IPGs Emerging Media Lab Pet Robots

Visited the EML the other day... Here were their pet robots:

nobody puts robocop in the corner!

ladies & gentlemen, mrs. c3p0

your grandfather's robot - an heirloom!

let sleeping robot dogs lie

master of all he surveys

random robot imagery

robots drawing at the ITP show several months back

crazy plastic, seemingly robotic mannequins, lit from within, in portland, or

robot messenger bag in soho reading toilet paper printouts

writing robot

image courtesy loganloganlogan

so slate seems to be doing a whole series about movies. it's summertime after all and we do like our summer blockbusters, right? i've seen exactly one: Star Trek. it was delicious.

but it turns out that 'formulaic' movies have a founding father. Wycliffe A. Hill took 36 archetypal figures and combined them with 36 archetypal situations (adding one of his own, "A miracle happens") to come up with 10 million plot concepts. i am so getting my hands on a copy of this.

when others entered the fray, however, developing their own stock plots, Hill took it a step beyond - he made a scriptwriting robot. it would write an outline for a script in 20 minutes. somehow this did not take off, despite the excellent name, "Shakespeare's Ghost." to see an ad for this brilliant piece of mechanized hackery, check this out.