Soft Materials

Soft Materials (2005)

25 Jan 2005 • Short • 0h 10m
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'What Italian philosopher Mario Perniola has called 'the sex appeal of the inorganic' remain central to Martin's vision.' (Art Forum) 'As for many feminist artists before her, the body itself is the site of the vitality of art.' (Frieze) Soft Materials (2004), staging a fictional relationship between humans and robots, that has been exhibited in dozens of public art galleries around the world including: the MIT List Visual Art Center, Cambridge, The Museum of Modern Art, Sao Paolo, Kunsthalle Zurich, and Haus der Kulturen de Welt, Berlin. Soft Materials was shot in the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Zurich where scientists research 'embodied artificial intelligence'. This cutting edge area of AI produces robots which, rather than being programmed from the 'head down' by a computer 'brain', instead learn to function through the experience of their physical bodies. Soft Materials introduces to these robots two performers, one man and one woman, trained in body awareness, acutely sensitive to the nuances of movement, primed to mimic the robots in a play of reciprocity. These performers shed skins of soft fabric, bear their joints like the frank structure of a machine, and, nude, approach the robots as if they were sentient beings. Creating intimate relationships that are in turns tender, funny and eerie, they bend flexible human fantasy around tough materials.

Daria Martin
Director
Daria Martin
Writer

Starring

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Country: United Kingdom
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(10 votes)
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