Edward Ihnatowicz (born 14 February 1926,
Chełm
Chełm (; uk, Холм, Kholm; german: Cholm; yi, כעלם, Khelm) is a city in southeastern Poland with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some ...
– died 1988,
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
) was a
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
cybernetic art
Cybernetic art is contemporary art that builds upon the legacy of cybernetics, where feedback involved in the work takes precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. The relationship between cybernetics and art can be summarised in ...
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
robot
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...
s as art. As
Eduardo Kac
Eduardo Kac dwardoʊ kæts; ĕd·wâr′·dō kăts(1962) is a contemporary artist of dual nationality (American and Brazilian) whose artworks span a wide range of practices, including performance art, poetry, holography, interactive art, digital ...
states:
...three artworks created in the mid and late sixties stand as landmarks in the development of robotic art: Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super hi ...
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 The Computer Arts Society (CAS) was founded in 1968, in order to encourage the creative use of computers in the arts.
Foundation
The three founder members of the Society – Alan Sutcliffe, George Mallen, and John Lansdown – had been involved ...
.
Cybernetic works
SAM
![Sound Activated Mobile](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Sound_Activated_Mobile.jpg)
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
A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public ...
mounted in front of
fiberglass
Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cloth ...
parabolic reflector
A parabolic (or paraboloid or paraboloidal) reflector (or dish or mirror) is a reflective surface used to collect or project energy such as light, sound, or radio waves. Its shape is part of a circular paraboloid, that is, the surface generated ...
s (reminiscent of a flower) on top of a spine-like column of
aluminium
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...
castings.
Hydraulic
Hydraulics (from Greek: Υδραυλική) is a technology and applied science using engineering, chemistry, and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. At a very basic level, hydraulics is the liquid counter ...
piston
A piston is a component of reciprocating engines, reciprocating pumps, gas compressors, hydraulic cylinders and pneumatic cylinders, among other similar mechanisms. It is the moving component that is contained by a cylinder and is made gas-tig ...
s in the
vertebra
The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates,Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic ...
-like units allowed the neck to twist from side-to-side and bend forwards and backwards. An
analogue circuit
Analogue electronics ( en-US, analog electronics) are electronic systems with a continuously variable signal, in contrast to digital electronics where signals usually take only two levels. The term "analogue" describes the proportional relati ...
was used to control the hydraulics to move the
robot
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...
to face the direction of the predominant sound. It was exhibited at the
Cybernetic Serendipity
Cybernetic Serendipity was an exhibition of cybernetic art curated by Jasia Reichardt, shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England, from 2 August to 20 October 1968, and then toured across the United States. Two stops in the United ...
exhibition which was held initially at the
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...
in London in 1968 and later toured Canada and the US ending at the
Exploratorium
The Exploratorium is a museum of science, technology, and arts in San Francisco, California. Characterized as "a mad scientist's penny arcade, a scientific funhouse, and an experimental laboratory all rolled into one", the participatory natur ...
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 of it, trying to attract its attention.
The Senster
His most significant work was The
Senster,
[
] a large hydraulically actuated
robot
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...
that followed the sound and motion of the people around it, giving the impression of being alive. The
Senster was the first robotic
sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
to be controlled by a computer. It used an array of four microphones to detect the direction of the sound around it and two
Doppler radar
A Doppler radar is a specialized radar that uses the Doppler effect to produce velocity data about objects at a distance. It does this by bouncing a microwave signal off a desired target and analyzing how the object's motion has altered the f ...
arrays to measure the motion of people. A computer program controlled the
hydraulic
Hydraulics (from Greek: Υδραυλική) is a technology and applied science using engineering, chemistry, and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. At a very basic level, hydraulics is the liquid counter ...
actuators to move the body so that the Senster was attracted by sound and movement but repelled by loud noises and violent motion. The program bears a strong resemblance to that used in
behavior-based robotics
Behavior-based robotics (BBR) or behavioral robotics is an approach in robotics that focuses on robots that are able to exhibit complex-appearing behaviors despite little internal variable state to model its immediate environment, mostly gradually ...
developed a decade later.
The Bandit
His final work of Cybernetic Art was ''The Bandit'', which was exhibited at the
Computer Arts Society The Computer Arts Society (CAS) was founded in 1968, in order to encourage the creative use of computers in the arts.
Foundation
The three founder members of the Society – Alan Sutcliffe, George Mallen, and John Lansdown – had been involved ...
exhibition at the
Edinburgh Festival
__NOTOC__
This is a list of arts and cultural festivals regularly taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The city has become known for its festivals since the establishment in 1947 of the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Fe ...
, UK in 1973. It was a hydraulically actuated lever controlled by a computer and had two modes: one where it was position controlled and one where it was force controlled. When a visitor first held onto the lever, it was force controlled, with a demand value of zero. The person could thus move the arm as he/she pleased. The computer system recorded the series of motions, then switched to position control mode, where it played the series of positions back to the person. The way the person reacted to the motion of the arm was statistically analysed and the computer program printed out its classification of the gender and temperament of the person.
Biography
From 1939 to 1943 Ihnatowicz was a war refugee in Romania and Algiers. In 1943 he arrived in Britain and from 1945 to 1949 he attended
The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art
The Ruskin School of Art, known as the Ruskin, is an art school at the University of Oxford, England. It is part of Oxford's Humanities Division.
History
The Ruskin grew out the Oxford School of Art, which was founded in 1865 and later became ...
, Oxford. From 1971 to 1986 he worked as a Research Assistant in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
.
References
External links
Biography and detailed information about his works at www.senster.comList of works held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ihnatowicz, Edward
1926 births
1988 deaths
Polish sculptors
Polish male sculptors
20th-century sculptors
People from Chełm