a very special work in the field of reflection on art / science / technology, a triad which is today more of a problem than a solution to the artists. And I think that in the case of Julio the experience is successful because it shows more problems than the solutions it finds.

Alberto Saraiva