"->forside

Vive Les Robots! met Magnus Wurzer in the capital of Austria, Vienna. Inside the Café Kantine he has just ordered a coffee and a lemonade, but not a cocktail, which might can seems a little bit surprising because this case study is on Roboexotica: A Festival for Cocktail-robotics.

In this very first article on Roboexotica, the main organizer of the festival, which takes place in Vienna in the beginning of December, will introduce us to his life story.

Roboexotica is a chance to catch up with friends, watch some stunning robots mixing cocktails or just have a good time talking to some highly intelligent barkeeper-psychologist-humanlike machines.

Magnus Wurzer:
"I was around nineteen when I was first confronted with the first piece of machine art. I stumbled upon the Mutoid Waste Company's work when I visited Amsterdam in the holidays at the time I was visiting computer school which I dropped out of. Actually after that holidays a few months after. So I'm a two time computer education drop out and I never lost the interest and the fascination with things computing. And so for the next few years I dropped out because I wanted to develop my artistic streaks".

"For the next few years I was torn between the poles of computer stuff and art stuff, I started thinking and working with ceramic stuff when in the mid nineties I found out both fit nicely together. I had this collaboration with Christoph Veigl, which we called Shifz. We made it to an artist association and used it as a label for the works we brought up together, like the Brainwashing-machine and different things including EEG feedback. Music, we had a band for few years. So it all came nicely together around the mid nineties and we worked and worked until, it must have been the early year 1999 just before the new millennium when we sat down and thought about what the future would hold and that's when we came up with Roboexotica".

Similar case stories:
Stanley Povoda and his Robot Band
Kal Spelletich in Prague
Black Box: A Lecture On A Robotic Play
Tesla Orchestra

[image source: Shifzr]
[source: Vive Les Robots!]