Robot Film Festival Rises Up Again

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Saturday, 07 July 2012 17:55

Written by Laura Blum

“Why do robots always get a bad rep?” was the rhetorical quibble that prompted social robotist Heather Knight to found the Robot Film Festival last year. Now back for its second installment (July 14, 2012 at Manhattan's 3LD Art & Technology Center), the fest aims to burnish the image of artificially intelligent creatures, which Knight vindicates as "good guys if we design them right.”

As befits a celebration of automata, RFF is quick and efficient enough to achieve its task in one day. It's up and at it with mimosas, caffeine and a morning matinee screening of Jake Shreier's directorial debut, Robot & Frank.

The sci fi comedy follows retired cat burgler (Frank Langella), who persuades his humanoid robot caretaker (voice of Peter Sarsgaard) to assist on one last heist. It snagged an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and is RFF's designated feature to assay its 2012 theme evaluating the impact of emerging technologies: "Are Robots Man’s New Best Friend?"

"Robots are not merely a type of character, but rather a medium for character -- just as animation and puppets and costumes allow us to experiment with our conceptions of ourselves and others,” observes Festival co-producer Marek Michalowski of BeatBots.

Though RFF calls itself a film festival, live performances, art installations and robot demos render the algorithm intriguingly more complex. It's really more of a variety show spliced with a TED Conference and flowing with mood lubricants.

The day culminates with the 2nd annual Botsker Awards, where the verdicts of RFF's juried short film showcase will be revealed amid the robo-antics of emcee and comedian/musician Reggie Watts.

Botsker categories include:

• Best Robot Actor
• Best Human as Robot Actor
• Best Human-Robot Interaction
• Most Uncanny Interaction

Held in a venue evocative of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the ceremony will kick off with the descent of mini-humanoids across the red carpet and close with Josh Ventura and Data the Robot -- his sidekick programmed by Knight -- in a number billed as a "human-robot dance."

Also getting his groove on will be BeatBots’ Keepon robot. Attendees are invited to pose on the Step & Repeat with the human-sized robot Millennia, known for her flirty come ons and snide asides.

Knight's résumé is hardly the usual festival curator's. She runs Marilyn Monrobot, a robot theater company which creates socially intelligent robot performances and sensor-based electronic art.

Her background includes stints at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Syyn Labs (with whom she built the award-winning This Too Shall Pass music video for OK GO), Aldebaran Robotics and the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab. Knight graced the 2011 Forbes List for 30 under 30 in Science.

Whether festival-goers will be too distracted by their mobile devices to absorb the concepts and queries of the Robot Film Festival remains to be seen. “Are we also out-of-touch with human character?" wonders Knight.

This Bastille Day rise up and storm the Festival barracks to find out. For more info or tickets, go to: http://robotfilmfestival.com or @robotfilmfest

Robot Film Festival
Saturday, July 14, 2012
10:30 am - 10 pm

3LD Art and Technology Center
80 Greenwich St.
New York, NY 10006

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