The original Albert was one of the kinetic sculptures in the
Cybernetic Serendipity
show at the ICA in London in 1968.
He was built by John Billingsley -- who seems to have dropped
off the face of the earth --
and was supposed to track visitors by turning his head as
they passed by.
Here's his page in the (pseudo-)catalog:
click for larger image
And here's the whole
Scanned Catalog.
In 1969 some of the original Cybernetic Serendiptiy pieces
became the founding exhibits at San Francisco's new Exploratorium
science museum. There, around ten years later, I tried to redesign
Albert to make him work more reliably. I failed -- actually I didn't entirely
fail but he never made it back to the museum floor under my tenure.
At the time I had no idea that Albert was a piece of Cybernetic Art History.
Thirty years later I discovered my crime and thought to try again.
The result was
The Plumber's Nightmare,
which also doesn't work very well.
Dateline Midsummer 2013
I just got an email from "KarlE" to the effect that under
his auspices !Albert Lives Again! at the Exploratorium:
And Billingsley only dropped off the Earth's Northern face. He
emigrated to Australia where he joined the faculty of the University
of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba (what a lovely name, eh? I've always
wanted to see what it looks like). He still works on robots and such like:
see his web presence.
Also, Jasia Reichardt the original CyberSerendip curator is/was doing a week
long residency at the Ex. So many Strange Loops have closed.
end Dateline Midsummer 2013
Finally I made,
Another Albert as you see him here.
He uses a stepper
motor to scan his environment. When he notices that some
reflective-thing has changed he stops and examines it. After a while he
gets bored with the new thing and goes back to scanning. He sorta-works
but you need to be fairly close-by for him to notice:
There is, sometimes, a mpg movie here...if not you can download it:
HERE
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