Kinetic art from Kal Spelletich

This is the Master Mind Machine, a robot I made, installed at the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco. It has an EEG interface, you put the EEG headband on and as your thoughts change the robot responds!, really, it took a long long time to get this made, i pondered the idea for like 8 or 9 years, the Exploratorium crew was invaluable helping make this happen!.
A hybrid human machine system
Reactive art, art that reacts to you= a machine that responds to your thinking/intellect
This is a robot that reads your mind and responds to your thought processes an changes. Can your mind control the robot or does the robot control your mind and body?
Much of my work involves finding interactive ways to blur the boundaries between people and machines. Getting to know this mechanical being takes some time and effort, and it's not always clear what exactly it's going to do. Is it simply responding to you, or are the two of you really interacting? Who's controlling whom? These deep uncertainties raise intriguing emotions—fear and trepidation, perhaps, but also anticipation and wonder, the excitement of the new, the thrill of contact. These are projects to explore new forms of interpersonal communication through touch, force-feedback technology, cyberkinetics, intimacy, social interaction via technology, machines, robot, fear, play, machine, human and animal interaction, rite of passage and empowerment.

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Motorized tree in my studio.

Have you read the book The Road by Cormac McCarthy? He has a special brand of existentialism, i rekon. My trees are partially inspired by his descriptions in it.

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work from the mid 1980's to the present

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Some art should be confusing and hard to comprehend

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Intention Machines features seven robotic sculptures, each representing an actual person influential in my life and artistic career. As well as assorted Prayer Wheels and seven photographs of the sun and moon were taken with a digital camera modified with various apparati.
Intention Machines features seven robots—avatars of friends, mentors and heroes who have profoundly influenced the my life. Each robot is titled for its namesake, and wears unwashed work clothes previously owned and worn by the person embodied by the work. Emory Douglas, who worked as the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, as well as poet and artist Lawrence Ferlenghetti are among those represented. These robotic models genuflect, clasp hands in prayer and whirl like Sufi dervishes. There are also "Prayer Wheels, mechanical manifestations of machines sending out prayers.
Viewers activate the robots by touching an interface sensor that enables the machine to ‘read’ the viewer, and react with a responsive gesture. Sensors detect a variety of inputs: proximity, touch, force, breath-alcohol content, polygraph metrics, and ambient sound. Responses are spontaneous and unique—the robots have no stored memory.
Each of the photographs in the exhibit relates to the same individuals personified by the robotic sculptures. Spelletich took the photographs with a digital camera modified by a child’s magnifying glass and lenses cannibalized from old slide projectors in an attempt to view the sun in a way one cannot with the naked eye. Spelletich’s process is very much rooted in his desire to pay homage to his mentors. The work titled after Martha Wilson was taken while Spelletich was conjuring her during a partial solar eclipse.

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