Part of the fun of any live event is creating situations that interact casually with people passing by. This can be something as simple as a friendly smile or complex as video technology that viewers can interact with. This video is a demonstration of how art and technology can work together to create an attention getting effect. The robotics behind this are fairly complex but the creative application is what makes the project really shine.

A giant whimsical one eyed creature is perch above the entrance of a building following the movements of visitors and even doing double takes. This is a great demonstration of how technology and art can come together.

From Flong.com:

“Double-Taker (Snout)” (interactive installation, 2008) deals in a whimsical manner with the themes of trans-species eye contact, gestural choreography, subjecthood, and autonomous surveillance. The project consists of an eight-foot (2.5m) long industrial robot arm, costumed to resemble an enormous inchworm or elephant’s trunk, which responds in unexpected ways to the presence and movements of people in its vicinity. Sited on a low roof above a museum entrance, and governed by a real-time machine vision algorithm, Double-Taker (Snout) orients itself towards passers-by, tracking their bodies and suggesting an intelligent awareness of their activities. The goal of this kinetic system is to perform convincing “double-takes” at its visitors, in which the sculpture appears to be continually surprised by the presence of its own viewers — communicating, without words, that there is something uniquely surprising about each of us.

Click here for a one-minute video that shows Double-Taker (Snout) responding to a group of children on their way to morning art classes at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.