Robotic Voice Activated Word Kicking Machine
Neil Mendoza
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Robotic Voice Activated Word Kicking Machine is a surreal exploration of language and our strange relationship with talking to machines. We talk to these devices, from customer service bots to “intelligent assistants,” as if they were our friends, ignoring the trail of data that we leave behind.
The piece combines projection and robotics to blur the line between the physical and the digital. Participants speak into the hanging horn. Their words are then converted into text and launched into the virtual world. They accumulate there, sometimes kicked by a robotic foot and sometimes sucked back out into the world as sound through the horn on the floor.
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Currently, the installation only recognizes words spoken in English and some commonly used words in other languages.
This is a social experience, so you may see things that visitors before you have said. The machine is collecting the audience’s words as it goes along.
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Neil Mendoza is a UK-born, US-based artist who blends sculpture, software, and engineering to animate objects and spaces. He employs humor and absurdity as tools to investigate how we mediate our interactions with each other and the natural world. His art often repurposes found objects, offering viewers a fresh perspective that challenges their preconceptions.
Neil holds an MA in Maths and Computer Science from Oxford University and an MFA in Design Media Art from UCLA. He has showcased his work globally, lectured at international conferences, taught art and technology at UCLA and Stanford, and co-founded the art collective “is this good?”.
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