Floribots

Geoffrey Drake Brockman

8 February - 8 April 2007
Westend Gallery

[l img='1_Floribots.jpg' caption='installation view Floribots, National Gallery, 2006 Photo: the artist':] The beauty of a flower is simple, pure and joyful. The majesty of the annual - blooming for one short moment, before withering away - plays out the tragedy of life in a single act: 'we grow, we are beautiful, we die'. While the solitary flower domesticated in a pot is emblematic of a suburban summer's day. The robot flowers of Floribots overlay familiar notions of the flowerpot with a shifted reality of technological autonomy and virtual agency. Floribots is an interactive, collective organism made up of 128 robot flowerpots equipped with telescopic stems and origami flowers. Each flower starts as a bud that grows to its full metre height and suddenly blooms with a distinct 'wap' sound. Soon afterwards, the bloom withers back into its flowerpot and returns to a bud state. An electronic 'field of flowers' dancing in unison, Floribots is choreographed by an embedded microcontroller and influenced by the 'mood' of its hive mind and by the actions of the audience. opening: Wednesday 7 February, 6pm free artist's floortalk: Thursday 1 March, 1pm Exhibition Catalogue [l img='Floribots01.jpg' caption='All images: installation view Floribots, PICA, 2007 Photo: Tony Nathan':]