We’re pretty familiar as a society now with the mechanised factory arms and pick-n-place circuit board robots of everyday assembly. Most of our knowledge comes from car ads of the last few years picturing the modern car production line as a futuristic disco environment where every car is perfect.

However, Matthias Gommel, Martina Haitz and Jan Zappe from Robot Lab argue that until recently the public have had little ability to observe and understand industrial robotics – to fathom a feeling for their potential and limitations. The Robot Lab projects address this, placing a number of standard robotic arms into gallery and new media exhibition settings.

Up until now, people haven’t had the chance to meet robots neither in public nor in private spaces. robots are mostly situated in special industrial spaces, therefore humans do not have contact with them, do not experience how they behave and do not know how to behave correctly with them. Today social patterns between man and machines do not exist. Instead there are only fictional images from science fiction literature and films. [about page]

My favourite piece The Bible Scribe, in 2007, saw the arm carefully replicating each calligraphic pen stroke of the Gutenberg Bible, while a gallery audience watched on.