RESEARCH

GRAHAM SMITH¹

ARTIST
Graham Smith is a well-known artist in the design world and has exhibited his work in the Netherlands, Germany and Canada. For over 25 years now Graham is creating so called telepresence art. In his inventions and creations different kinds of media are used to create interaction, like robotic, photographic, virtual reality and telepresence media.
Below several of Graham´s projects will be described to indicate in what kind of projects this artist is involved.
THE THIRD EYE
This 4-year multi-disciplinary project is meant for the Culture Capitol in Germany in 2010. University researchers, artists, architects, urban planners, designers and high school students are united with this project. They work together to create the new model of the future citie and exchange their visions and ideas on how they live, how they want to live and how to design and plan their future urban landscapes.
This will result in a detailed real three-dimensional model. A small remote-controlled video robot travels through the model, which people can guide through the future streets, houses, and squares. The view of the robot is displayed on a screen and in this way a unique perspective on the future city is provided using the “eyes” of the robot.


EMOTION CHAIR
The Emotion Chair is a concept developed specially for deaf people. The goal is to give deaf people the opportunity to enjoy a movie in their unique way. The idea is to provide deaf people with a mixture of sensory experiences to allow them to better “feel” and experience the effects of the music and sound in a film.
3 years of research by Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada to develop and test the Assisted Sensory Information Display (ASID) provided enough knowledge to realise the idea.
The sensory experiences are built in a chair on a motion platform. The Emotion Chair can blow hot and cold air at the face or neck, can even generate various smells, has 12 speakers under several body parts and the 22” LCD lights up with different colors.
The project is demonstrated at V2 in Rotterdam Feb 21, 2008.




MOBI AND MOBI JR.
MOBI stands for Mobil Operating Bi-directional Interface and is a human size telepresence robot. Users can remotely control MOBI to move through distant environment and talk and hear through its speakers while he sees through the robot camera eye. Next to that a lifesize image of the user is projected on the LCD head of the robot throught video-connection. MOBI allows people to "explore far away art shows, attend distant presentations and make public appearances from anywhere on earth, thus helping to reduce air travel and global warming".³

A second version of MOBI, MOBI JR, was specially designed to interact with children using telepresence, which is smaller. MOBI JR. was shown at the STRP Art and Technology Festival in Eindhoven, The Nederlands.
This project was developed with the Industrial Design and Robotics Department at the Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands.

¹ The entire website of Graham Smith is available at http://www.telepresenceart.com
² The entire website of The Third Eye is available at http://www.cybercityruhr.com
³ Text used from http://www.telepresenceart.com/artworks