6:30 for 7:00pm Tuesday 19th October 2004

Speaker: Alex Zivanovic, Imperial College London

Room 542
Mechanical Engineering Department
Imperial College London
Exhibition Road
London SW7 2BX

Edward Ihnatowicz was a Cybernetic Sculptor active in the late 1960's and early 1970's. His ground-breaking sculptures explored the interaction between his robotic works and the audience, and reached their height with The Senster, a large (15 feet long), hydraulic robot commissioned by the electronics giant, Philips, for their permanent showplace, the Evoluon, in Eindhoven in 1970. The sculpture used sound and movement sensors to react to the behaviour of the visitors. It was one of the first computer controlled interactive robotic works of art and remains unparalleled to this day. The talk will focus on his cybernetic sculptures and explore his ideas about Artificial Intelligence and embodiment. More details at http://www.senster.com.