Ken Rinaldo, ‘The Paparazzi Bots’, 2010 (Transmediale: Berlin).

Watch the accompanying video on LEA’s Vimeo page: http://vimeo.com/34586857

Each autonomous robot makes the decision to take the photos of particular people, while ignoring other humans in the exhibition, based on things like whether or not the viewers are smiling or the shape of their smile.

When the robots identify a person or group they automatically adjust their focus and the robots stop and use a series of bright flashes to record that moment.



Surveillance technologies straddle a delicate balance we have in contemporary culture, where we are all photographed without our knowledge by cell phones, hidden cameras and sometimes “celebritized”. For me this is a kind of modern baptism with the camera flash and the spectacle of being the focus of the camera becoming a kind of techno anointing.

In the photo that accompanies this work you will notice the Paparazzi Bot has captured Science Fiction writer Bruce Sterling at the Transmediale Exhibition where these works were invited by curator Honor Harger in 2010.

All images are the copyright of the artist and cannot be used "in any way" without their expressed consent.