Edward Ihnatowicz

Edward Ihnatowicz (1926–1988) was a Polish cybernetic art sculptor active in the late 1960s and early 1970s . His sculptures explored the interaction between his robotic works and the audience. .

He was a pioneer of the use of computers in art and especially robots as art. As Eduardo Kac states:

...three artworks created in the mid and late sixties stand as landmarks in the development of robotic art: Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe's Robot K-456 (1964), Tom Shannon's Squat (1966), and Edward Ihnatowicz's The Senster (1969-1970). While these works are very significant in their own right, they acquire a particular meaning when re-considered today, since seen together they also configure a triangle of new aesthetic issues that has continually informed the main directions in robotic art.

He was an active member of the Computer Arts Society.

His first cybernetic work that moved directly and recognisably in response to what was going on around it was the Sound Activated Mobile (SAM) . It had four microphones mounted in front of fiberglass parabolic reflectors (reminiscent of a flower) on top of a spine-like column of aluminium castings. Hydraulic pistons in the vertebra-like units allowed the neck to twist from side-to-side and bend forwards and backwards. An analogue circuit was used to control the hydraulics to move the robot to face the direction of the predominant sound. It was exhibited at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition which was held initially at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1968 and later toured Canada and the US ending at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. SAM's behaviour, that of turning to face people as they talked and tracking their movement if they continued to make a sound, together with its sensitivity to quiet but sustained noise, rather than loud shouts, encouraged many people to spend time in front if it, trying to attract its attention.

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