Steve the Robot H.E.Ai.D.: a Large Scale Generative Music and Laser Play Space
Steve the Robot H.E.Ai.D. is a 35 foot, interactive, collaborative installation that allows people to create sound together, using video sensors to collect people’s motion and interactively generate music, voices and lasers. This was a very large scale project with about ten collaborators, funded by the Burning Man organization for installation in 2009, and which has now appeared at several events. Learn more and check out the video at http://heaid.com. I played a lead role in the project: recruiting collaborators, defining the artistic vision, project coordination, fundraising, and so forth.
The original vision was shaped by our fascination with how the process of cultural evolution has been accelerated by technology. As we integrate technology into our collaborations, these collaborations become their own persistent meta-beings comprised of both technological and collective biological parts. With Steve: The Robot H.E.Ai.D., a H.uman E.nergized Artifical i.ntelligence D.evice., we explore the idea that the next step in our human evolution is when these meta-beings wake up, become in some way self-aware, and start speaking to us, its individual nodes, within its own larger brain.
Steve the Robot. H.E.Ai.D.
