profiler

Collages of human silhouettes
2004

The robot in the installation “profiler” creates portraits of visitors in the form of outline drawings and arranges them in compositional contexts. Once an exhibition visitor has entered the stage in front of a brightly lit background wall, the robot recognizes this, moves into recording position and captures the human figure with its video camera. The computer processes the recorded image, transforms it into line drawings and the robot then executes the drawing with just a few strokes on the enameled, large-format drawing board.

The arrangement of the drawings by “profiler” is based on its own composition principle. The robot has a workspace limited by its anatomy, which is represented in a kidney-shaped manner in the panel plane. This accessible area was segmented into 16 fixed rectangles that overlap. Gradually, 13 outline drawings of visitors are randomly distributed in different rectangles. Three rectangles always remain empty. Within a rectangle, the drawing can take one of five possible positions, also determined by chance: in one of the four corners or in the center. The combination of systematics, chance and omission creates unpredictable arrangements on the panel with separations, groupings and overlaps.